Remove All Racist Monuments? Or Only Some?

Arcata CA

Description

CARTER DEFENDS ALL‐WHITE AREAS By Christopher. Lydon Special to The New York Times April 7, 1976 SOUTH BEND, Ind., April 6 — Jimmy Carter said today that the Federal Government should not take the initiative to change the “ethnic purity” of some urban neighborhoods or the economic “homogeneity” of well‐to‐do suburbs. ‘If he wins the Presidency, the Georgia Democrat said at a news conference here, “I'm not ‐going to use the Federal Government's authority deliberately to circumvent the natural inclination of people to live in ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods.” Similarly, he said, “To build a high‐rise, very low‐cost housing unit in a suburban neighborhood or other neighborhoods with relatively expensive homes, I think, would not he in the best interest of the people. who live in the high‐rise or the suburbs. “Any exclusion of a family because of race or ethnic background I would oppose very strongly and aggressively as President,” he said. “But think it's good to maintain the homogeneity of neighborhoods if they'ye been established that way.” Mr. Carter, making his first campaign venture into Indiana, which will hold its Presidential primary May 4, repeatedly declared his support for Federal and state open‐housing laws. “If there is a neighborhood that's homogeneous and if a family of another ethnic group wanted to move in,” he said “I would use the full resources of the Federal Government to enforce their right to do that." But the emphasis of his remarks—first in an answer to a news conference question in Indianapolis this morning, then in elaborations here—was on the value of sameness in communities and on the costs of change and integration. In making the point, he used unusually blunt language about; social differences—about “black intrusion” into white neighborhoods, for example. He spoke of “alien groups” in communities, and of the had effects of “injecting” a “diametrically opposite kind of family” or “a different kind of person” into a neighborhood. One of the most striking aspects of Mr. Carter's success in primaries this year has been his ability, in both North and South. to win votes from blacks and simultaneously from many whites who feel that government has done more than it should for racial minorities. Today he seemed to he saying that “affirmative action” by the Federal Government is not the key to political success or social. harmony, ‘Natural Inclination’ His first comment on the subject today was addressed to a question about an interview he gave in New York last weekend. He said, “I have nothing against a community that's made up of people who are Polish or Czechoslovakian or French‐Canadian, or blacks who are trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods. “This is a natural inclination on the part of people, and I made this statement in Milwaukee, where there has been over a period of 100 or 150 years a compatibility among neighborhoods, for the churches, the private clubs, the newspapers, restaurants, all designed to accommodate members of a particular ethnic group. I see nothing wrong with thatas long as it's done freely.” Asked later if Northern ethnic neighborhoods had been preserved “freely,” he said, “I can't tell you that.” In Indianapolis this morning, he continued: “I would never, though, condone any sort of discrimination against, say, a black family, or any other family, from moving into that neighborhood. But I don't think government ought deliberately to try to break down an ethnically oriented community—deliberately by injecting into it a member of anothor race, This Is Contrary to the best interest of the community. It creates disharmony. It creates hatred.” Mr. Carter showed puzzlement and annoyance when reporters pressed their questions this.afternoon. “If you're trying to make something out of nothing,” he told one reporter, “I resent that effort. I'm not trying to say I want to maintain with any kind of government interference the ethnic purity of neighborhoods. I didn't say that at all. What I say is the government ought not take as a major purpose the intrusion of alien groups into a neighborhood, simply to establish that intrusion.” He said this afternoon that his first comment this morning had got and merited little attention. “None of you noticed it,” he said. “There was nothing notable about it. Now in retrospect, you're trying to make something out of it, and there's nothing to be made of it.” Southern Context Today, as he frequently does, Mr. Carter explained his racial goal in the conrext of his native South. Often he has said that the Federal civil rights legislation of the 1950's was “the greatest thing thing ever happened to the South in my lifetime.” He is the richest citizen in his rural hometown, Plains, Ga., and, as he said today, an integrated public housing project stands “almost within a stone's throw of where I live.” As Governor of Georgia, he sponsored the slate's first open housing law, he said, and enforced it more vigorously than the Nixon Administration was enforcing Federal laws against discrimination in housing. Asked this afternoon whether the rural South was an appropriate model for racial integration in traditionally but not legally separate communities in the urban North, he hesitated. “If you refuse to let me use experience that I've had, it constrains me a great deal in my ability to answer your questions. I'm not sure it is different,” he added, speaking of the Northern and Southern experiences. “In Atlanta, for instance, there was adamant opposition to the intrusion of blacks into those all‐while neighborhoods.” Asked further if the South could have been integrated without an aggressive Federal policy, he said, “I see no relationship from your questions to what we've been discussing. I'm not trying to keep blacks and whites apart.'’ Finally, he was asked whether the preservation of ethnic not economically uniform neighborhoods would not extend racial separation in the public schools of the North. “That may or may not be the case,” he replied. “Thc neighborhood in Atlanta with which I am familiar have been fairly pure, although they've been much more integrated since I misled my open‐housing bill. But the schools are quite thoroughly mixed.” A horse is a Source of course my Whores: https://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/07/archives/carter-defends-allwhite-areas-says-government-shouldnt-try-to-end.html South Bend Indiana as KKK hot-spot: https://www.southbendtribune.com/story/news/local/2018/08/21/yes-there-were-plenty-of-kkk-rallies-when-adam-driver-lived-in-st-joseph-county/46490337/ Compare/Contrast with the policy of Lester Maddox who also would "not use force" to integrate: https://youtu.be/TAMWsWvcbtg?t=81 Associated Press: Jimmy Carter blames others for his "unfortunate phrase" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uCO9OHtXws