One of the few pleasures of aging is the capacity to see things from the eagle's eye view, to see one's place in a landscape rather than seeing the world from the worm's eye view.
So, when the Phantom recently learned about the policy of the United States government which financed massive suburban home building following World War II, but forbade home builders from selling these new homes to people of color, or "Negroes" as they were then called, it was an "Aha!" moment.
There is a mordant joke about Pennsylvania, but it has been applied to all states, that Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in between. Of course, the same can be said of Texas (Austin/Dallas/Houston) and even New Hampshire (Manchester/Portsmouth/Durham).
It is, as the Joker famously said, in "Full Metal Jacket" the "Jungian thing" thing. When an officious colonel rebukes the Joker for wearing a peace button on his helmet next to a phrase "Born to Kill" the Joker says it's about being able to hold two opposite thoughts together in (or, in this case on) the same head.
And so it is with America, two different beliefs: tolerance and intolerance, welcoming even celebrating differences and hybridization existing next to rejection of the other tribe, horror at "bastardization."
When the Phantom moved from Virginia into the newly built Maryland housing development he discovered some odd, at that time unfathomable, facts. His neighborhood was built by two Jewish brothers, engineers, who came back from the war, went to college on the GI bill, and set out to replicate what was going on in Levittown and all over the country, building new suburban houses for returning veterans who could buy them with low interest GI bill loans. He discovered that about 1/3 of his neighbors were Jewish, which was pretty striking because in his Virginia garden apartment complex, there were only two Jewish families among the hundreds.
When the Phantom went to the public junior high school, he made friends with schoolmates who lived in neighborhoods with lovely, Ozzie and Harriet names like "Woodacres" and "Springfield" and "Kenwood," and he noted they were blond, wore gold crosses around their necks and had names which his parents told him were of English and Scandinavian origin. The public school, drawing from these neighborhoods had almost no Blacks and the only Jews came from his neighborhood and one other.
This was what "redlining" accomplished: neighborhoods in which the invisible hand of government segregated out different "tribes," by virtue of financing structures you could not see driving around. Certainly, no 9 year old kid could see that. And most of the parents who bought those homes probably were unaware. The whole process was opaque. You looked at a house. You could afford it. The government gave you the mortgage guarantee. The government gave the builder his money. There were no "whites only" signs hung out, no signs which said, "Jews live here." So the federal government did that with its home loan racially discriminatory policies, and locally the discrimination got down to finer points among different types of whites.
But there was the other force--public education, which mixed some of the tribes--Catholics, Prostestants, Jews--but not all the tribes. No Negroes. Well, almost no Negroes. In a class of 500, there were maybe 15 Negroes.
In school it was tough to keep Jews and Protestants and Catholics apart, to the consternation of some, to the delight of others, and dating patterns turned into marriages among the tribes.
But of course, none of this was publicly stated.
Alex Ross, writing in this week's New Yorker about Hitler and the Nazis and the inspiration Hitler drew from America, notes
"The entire apparatus is hopelessly opaque, concealing racist aims behind contorted justifications. Why not simply say what one means? This was a major difference between American and German racism."
And speaking of the American rejection of a ship loaded with Jewish refugees, who were returned to Europe to die in concentration camps:
"The German Foreign Office, in a sardonic reply, found it 'astounding' that other countries would decry Germany's treatment of Jews and then decline to admit them."
The thrust of the whole long article is that America was every bit as racist as the Third Reich it fought, but it simply refused to publicly embrace its own racism, or its past which included genocide against Indians and Negro slavery. Jim Crow laws prevailed in the South, but people in the North remained mostly unaware of them.
America achieved "the Jungian thing" living with two contradictory ideas in the same mind, freedom/inclusion/unity set against Jim Crow/segregation/tribalism.
There is a man who drives a pick up truck through Hampton some days. He probably lives in Hampton or possibly Exeter. Two large flags fly from poles affixed to the flat bed behind him: An American flag and a Confederate flag. The flag of Union. The flag of disunion.
Hitler was an artist and personally designed the Nazi flag, going through many designs before settling on a flag with immediate emotional impact. It's a brilliant flag, really. Only the French tricolor is more brilliant.
And what are flags? Symbols and expression of tribe.
The Phantom loved flags. They are art.
His wife hates flags. Refuses to allow a flag to be displayed.
The Phantom hangs his flags in his garage, which his wife considers his man cave. If he wants to hang Playboy pin ups, maps, Batman posters in his garage, even flags, that's his business.
