# NAACP **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 9, 1999, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/naacp/17072 "1999-12-09T03:55:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 1999, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/naacp/17072/21 "1999-12-25T22:07:00Z")
**KM2** : > [@](#): > > Come on, now! When is the last time this happened? I’d like to see this story if it happened in the 90s. Source? > > Of course, I bet I’d get a much warmer reception if I lived in Harlem or Cabrini-Green. Heck, if I just strolled through those neighborhoods… Your second statement is simply silly. If you walked through Cabrini-Green, you would be a target because you looked as though you possessed a dime, regardless of your color. An accurate comparison would be if you could find a black middle-class or lower-middle-class neighborhood where you were intimidated to leave. I know of a couple of neighborhoods on the East Side of Cleveland and its inner suburbs that are predominately black where whites have moved in the last few years. I don’t recall hearing any of them being chased out. On the other hand, a quick run through the last four years of the Cleveland Plain Dealer produces several incidents of cross-burnings and graffiti directed at new black residents in white neighborhoods. A quick scan, nationally, (limited to the criterion that the events had to be in the 1990’s) turned up the following incidents: [www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/features/99/02/25/CITY\_HALL.html](http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/features/99/02/25/CITY_HALL.html) > [@](#): > > On Tuesday night, word spread of the findings by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in a three-year probe of the Boston Housing Authority (BHA), an inquiry sparked by civil-rights complaints filed by 13 families alleging racial intimidation and assaults in South Boston and Charlestown housing projects between 1992 and 1996. > > The report’s findings are so free of ambiguity that they’re unspinnable: the BHA, according to HUD secretary Andrew Cuomo, systematically failed to respond when offered evidence of racial harassment and assaults in the Old Colony and Bunker Hill developments. * * * [http://www.fairhousing.com/news\_archive/advocate/may98/page3.htm](http://www.fairhousing.com/news_archive/advocate/may98/page3.htm) > [@](#): > > National Fair Housing Advocate > May 1998 > > In February, a federal jury found a Chicago firefighter guilty of intimidating three African-Americans in an attempt to prevent one of them from buying a house in southwestern Chicago. The jury awarded the plaintiffs, two Chicago police officers and a real estate agent, $40,000 in damages. * * * [http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/anti-semitism/KKK.html](http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/anti-semitism/KKK.html) > [@](#): > > Knights of the White Camellia Ku Klux Klan: The Knights of the White Camellia, a Texas Klan group led by Charles Lee, along with the Texas chapter of Thom Robb’s Knights of the KKK, has been linked to a number of incidents of racial intimidation and harassment in Vidor, Texas. These incidents, which occurred in 1992 and 1993, involved efforts to prevent the desegregation of an all-white Federally assisted housing project in Vidor. Among the reported acts of intimidation was the threat to blow up a housing unit to prevent its integration; residents of the project additionally alleged that the White Camellia Knights carried automatic weapons on a bus they drove through the housing complex and that one Klan member offered white children $50 to beat up African-American children. The Texas Commission on Human Rights has brought a civil suit against both Klan groups in response to these incidents. * * * [http://www.house.gov/judiciary/22255.htm](http://www.house.gov/judiciary/22255.htm) * * * [http://www.civilrights.org/lcef/hate/p8.html](http://www.civilrights.org/lcef/hate/p8.html) > [@](#): > > On Friday, March 29, 1996, an African-American woman, Bridget Ward, and her two daughters, Jamila, 9, and Jasmine, 3, moved into a rented home in the virtually all-white Philadelphia neighborhood of Bridesburg. Late that night, she heard young people marching down the street, chanting, “Burn, motherf–, burn.” The next morning, Ward, who works as a nurse’s aide, found racial slurs smeared on her house, ketchup spilled on the front side walk and back porch, and an oily liquid was splattered in the rear. From Mayor Rendell to ordinary citizens, including many of Ward’s neighbors, most Philadelphians were horrified by the incident. Police patrols were stepped up on the block, and the department’s Crisis Prevention and Resolution Unit, which typically handles racial incidents, investigated the crime. But Ward continued to be subjected to racial harassment, including a letter threatening her and her children. Five weeks after she moved to Bridesburg, Ward announced her intention to move. The acts of racial hostility against the Ward family are typical of hate crimes intended to keep members of racial, ethnic, or religious minorities out of many neighborhoods. > > In Fairfax County, Virginia, an affluent community near Washington, D.C., in 1993, a 41-year-old black woman heard the doorbell ring at the home where she was house-sitting. When she looked out the window, she saw a cross burning 10 feet from the front door. > > A continent away, in 1994, in the Los Angeles suburb of South Gate, the white neighbors of a black woman burned a cross on her lawn, kicked her children, hanged and gassed her puppies, and placed “White Power” signs on her property. > > In Harper Woods, Michigan, a black couple was threatened by a white man who said he would kill and dismember them if they moved into his neighborhood. * * * Tom~ ---
**Author:** ![spankboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@spankboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spankboy)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 1999, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/naacp/17072/22 "1999-12-25T22:27:00Z")
This might be an ignorant question, but is the real estate practice of ‘blockbusting’ still illegal? Back in the day, my father told me that he had to be really careful when taking minorities shopping for houses, due to the fact there was some sort of law that moving a minority family into an all-white neighborhood was seen as ‘blockbusting’. What he understood it coming from was back in the ‘old days’ unscrupulous real estate agents would move minorities into lily-white areas, and pick up the white folks’ properties cheap because they wanted to move so badly (motivated by general racism, or the old ‘there goes the neighborhood’ stuff). He also said that it worked the other way-if he couple liked a house in an all-white neighborhood, he could get sued for discrimination if he didn’t allow them to make a bid on it. Does this ring a bell for anyone? * * * From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee- ---
