Today The New York Times hits the nail on the head. It is a simple and universal truth and it cuts to the heart of the Trump madness.
Integration, the obliteration of racial barriers, is the beginning point of justice. It is the start, not the end. It is the basis of the perfect union that is the aspiration of the American Constitution. To see this truth plainly and without being threatened or thrust onto the defensive is essential to liberation.
Here is the story with backup evidence that underlies the brief for integration first.
Program to Spur Low-Income Housing Is Keeping Cities Segregated https://t.co/n9q2ZJcWmy
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) July 3, 2017
Let's be very clear.
Fair housing advocates believe correctly that there should be unity among all people. But when the solution is to build what amounts to a racial ghetto in an affluent neighborhood, the difficulty is palpable, real, clear, obvious.
Galleria
People in Houston's Galleria area are represented in a letter the Times quotes that refers to the possibility that the project will bring crime, drugs, and prostitution to the area.The writer struggled to get to that level in society and does not want to be beset by an influx of the "those who, either from lack of initiative or misfortune, don’t deserve to be there.”
Racism
This is textbook evidence of how the cookie of racial unity crumbles in the hard light of reality.
Let's understand reality. It can be ugly as noted here, with no chance of a resolution, even if the project is implemented. Why? Because the will does not exist to engage in any process that might lance the boil of resentment that is obvious even in this tiny snapshot, Reality is about making things better.
Getting to know you
Until people can actually meet and get to know one another there is no possibility of brotherhood or sisterhood or live or fellow feeling. Until there is the possibility of actual kumbaya moments, suspicion is rife and polarization is a given.
The solution is irrespective of how it is achieved. It is the togetherness of knowing one another, of discovering each other, of learning the good and the not so good in all of us.
New communities
My own solution is to create cyber communities where housing is affordable to all and more or less like cars, customized so that private areas are personal and unique. But where public areas are communal and civil.
This can only happen by building communities from the ground where people of all sorts and conditions will choose to live.
This right of choice is fundamental and almost entirely ignored. That we have any integration at all is a testimony to the indomitable impulse that enables us to be universal beings even in the face of the nativism and know-nothingism of our world.