But no flags on the porch or the tree.
A neighbor hangs an American flag outside.
"An American Nazi," she says. "Different flag, same idea."
So, when the Phantom recently learned about the policy of the United States government which financed massive suburban home building following World War II, but forbade home builders from selling these new homes to people of color, or "Negroes" as they were then called, it was an "Aha!" moment.
There is a mordant joke about Pennsylvania, but it has been applied to all states, that Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in between. Of course, the same can be said of Texas (Austin/Dallas/Houston) and even New Hampshire (Manchester/Portsmouth/Durham).
It is, as the Joker famously said, in "Full Metal Jacket" the "Jungian thing" thing. When an officious colonel rebukes the Joker for wearing a peace button on his helmet next to a phrase "Born to Kill" the Joker says it's about being able to hold two opposite thoughts together in (or, in this case on) the same head.
And so it is with America, two different beliefs: tolerance and intolerance, welcoming even celebrating differences and hybridization existing next to rejection of the other tribe, horror at "bastardization."
When the Phantom moved from Virginia into the newly built Maryland housing development he discovered some odd, at that time unfathomable, facts. His neighborhood was built by two Jewish brothers, engineers, who came back from the war, went to college on the GI bill, and set out to replicate what was going on in Levittown and all over the country, building new suburban houses for returning veterans who could buy them with low interest GI bill loans. He discovered that about 1/3 of his neighbors were Jewish, which was pretty striking because in his Virginia garden apartment complex, there were only two Jewish families among the hundreds.
When the Phantom went to the public junior high school, he made friends with schoolmates who lived in neighborhoods with lovely, Ozzie and Harriet names like "Woodacres" and "Springfield" and "Kenwood," and he noted they were blond, wore gold crosses around their necks and had names which his parents told him were of English and Scandinavian origin. The public school, drawing from these neighborhoods had almost no Blacks and the only Jews came from his neighborhood and one other.
This was what "redlining" accomplished: neighborhoods in which the invisible hand of government segregated out different "tribes," by virtue of financing structures you could not see driving around. Certainly, no 9 year old kid could see that. And most of the parents who bought those homes probably were unaware. The whole process was opaque. You looked at a house. You could afford it. The government gave you the mortgage guarantee. The government gave the builder his money. There were no "whites only" signs hung out, no signs which said, "Jews live here." So the federal government did that with its home loan racially discriminatory policies, and locally the discrimination got down to finer points among different types of whites.
In school it was tough to keep Jews and Protestants and Catholics apart, to the consternation of some, to the delight of others, and dating patterns turned into marriages among the tribes.
But of course, none of this was publicly stated.
Alex Ross, writing in this week's New Yorker about Hitler and the Nazis and the inspiration Hitler drew from America, notes
"The entire apparatus is hopelessly opaque, concealing racist aims behind contorted justifications. Why not simply say what one means? This was a major difference between American and German racism."
And speaking of the American rejection of a ship loaded with Jewish refugees, who were returned to Europe to die in concentration camps:
"The German Foreign Office, in a sardonic reply, found it 'astounding' that other countries would decry Germany's treatment of Jews and then decline to admit them."
The thrust of the whole long article is that America was every bit as racist as the Third Reich it fought, but it simply refused to publicly embrace its own racism, or its past which included genocide against Indians and Negro slavery. Jim Crow laws prevailed in the South, but people in the North remained mostly unaware of them.
America achieved "the Jungian thing" living with two contradictory ideas in the same mind, freedom/inclusion/unity set against Jim Crow/segregation/tribalism.
There is a man who drives a pick up truck through Hampton some days. He probably lives in Hampton or possibly Exeter. Two large flags fly from poles affixed to the flat bed behind him: An American flag and a Confederate flag. The flag of Union. The flag of disunion.
Hitler was an artist and personally designed the Nazi flag, going through many designs before settling on a flag with immediate emotional impact. It's a brilliant flag, really. Only the French tricolor is more brilliant.
And what are flags? Symbols and expression of tribe.
The Phantom loved flags. They are art.
His wife hates flags. Refuses to allow a flag to be displayed.
The Phantom hangs his flags in his garage, which his wife considers his man cave. If he wants to hang Playboy pin ups, maps, Batman posters in his garage, even flags, that's his business.
But no flags on the porch or the tree.
A neighbor hangs an American flag outside.
"An American Nazi," she says. "Different flag, same idea."
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