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It is interesting to hear countless political figures struggle when discussing systemic racism. There is a need to deny the existence of racism when we all know it is historical in nature. The quest to “Make America Great," and to "Make America Great, Again” is a search for a mythical time when America was perfect. A simple survey of the twentieth century proves that no such era ever existed. America, in the minds of most social scientists, was always a contested space. None-the-less, the quest to find that “special time” continues.  Some social commentators have described it as a time when whites dominated the suburbs and were able to keep blacks and other minorities out. A deeper dive would reveal that the suburbs were never perfect for any group. See Richard Rothstein's seminal work, The Color of Law to see how the government provided the tools for segregating America.

Neither the city, suburb, or rural countryside gave rise to the ideal American residence. Various tactics and practices were used against ethnic and religious whites, people of color, and people of different gender identifications. Americans have long been segregated in residence and religious settings. However, in relation to this argument, people of color were always in the suburbs. Exclusionary politics kept them out of some communities but not all. The stories of minority residence in suburbia is more frequently about their expulsion rather than their exclusion. 

Recent articles in the Los Angeles Times and the Argonaut tell the story of black entrepreneurs who purchased large plots of coastal land in Los Angeles County during the early twentieth century. In each case the attempts to provide beachfront living and accommodations for black homeowners and patrons in Venice (Oakwood), Gordon's Manor, and Manhattan Beach (Bruce’s Beach) ended with segregation laws, intimidation and arson. The entrepreneurs lost their property and that subsequently killed the dreams of their race. Slowly blacks throughout the county were transformed from aspiring homeowners to generations of renters. Currently over 60% of Black Angelenos live in neighborhoods with few white residents. Restrictive covenants, outlawed by the Supreme Court in 1948, still determine where most African Americans and Latinx reside.

The crusading Afro-American press was the first to tell these stories and many more. In Los Angeles, the Eagle and the Sentinel captured the pains and sufferings of generations tortured by injustices. Similarly, in New York that responsibility fell to the New York Age and the Amsterdam News. Black dailies and weeklies in other cities shared these stories as well as local accounts.

Alfred Johnson recently suggested that there were a cohort of men who created racial residential patterns in New York City. The cadre consisted of elected officials, appointed officials, and wealthy developers. His research indicates that Robert Moses helped to create suburban Long Island by building highways and supporting the exclusionary suburbs like Levittown. Its developer William Levitt was not alone in creating housing that prohibited black residents. Many prominent New Yorkers held the color line. Included in this group were Sameul LeFrak, the tycoon behind LeFrak City, Battery Park City and Jersey City’s Newport, and Fred Trump, the president’s father. All were eventually sued by the federal government in the 1970s for discriminatory housing tactics that they had developed years earlier.

 

Moses also isolated minorities within New York. He tried building parks to keep them in their neighborhoods but denied them the facilities that existed in white communities. Black neighborhoods, for instance, lacked pools and had to rely on fire hydrants to stay cool. Moses also favored destroying black neighborhoods to gentrify the city. His last venture, the Cross Bronx Expressway, destroyed much of the old South Bronx.

Moses's ideas rubbed off on future generations. His scheme of highway development to gentrify was and remains practiced throughout the nation. Examples of this policy were implemented in Newark, Harlem, Hartford, Miami, Baltimore, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Louisville

Finally, for those that believe that the events of 2020 are bringing attention to new concerns know very little about African American history. Black complaints about police brutality and ensuing protests after confrontations with police are over 100 years old. Shannon King’s “A Murder in Central Park” is a fascinating chapter in The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North, a volume edited by Brian Purnell and Jeanne Theoharis with Komozi Woodard. King highlights how New York City framed crime in Harlem and Bed Sty during the 1930s and 1940s. His work develops how “stop and frisk” was a historic progression based on white fears of black muggers, and how the negligence of the police to protect black women and children equally gave rise to the Rockefeller drug laws that led to the mass incarceration of black and brown men.

In essence, the facts are clear. The concepts associated with systemic racism are visible and cannot be denied. The "golden age of race relations", at least in understanding America's relationship with African American and Latinx communities has yet to occur.