Once you go white

Imagine a town with a sign at city limits warning: “Nigger, don’t let the sun set on you here!” Probably some racist Southern town from 100 years ago, right? Guess again.\nFrom the 1890s through the 1960s many towns through the West and Midwest forced out black (and sometimes Asian and Jewish) residents. In some communities, white mobs would violently run every black resident out, burning and destroying homes or terrorizing blacks until they left. Many of these towns then posted ominous signs, like the one quoted above, at the city limits. Other towns used subtler strategies to force and keep blacks out. Social pressures, police harassment and city ordinances that prevented blacks from renting or buying homes created many “white only” towns throughout the Midwest.\nProfessor James Loewen, who spoke on campus last Friday, documents this racist history in his book “Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism.” “Sundown towns” are towns that were “all white on purpose” – places that actively excluded people of color for many years, some as recently as the 1990s. Loewen has confirmed more than 470 sundown towns in Illinois alone, over 100 in Indiana, and thousands nationwide (although very few exist in the South). In other words, if you grew up in an all-white (or nearly all-white) town in the Midwest, odds are excellent that the racial makeup of your community didn’t “just happen.”\nFor example, Loewen’s research reveals in 1906 the white residents of Greensburg, Ind., drove out almost all the 164 black residents. In 1960, the entire county had only three black residents. And as of the 2000 census, Greesburg still had only two black households.\nThese towns weren’t created by a few crazy Klansmen. Rather they were the collective work of most white residents who “either approved of the policy of exclusion or said nothing to stop its enforcement.”\nIt’s tempting to say, “I wasn’t there. I didn’t do those things. Don’t blame me!” Or it’s easy to say, “We don’t exclude people anymore.” But we can’t let ourselves off the hook so easily.\nWe’ve inherited this racist history whether we like it or not. And simply “not doing it anymore” isn’t nearly enough. If we truly care about ideals of justice and equity, we have to work actively in order to reverse the ongoing effects of a racist past. In the case of sundown towns, taking down a threatening sign or eliminating racist laws is one step, but only an active effort to welcome people of color will reverse the effects.\nIf we’re not consistently willing to challenge and reverse the outcomes of the past, then we are completely complacent in reproducing and perpetuating the inequalities and injustices that history created. Racism doesn’t just fizzle away; we must make an ongoing effort to stomp it out.\nTry it today. Think of one thing you can do to challenge and counteract racism. Don’t just shrug your shoulders and excuse yourself. Get busy.\nYou’ve got until sundown.