Recently, a controversy down in Springfield provoked some strong language.
As the mayor and city council struggled with cutting the city budget, one service they thought could be eliminated was city's Human Rights Commission, which investigates discrimination complaints. Earlier this month, the council cut the commission's funding from $68,000 to a measly $1,000. During that meeting, the Human Rights Commission's executive director, Kathy Clancy, begging the council to save her agency, said that "Springfield is seen as one of the most racist cities in Missouri."
Knowing nothing about Springfield, I can only imagine Clancy's reasons for giving her city that ignominious distinction (her official press release provides some insight).
But it made me wonder whether Springfield really was the state's most racist city. Because I've always thought Kansas City could be a contender for that designation.
There are big, obvious reasons why we qualify.
We endured a $2 billion, 26-year school desegregation case that ended when a judge declared the Kansas City schools were integrated, even though they're not.
We are a textbook case in white flight, made extra dramatic by the presence of a state line. Whites didn't just flee to the suburbs -- they fled to the suburbs in a whole other state.
We all know the name of the street that's considered the city's black-white dividing line.
Agonies over the black-male-targeting dress code at the city-funded Power & Light District are only the latest blow-up of tensions that fester just underneath our city's polite veneer. And that polite veneer is pretty thin -- as those of us who are familiar with disgusting comments left on blogs and Web sites know all too well.
We are quick to throw around allegations of racism, but apparently
incapable of having any sort of civil and productive, much less
healing, community-wide discussion about it.
I suppose that makes us typical of most American cities. But this is the city where I live. Not having lived anywhere else in the state, it feels to me like the most racist city in Missouri.
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I believe that LAthrop, MO should get that distinguishment for its police department and Deputy Chief of Police, Don, who made extremely racist comments about a Native American child to my family recently regarding our former foster child and is spending thousands of dollars in taxpayers money to have him extradited to Missouri for "attempting to break into a concession stand" when the building was never entered and nothing was taken, as he himself admitted.
Having grown up in Shawnee Mission myself in the late 70's and 80's... Yet spending most of my time in KCMO, and now living in a completely other state.... I don't think it's "racism"... I don't think it's a Black White Hispanic or Asian thing. I think it's Socially Economic. If you don't show off money? Don't come 'round here... I don't believe it's White Flight either... I believe that's still money related... EWWW you don't drive a Beamer or a Lexus? Uh! I can't even be seen as your neighbor! I'm going to have to move now!... It was always about how you flaunted (or didn't flaunt) your money... I think racism is the "easy" explination because "money" seems so ridiculous... That's just it... it IS ridiculous! Sure some people are racist... always will be... but MOST are economically driven...
Sounds a lot like KC and St. Louis. Southerners have always been more up front about their prejudices than midwesterners and northerners. That's the only real difference.
Amen. The same holds true about St. Louis. It is as, if not more racist than any city in the South.
I grew up in St. Louis. Race relations in St. Louis are probably as bad as they are in nay rural small town in the state.
I don't know how bad things are in KC concerning race relations, but haveing grown up in the St. Louis Area and experienced it first hand, I would have a hard time believing that race relations in KC are any worse than they are in my hometown. Having spent a lot of time in southern cities like Little Rock and some time living in Savannah, Georgia, I can say that St. Louis has as much polarization as any of these places and possibly more. It disgusts me when a fellow St. Louisan wants to pontificate with me about "rednecks" out in rural MO. or in the South. ST. Louis is as polarized as any of these areas. I love St. Louis. It is my hometown. But I'm realistic about it.
I live in town about 60 miles south of st louis. We have about 400 people. Our schools are made up of kids from surrounding small towns. Hell our highschool only has about 200 kids. Anyway we have no black kids at all. The confederate flag flies plenty around here Hell got one in my front yard lol. So this side of missouri is racist to.
why would a person moving into this city with kids subject himself and his family to what's going on East of Troost
A former manager of mine moved here from Canada. He wasn't at all familiar with the city, and bought a house near 40th and Virgina. (just off the Paseo) It didn't take him long to figure out his mistake and within a couple of years, he'd moved to Olathe.
A microcosm of what KC's undergone the last half-century or so.
Schools: dead on.
The first and main reason we chose the Kansas side over the Missouri side when moving here was for the schools.
If it was just my husband and I, we'd have looked at a place in KC.
Even beyond the standard "white flight" argument, there is powerful evidence that real estate companies changed the demographics of our city. This probably also happened in other large cities, but for some reason became solidified in ours. Check out Kevin Gotham's book Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development: The Kansas City Experience, 1900-2000. Do you think all this happened by accident?
"Gotham provides both quantitative and qualitative documentation of the role the real estate industry and the Federal Housing Administration, demonstrating how these institutions have promulgated racial residential segregation and uneven development."
But why does racial segregation persist? I think one of the biggest reasons is the KCMO school district. If there were awesome public schools in Missouri, the lower housing costs would attract a lot of families.
What I want TJ to understand is that I am not making any "assumptions" about white flight. White flight is a historical fact, a documented demographic occurrence in cities across the country.
last commenter has a point, why would a person moving into this city with kids subject himself and his family to what's going on East of Troost. your own paper makes a point of mapping every freaking murder and all KCMO school district goings on,so anyone who can read and can afford to stay away from this crap will obviously try to do so. at this point it's a quality of life issue.
CJ,
As the population of the KC area expanded in the last 100 years, those extra people had to go SOMEWHERE.
Many of them chose (for varied reasons) to buy home in various suburbs.
Maybe they liked having a new home and a big yard on a quiet cul-de-sac without traffic racing thru; instead of aging houses with deteriorating plumbing and plaster, crammed together in the core of the city.
Maybe one of the other factors I previously mentioned was a motivator.
You seem to assume that unless they remained confined within the city limits of kcmo that MOST of them must be racists.
You argue the kc is THE most racist city in Missouri.
It is your broadbrush approach that is offensive, and it is racist.
Implying a racial motive when there is none IS racist, cj, because you assume behavior and thought patterns based on skin color.
Uh, Birmingham has NOT moved beyond racism. 75% black city yet only white people live in the good neighborhoods and most of the black people live on the north side.
See, TJ, that's what I mean about how quick we are to throw around accusations of racism. In no way did I say blacks caused any of the above. And I'm sure not all of the families who left the city were white-flighters, but you can't deny that the phenomenon exists.
Many families have moved out of KCMO for reasons that have nothing to do with race.
Maybe they didn't like:
KCMO's long history of political corruption
poor quality schools
noise and congestion
high levels of crime
high taxes (KCMO is one of the few cities in the country with it's own income tax)
CJ, are you saying that blacks caused those things?
Now THAT'S racist.
wow, realist, that's dark. I think KC is pretty racist but is it really as bad as the south? it's tough to say since white flight has left in town the white people who are kind of open minded. the suburbs seem worse than downtown or midtown, that's for sure
When I worked north of the river in the '70s and '80s, there was a running joke about "NNR Cards" - "N_gg_r North of the River" - which supposedly had to be carried by blacks and shown to police officers on request.
I never saw any actual cards, but I did notice that any black person walking down the street up there would be rapidly stopped and checked out by the local cops. Walking white people, for some strange reason, managed to avoid the same treatment.
Kansas City is just as racist as Selma or Birmingham or Little Rock - it's just better at keeping it covered up. And in one way, that makes KC worse: those other cities were forced to confront their own racism, which allowed them to move beyond it. KC won't admit to any racism - how can you move beyond something if you don't accept its existence in the first place?
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