Correcting falsehoods in the historical preservation debate

The current racial mix of the Garden Alameda neighborhood in San Jose is roughly the same as the City as a whole, except Garden Alameda has a higher percentage of Black and Mixed Race residents. At the March 24 Rules Committee Meeting, however, Coucilmember Sylvia Arenas suggested that efforts of neighbors in that district to preserve their 100-year-old homes were racist and that the neighborhood was segregated.  Arenas also confused many in the audience by conflating New Deal federal financial loan terms from the 1940s with racist property lot covenants from the 1920s. The Opportunity Now web editor team tries to clarify.  

"The neighborhood was built exclusively to not have people of color in it. There are documents that are part of the redlining. In 1937 no blacks nor foreign born lived in the neighborhood."--Sylvia Arenas, March 24, 2021

Arenas appears confused about what redlining was and did. "Redlining" was a term associated with the federal government's efforts to categorize different neighborhoods as to their risk-level for potential federal home loans. "Redlining" refers to neighborhoods that were considered high-risk, these were often poorer neighborhoods and populated by immigrants and people of color. Redlining said nothing, however, about who could purchase or rent properties in those neighborhoods. 

More on redlining here.

Arenas is probably referring to the unjust and shameful race-based covenants that were attached to property lots (not the homes per se) across San Jose and much of the United States early in the 20th Century, which generally forbid the sale or rental of property lots to non-whites, or selected minority racial or ethnic groups. It is probable that all the property lots in the proposed historical area had covenants of this sort when they were developed. In the 1940s the U.S. Supreme Court ruled these covenants unconstitutional and unenforcable, effectively ending this type of formal segregation.  As a result, in the 100+ years of these homes' lifespans, the first twenty-five years (roughly) were covered by these race-based covenants, and the remaining and most recent 70+ years have been free of explicit racial restrictions. This could very well be a determining factor in the highly integrated nature of the neighborhood currently. 

Read about Shelley v. Kramer, the Supreme Court decision that struck down racial covenants in 1948.

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Photot by Sean Marshall.