{"id":1610,"date":"2009-02-08T22:17:21","date_gmt":"2009-02-09T03:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/?p=1610"},"modified":"2009-02-08T22:17:21","modified_gmt":"2009-02-09T03:17:21","slug":"oh-susquehanna-and-the-geography-of-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/2009\/02\/08\/oh-susquehanna-and-the-geography-of-race\/","title":{"rendered":"“Oh, Susquehanna” and the geography of race"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Defiance, Ohio song Oh, Susquehanna<\/em>, I always envisioned rivers and the Susquehanna, familiar to me from where I grew up, as a metaphor for organic connectedness and aknowledgement that our lives have implications on our neighbors.\u00c2\u00a0 The metaphor is imperfect since, when used for our means, rivers become not only connectors but barriers.\u00c2\u00a0 As I recently read in James W. Lowe’s Sundown Towns<\/span>:<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, open housing came too late, after suburbia was largely built.\u00c2\u00a0 Across the United States, whites had kept African Americans out of most suburbs throughout most of the twentieth century.\u00c2\u00a0 By 1968, suburbs were labeled racially.\u00c2\u00a0 Once in place, these reputations were self-sustaining.\u00c2\u00a0 Desegregating them was an uphill struggle, a mount that we are still climbing.\u00c2\u00a0 Like anyone else, African Americans don’t want to live in a place where they aren’t wanted, and one way to deduce that they aren’t wanted is to note that no African Americans live there.\u00c2\u00a0 Today, just a little steering by realtors suffices to keep sundown suburbs nearly all-white.\u00c2\u00a0 Here is an example from Pennsylvania.\u00c2\u00a0 Whites and blacks refer to the suburbs across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg as “the white shore.”\u00c2\u00a0 A man who grew up there wrote me:<\/p>\n

I can tell you that there were (are?) sundown towns in Central Pennsylvania.\u00c2\u00a0 You were right about the “white shore.”\u00c2\u00a0 I have no objective proof at all.\u00c2\u00a0 However my mother grew up in Enola, and my uncle live in Camp Hill.\u00c2\u00a0 It was common knowledge that African-Americans would not be sold a house in those towns and those that surrounded them.\u00c2\u00a0 It was indeed a “white shore.”<\/p>\n

By August 2002, when a new black employee moved to Harrisburg to take up her new job with the State of Pennsylvania, the pattern was in place.\u00c2\u00a0 “The realtor told me I could live on the west shore, but it’s really called ‘the white shore,’ so I’d probably be happier somewhere else.”\u00c2\u00a0 She bought in Harrisburg.\u00c2\u00a0 Such steering is illegal, but it goes on every day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Defiance, Ohio song Oh, Susquehanna, I always envisioned rivers and the Susquehanna, familiar to me from where I grew up, as a metaphor for organic connectedness and aknowledgement that our lives have implications on our neighbors.\u00c2\u00a0 The metaphor is imperfect since, when used for our means, rivers become not only connectors but barriers.\u00c2\u00a0… Continue reading “Oh, Susquehanna” and the geography of race<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[695],"class_list":["post-1610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defiance-ohio","tag-defianceohio-pennsylvania-racism-harrisburg-susquehanna","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wnIz-pY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1610"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1816,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610\/revisions\/1816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}