Kansas Democrats’ plans to remove racist property restrictions isn’t enough | Opinion

On the surface, two new bills in the Kansas Legislature that would remove racist language in old deed restrictions seem like a good move with no downsides. After all, turning our attention to the inequities of our past can serve as a reminder of how laws have changed and how society has seemingly evolved.

But what do we do about making sure that the garden-variety racism of a not-too-long-ago Jim Crow still remains in our community consciousness so we don’t repeat those mistakes — and so we don’t forget the impact that still remains today?

The identical measures — House Bill 2174 and Senate Bill 77 — were offered by state Rep. Rui Xu, a Democrat from Westwood, and state Sen. Ethan Corson, a Democrat from Fairway.

The legislation would authorize any city, county or the Kansas Human Rights Commission to eliminate a racially restrictive covenant by redacting it from the plat description or homeowners association governing document. Under current law, that language — though unenforceable — can be removed only by a HOA.

Overwhelmingly, it is positive to remove racist language that was reflective of the times. The era when it was legal to ban ownership or occupancy “by any person of Negro blood or by any person who is more than one-fourth of the Semitic race, blood, origin or extraction, including without limitation in said designation, Armenians, Jews, Hebrews, Turks, Persians, Syrians and Arabians” — as in one Johnson County covenant quoted by The Star’s Judy L. Thomas — is within the lifetime of many people still with us today.

That’s hurtful language to see now: deeds that essentially say no Black or Jewish people are allowed to live here except for Black servants.

But one of the hardest things we Americans have to do is acknowledge our horrific but common legacy of racism while eliminating its reminders, such as old statues, public buildings and fountains named after people with a racist history. It’s a hard line to walk, but it’s a line we have to walk to show history’s impact on the world we’re in now.

Developer J.C. Nichols was one of the most significant and famous architects of creating and enforcing these sorts of restrictive covenants. And those policies have tentacles that continue to reach out even after they became legally unenforceable.

Between the restrictive covenants that were primarily used in the sale of Johnson County homes on the Kansas side, and west of the notorious color line of Troost Avenue on the Missouri side, we sometimes forget that the racial divide and the racial wealth gap today — particularly between white and Black Americans — took root a long time ago.

Many studies have shown that home ownership is a huge contributor to a family’s wealth, including wealth passed down to subsequent generations. But in a city where racist deeds, redlining and blockbusting were common measures to keep neighborhoods white, we need to keep telling the story honestly about how those neighborhoods became what they are.

We usually resist comparison to 20th century fascism, but here it’s apt: German society openly addresses the stain of Nazism today with the concept of “vergangenheitsaufarbeitung,” which loosely translates to “processing the past.” If Kansans take racist language out of these deeds, they should also pay attention to marking what used to be. Each city and county may have a different way of addressing this, whether by plaques, local museum exhibitions, annual programs or other creative means.

At the personal level, families need to talk about these past practices — and not just the families impacted by this legalized discrimination, but all families, including those who benefited from it. We can’t escape it and say, “That’s not who we are” — because that is exactly what the communities who took advantage of deed restrictions were.

It’s admirable for legislators to want to remove the vestiges of times past. But we have to figure out how to make sure that this history doesn’t get whitewashed — and that truth-telling doesn’t get blackballed.