I do not recall how I got a copy of a 2019 article “Protection from Undesirable Neighbors: The Use Deed Restrictions in Shaker Heights, Ohio.” It is a levelheaded, readable account of residential discrimination in a prominent northern city. The author researched, wrote, and published this scholarly article before the hue-and-cry about Critical Race Theory, an issue already less newsworthy and less inflamed than it was just recently. Because it makes no reference to CRT and no recommendations, those who oppose CRT or deny facts about institutional racism may find it palatable. Advancing no agenda, the article enlivens its history of legal and social evolution with specific episodes showing the operation and effects of institutional bigotry on peoples’ lives. (I use the term “bigotry” because the article considers restrictions affecting Jews as well as Blacks) Raised in Shaker from 1945 on and knowing some of the facts, I can vouch for its reliability. Yet the facts speak for themselves, though some will not listen to them.
The most harrowing incident illustrating institutional racism in its on-the-street application arose in the effort by Edward Bailey, a black surgeon, his wife, and young daughter, to move into a house in a neighborhood of comfortable houses in an attractive section of the city in the fall of 1925. The house and garage were vandalized. “Mayor William Van Aken … turned down Bailey’s request for police protection, leaving the family to fend for itself when the vandals returned. To ward them off, Bailey’s chauffeur fired one warning shot into the ground. He was promptly arrested and charged with unlawful discharge of a firearm. The mayor then posted guards with instructions to search everyone going into or out of the Bailey home. After the court turned down Bailey’s request for an injunction to stop this harassment of his family, he sued the mayor and the police chief for depriving him of his rights, property, and reputation. He lost the case. Fearing for the safety of his family, Bailey had no choice but to retreat back to Cleveland” (pp. 5-6). Mayor, police chief, judge—there can be no question about institutional racism forcing a black professional and his family from their home.
Forty years later, in the mid-60s, Blacks were still fighting restrictions on residency. But by the ‘90s, much of Shaker had been integrated, more in smaller, less expensive houses on the south side of Van Aken Boulevard—outrageous that its name honors a racist—than the increasingly larger and more expensive housing on the north side. A sign of the times: my family’s 22-room Georgian house with a 3-car garage and an extra lot adjacent to the entrance to the Shaker Heights Country Club has a Black woman owner. Today, Shaker is 55 percent white, 35 percent Black, 6 percent Asian, and 5 percent Hispanic and other (rounding accounts for 101 percent). The article notes, “The national reputation of Shaker Heights as a successfully integrated community is a source of community pride and the reason why President Barack Obama chose Shaker Heights High School [my high school] as the venue for one his Town Hall Meetings in November 2009 and returned for a major policy announcement in 2012” (p. 25).
The only flaw in this article is this rosy conclusion, which interpolates from obvious improvements in residential integration to “a successfully integrated community.” Much has been achieved in the century since public officials forced the Baileys from their home. But much remains to be done. Even with the lessening or demise of institutional bigotry, individual bigotry from which institutional bigotry emerges and on which it depends still abides. For instance, some inter-racial conflict exists in the public schools. Two of many reasons are residual White and Black racism and Black antisemitism (a large but unquantified percentage of students are Jewish). No doubt, racial and religious friction, if not conflict, persists at the personal level in Shaker. Still, I remain proud of Shaker’s achievements and continuing efforts to achieve social justice and inter-racial and inter-religious harmony. The fact that complete success has been elusive indicates how difficult bigotry is to overcome even in a community committed to it.
For individual racism remains powerful despite the abatement of institutional racism even in liberal communities. Shaker is one example but not in my family. My parents were professional and political associates, and personal friends of blacks. My mother was a liberal Democrat like many descendants of Polish-Russian Jews. My father was a moderate Republican raised with an unconscious racism common to descendants of German Reform Jews. But he was shocked into change by reading the 1961 classic Black like Me (1961), an account by a white man who darkened his skin to travel in the South as a Black man. Both of my parents worked on or for Carl Stokes’s mayoral campaigns.
Cleveland Heights, a slightly less affluent suburb next to Shaker Heights and my retirement destination in 1998, is another. My maternal uncle was a Cleveland Heights liberal who, unaware of his racism, would have denied it. His closest experience with Blacks was his cleaning woman, who bused from her inner-city home to his suburban home, and back. In 1963, after the March on Washington, with Martin Luther King’s stirring speech—“I have a dream”—about equality as the realization of the American dream, my uncle and I lunched together and discussed the Civil Rights Movement. He feared that King’s speech would prompt racial violence and social turmoil. I replied that he had nothing to fear from those who marched for racial justice through equality for Blacks. However, I warned that, if liberals rejected King, his successors would be scary. He remained racist, fearful, and silent on the subject of civil rights.
Years later, I encountered White racism and fear reflected in aspirational differences, with liberal Whites taking comfort in the assumption that Blacks want what Whites want. In 2000, Cleveland Heights undertook to involve citizens in defining a vision of the city for the 21st century. I signed up for the “Diversity Committee.” The first and, I believe because of me, only meeting was chaired by a liberal White woman and attended by six to eight White men and women, and three Black women. The chair led the discussion on how the city might do a better job of welcoming and integrating Blacks, especially those living in Section 8 housing. For an hour, the Black women said nothing, and the chair did not encourage them to speak. I said nothing until the discussion had run its course, then spoke to make three points. Attendees included no Black men or Hassidic Jews, the latter about 30 percent of the population. Many Blacks, especially Black men, opposed integration, and Hassidic Jews refused it because it threatened cultural assimilation. For White liberals, integration was an ideal; for minorities, it was a danger. I pretty much put the kibosh on the discussion, and the meeting ended. The three Black women came up to me and thanked me for saying what they had wanted to say but felt that doing so would have been unwelcome. The chair later strode up to me and said that I, sporting a beard and wearing a Stetson, looked like one of those Western men who beat their wives.
So many stereotypes. Bigotry is one tough issue, whether institutional or individual. Most people embrace causes; the greater need is for them to examine their consciences, as did my Dad, and their conduct.
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