Continuing from our conversation around housing segregation and the language employed by those with power I think it’s worth thinking some about the text of this petition:
“As moral, religious and law-abiding citizens, we feel that we are unprejudiced and undiscriminating in our wish to keep our community a closed community … to protect our own.”
The petition was put out in 1957, as Levittown sought to stave off integration. What’s important to note is that we are well into post-war America and there is some social sanction emerging against prejudice and discrimination. What the petition does is effectively endorse prejudice and discrimination while claiming not to. Another example:
“We favor racial integration, but only at such time the negro shows he is ready for it.”
via The Language of Segregation Under Social Sanction – Ta-Nehisi Coates – The Atlantic.
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