**Author:** ![Phaedrus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@Phaedrus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phaedrus)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 1999, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/naacp/17072/23 "1999-12-25T22:42:00Z")
tomndebb: Wow! ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 1999, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/naacp/17072/24 "1999-12-26T00:07:00Z")
**Spankboy** , “blockbusting” was not simply getting a black to move into a white neighborhood. It generally involved an agent calling on each of the neighbors and telling them that x% of their neighbors had _already_ put their houses up for sale because blacks had entered the neighborhood and that they needed to sell fast to get any money out of their houses. When 20 people put their houses on the market at the same time, that _did_ lower the prices for the neighborhood (supply and demand) and it started a stampede. The realtors didn’t care because 7% of 50 houses at $25,000 each was a lot more money than 7% of three houses at $33,000. Friends of my parents got a blockbuster hauled into court when he made the mistake of showing them the “for sale” pictures of their best friends. They were sure the other family had not intended to move and managed to hold on to the flyer the realtor was holding. They took the flyer (which was bogus) to the federal prosecutor who nailed the realtor. * * * Tom~ ---
**Author:** ![Phaedrus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@Phaedrus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phaedrus)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 1999, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/naacp/17072/25 "1999-12-26T05:32:00Z")
Cool! ---
**Author:** ![JillGat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9fc29f/32.png) [@JillGat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JillGat)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 1999, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/naacp/17072/26 "1999-12-26T06:06:00Z")
[[I also presented an article in another topic that said blacks kill far more whites than vice versa. Where’s the outcry?]] It can also be shown that a huge portion of violent crime in this country is caused by men. Almost 100% of violent crimes against women are committed by men. And I certainly don’t hate all men because of that. You never responded to this point, Klanman. ---
**Author:** ![theuglytruth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@theuglytruth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/theuglytruth)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 1999, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/naacp/17072/27 "1999-12-27T04:25:00Z")
Are any of you race baiters going to answer my original question??? ---
**Author:** ![Phaedrus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@Phaedrus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phaedrus)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 1999, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/naacp/17072/28 "1999-12-27T04:40:00Z")
Nah, ugly, let it stand… too much cornfusion otherwise. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![pldennison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@pldennison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pldennison)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 1999, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/naacp/17072/29 "1999-12-27T13:57:00Z")
And right in our own backyard, Tom, in a suburb so segregated that it is STILL under a Federal order to desegregate in its housing policies: > [@](#): > > PARMA HTS. TEEN ADMITS ROLE IN DECEMBER CROSS -BURNING > > 05/20/1999 > The Plain Dealer Cleveland, OH > FINAL / ALL > Page 6B > (Copyright © The Plain Dealer 1999) > > A Parma Heights teenager admitted yesterday that he set fire to a cross on a black family’s lawn in > December in Parma . > > Cuyahoga County Prosecutor William D. Mason has refused to negotiate plea bargains with any of > the three white boys charged in the case, and the 15-year-old who admitted his crime yesterday did > so as charged. He admitted his delinquency by reason of ethnic intimidation, aggravated trespassing, > aggravated menacing, arson, criminal damaging and possession of a criminal tool - a container of > gas. > > The youth could be sent to a state institution for delinquents until his 21st birthday. Blaise Thomas, > who supervises the prosecutor’s Juvenile Court office, said the youth entered his plea hoping Judge > Joseph Russo would be lenient. The youth has promised to cooperate with prosecutors. > > The other two youths, 12 and 14, are brothers who are scheduled for hearings - the Juvenile Court > equivalent of trials - June 2. > > Parma police have said the 15-year-old boy provided the cross , and the brothers, who live near > the black family’s Greenleaf Ave. address, scouted the site. The black family had lived at their home > for nine days when the cross was burned . A neighbor put the fire out with a garden hose. * * * “It’s my considered opinion you’re all a bunch of sissies!”–Paul’s Grandfather ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 1999, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/naacp/17072/30 "1999-12-28T06:25:00Z")
Actually, Phil, I had deliberately left that one out–along with the other three cases in Parma since 1995. Since my point had been in regards to people fleeing their homes and none of the recent Parma incidents have resulted in the people leaving (that I am aware of) I did not want to skew my evidence too strongly. Parma does have a deservedly bad reputation. My impression, however, is that after they lost their fights with the Feds, Parma council and police have worked pretty hard to nail perpetrators to get them to stop. I believe that no intimidation incident in Parma in the last several years has gone unsolved, so I thought I would cut them some slack. * * * Tom~ ---
**Author:** ![pldennison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@pldennison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pldennison)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 1999, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/naacp/17072/31 "1999-12-28T06:27:00Z")
Yeah, I can see your point there. But, on the other hand, it IS Parma. * * * “It’s my considered opinion you’re all a bunch of sissies!”–Paul’s Grandfather [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/naacp/17072.md?page=1)