Dr. Sweet.

Today, Professor Jelani Cobb mentioned Dr. Sweet of 1925 Detroit on the Melissa Harris Perry
show.
My mom was born in 1920, but was brought to Detroit to be raised six months later.
One of the things she spoke about continually as I grew up, was how even a black physician
in Detroit didn't seem to be good enough to live among white factory workers.
My dad was a bit different in his reaction of horror. His feeling about housing was 'Let 'em
have it.'
As crime grew in some black communities, however, my dad had to consider a bit of broadening about housing when the time came for us to actually buy a house.
I found a beautiful house for us in an all white neighborhood. I figured we should try it because
the neighborhood was surrounded by black neighborhoods. My dad wasn't sure at all. He had his
realtor poll the neighbors. At this time, housing discrimination was already against the law. My
dad didn't care. Daddy was already about eight when Dr. Sweet got crosses burned on his lawn and subsequently got arrested; but he remained just as traumatized as my mom in his memory of the race degradation in the incident.
My siblings and I were saying: "Power to the people!"
My dad kept saying: "No way."
He was proud of the struggle, but he didn't want it in his mortgage.
So in the end, the polled neighbors told dad's realtor they were all professional, non-cross burners, but wouldn't be openly accepting of us in their community or its organizations.
My dad didn't care about that. He was busy. His neighbors were not his community.
My sibs and I were saying: "Great." We weren't even going to have to change our school.
My mom, though, felt mortally wounded by the non-inclusion news. She never forgave that assertion by our neighbors, until one of the couples got my brother (about twenty years later) a job. It took her years even to ask which neighbors felt that way and which ones even knew what had been said. She hated everyone associated with those statements. For a while, that included dad's messenger realtor.
I didn't understand my dad. But he never changed. Integration could be useful, in his mind, but
was an unfortunate necessity. We were overjoyed he bought the house. It just took us a long
time to understand that he absolutely did not want to deal with confrontation over where he
spent his hard earned money.
Melissa Harris Perry also talked with Tim Wise on her show today. His book is on institutionalized racism, which happens to be an important thing for a white man to write and lecture about these days. The new racism is more in disguise than in remission. And black writers are often thought to be
complaining due to 'sensitivity'.