Kurashige: The Fight for Housing Integration

In Kurashige's chapter entitled, "The Fight for Housing Integration," many startling points were raised that introduced themes in US history I would like to further research. The first is the use of government subsidies to create bastions of white privilege after world war II. Kurashige frequently mentions that tax dollars were being spent to facilitate white flight to the suburbs, most commonly taking the form of housing subsidies and freeway construction. This trend strikes me as significant because it dismantles that myth that government has a tendency to act impartially with its resources; in fact, this example proves just the opposite--government has, historically, utilized its public resources to the benefit of certain communities, and the detriment of others. Such behavior calls into question the progressivist notion of government acting on behalf of the "common good"; in the case of the freeway construction, one notices people are being displaced by freeways in the name of "progress" or "development", as wealth and resources are being transplanted to racialized suburbs (enclaves of protected privilege).

Another fascinating point on housing discrimination in the postwar era is the contradiction that this phenomenon poses when viewed alongside popular perceptions during the war. I am trying to grapple with how Americans overwhelmingly conceived of their country to by antithetical to Nazi Germany--America was unquestionably good and moral--yet so many individuals were fine perpetuating racial inequality and policing racial fault lines after the war. To what degree was racial progress connected with patriotism during WWII? Did this connection dissolve after WWII? How is it that the metanarrative of America's racial inclusion and goodness could be so far from reality? What allowed for such disparity between rhetoric and reality?

Also striking in Kurashige's chapter is the reference to Whites moving several times within a few years in order to avoid the "invasion" of Blacks. Such behavior, which seems to have been fairly prevalent, is truly shocking, and reminds be of the potency of racial discourses during this period. Often racism is described in economic or materialist terms--as a system that facilitates the maldistribution of resources within society, or a system that is materially rational for people atop the racial hierarchy. In the case of people fleeing their homes, while material calculations may have been part of their calculus (the fear that home values would plummet after Blacks entered), it seems that people were also behaving in ways that can only be described as crazy. People were literally moving over and over again to avoid living next to people of color. Such irrational or non-rational behavior speaks to the power and potency of racism and racial perceptions.