Response 1: Our Super Initiative

On Monday, March 27, 2006, Jacob posed the question to our class, “To what degree is your super-initiative empowering?” This question seemed timely and extremely relevant to our topic. A common comment that I hear from people when it comes to racism, is that it seems like a problem so big that it cannot be tackled. That our individual efforts have little effect on the larger issues at hand. In many ways the impetus behind pushing for solutions to the end of racist ideologies and beliefs is that history will repeat itself. We are constantly looking for an end to the cycle.

In our attempts to zoom in and discuss racism from the worms eye view, I want to continue to stress the idea that change needs to occur on the micro level. One of the primary ways that this can occur is though the support and creation of diverse communities. I still believe that diverse communities do not happen organically, but are intentional. It is natural to self-segregate, it is a value that has been intricately woven in to our understandings of American life and culture. On the same token, I posit that segregated communities do not occur by accident either. A book titled Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by Dr. James Loewen seeks to prove my assertion to be true. Sundown towns are towns that through violence, threats of violence and codified laws excluded non-whites from communities throughout the United States. Located primarily in the Northern states, Illinois had some of the highest numbers of Sundown towns on record, with nearly 70% (up to 472) towns listed. Considering that a large majority of our class comes from Chicago or the outlying Chicago Suburbs and that Dr. Loewen has identified that almost 80% of these suburbs were Sundown towns, the experiences that our peers were brought up in are directly related to our understandings of race and racial politics. Race is often tied to class, but here we see where class was not a factor in the shaping of our communities, insomuch as racist ideologies. These attitudes have persisted.

Dr. Loewen outlines these areas and the detrimental effects of creating and maintaining segregated communities. He asserts that despite Federal mandates, many towns still covertly operate as Sundown towns. It is only when cases are brought to court that the town laws are reviewed and reversed. This is not merely a black and white issue either as he illustrates that Latinos, Asians, Jews and Italians were prohibited from purchasing property

An excerpt from an online chat he gave about his book: "Many towns became sundown -- expelled their blacks -- upon learning of the misbehavior of one black person. For example, Vienna, IL, burned out its black community quite late -- 1954 -- because one (perhaps two) black(s) molested a white woman and her daughter. Vienna has no black household to this date. This kind of collective responsibility is NEVER done to whites. How could we -- do it to ourselves?" Chilling stuff huh?

Many towns like Hawthorne, Calif., in the 1930s, had signage that literally stated "Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Set On YOU In Hawthorne.” Others had signals such as bells, as in Villa Grove, Illinois that rang every day at sunset as a warning to non-whites who may have worked or traveled through Villa Grove. It has been less than a decade since that town stopped the traditional ringing the bell. Many of the younger generation were unfamiliar with the legacy of the bell and took the racial exclusivity of their town for granted as a natural part of their upbringing. In this way, I believe that our Super-Initiative will empower our class to reconsider our immediate world. We can see the complexities of race relations and that there are more than just stereotypes at work here. Hopefully, those of us who are affected by this will make an intentional effort to live in diverse communities and to stop the cycle of self-segregation. We can see that this problem does not have to be bigger than ourselves. We can see effective change, on the micro level, through deliberate interactions with the varied, diverse, unique world that is all around us.