c. 1999 Religion News Service
(David P. Gushee is director of the Center for Christian Leadership and associate professor of Christian Studies at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.)
UNDATED _ An under-reported story deserves our attention: The news that Gov. George W. Bush bought in 1988 and sold in 1995 a Texas home with a deed restriction stipulating the home could be occupied”by white persons only, not excluding bona fide servants of any race.” At one level this is another example of the unfortunate”gotcha”politics of contemporary politics, especially presidential races. Bush is the enormously popular front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 and may well be our next president.
A growing industry now exists to go through every possible scrap of garbage that can be dug up about those who seek high office, and this finding is one result of such efforts. A recent article in The New York Times profiled several of the unsavory private detectives who earn their living digging up such dirt and selling it to the highest bidder. It is also an established part of the political apparatus of both major parties at the national level, another example of the viciousness that characterizes the fight for political power.
But the importance of this story goes beyond that.
Bush himself says he didn’t know about the deed restriction and, in any case, it could not be legally enforced. The latter is certainly true, and it is possible that Bush did not in fact know about the restrictive covenant, although the title company agent recalled sending Bush paperwork on it in 1995. If Bush is lying, it will _ or at least it should _ damage his candidacy. We will see what develops.
Yet the story is important in another way as well for it well reveals the extent of the sometimes overt _ and sometimes subterranean _ racism still existing in our nation.
And housing is a particular problem.
According to the on-line Slate magazine, a 1998 study discovered that even in majority black Washington, D.C., evidence of housing discrimination by banks turned up in 41 percent of cases in which minority”testers”sought a mortgage.
It is not only banks, of course, that find ways to maintain the racial makeup of neighborhoods along the lines desired by those who live there. Sometimes the real estate industry is involved; and even when houses in predominantly white neighborhoods are sold to minority buyers, sometimes the locals make life extraordinarily unpleasant for their new neighbors.
Then, of course, there remains the phenomenon of white flight _ the”last resort”for white residents when their neighborhoods begin to integrate.
The continued existence of racial covenants comes as somewhat of a surprise, however.
These covenants have been null and void since 1948, when the Supreme Court ruled courts could not enforce them. Congress also passed a law in 1968 making it illegal for individuals to draw up new racial covenants or honor existing ones.
How is it, then, that as late as 1988 Bush happened to buy a house that still had such a covenant? Exactly how many neighborhoods still have these ghastly appendages of racism still on the books?
Frequently I find myself in interracial gatherings in which whites find it incredible blacks still claim to experience racism in American life. We white folks might like to believe that all of that trouble is”in the past.” But I would ask white readers to consider the impact of this story. Think of being a racial minority and learning of the existence of official documents intended to exclude you and your family from living in a neighborhood.
Consider the fact that the man who may be the next president of this nation until recently lived in such a neighborhood. It must feel like a nice swift kick in the stomach.
How long will it take until every American is treated with the justice and love that every human being deserves? For all are sacred, made in God’s image, and all of us are the objects of divine love beyond measure.
DEA END GUSHEE
