[StBernard] Jarvis DeBerry: Thinly veiled racism in St. Bernard Parish blocks fair housing

[Westley Annis]

Jarvis DeBerry: Thinly veiled racism in St. Bernard Parish blocks fair
housing
Posted by rkoenig August 20, 2009 20:00PM

On April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated,
President Lyndon Johnson said in a letter to Speaker of the House John W.
McCormack that the slaying "forces upon us all this question: What more can
I do to achieve brotherhood and equality among all Americans?" 

For the government, Johnson had an answer. "We should pass the Fair Housing
law when the Congress convenes next week," he wrote.

On April 11, Johnson was signing the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Title VIII of
the act included his desired fair housing provisions. The president praised
King, "an outstanding Negro leader," who had been at the White House in 1966
when Johnson called for Congress to give him a fair housing bill. 

It's not a stretch, then, to say that the Fair Housing Act was purchased
with King's blood and that its fulfillment should be a goal of those who
believe in the racial equality Johnson references in his letter. 

St. Bernard Parish officials, however, have waged war against the Fair
Housing Act and broken the agreement they had with a local fair housing
group not to enact racist housing policies. As U.S. District Court Judge
Ginger Berrigan ruled Monday, those officials have used "camouflaged racial
expressions" while illegally thwarting a developer trying to build four
apartment complexes in Chalmette. 

It's the second time in five months Judge Berrigan has found the parish in
violation of the law and its 2008 settlement with the Greater New Orleans
Fair Housing Action Center. She ruled in March that a parish moratorium
against multi-family housing units was illegal, in part because it was
crafted to keep out black people.

The moratorium was nixed, but officials have continued their attempt to keep
black people out, Berrigan found, by withholding from Provident Realty
Advisors, Inc. the routine re-subdivision it needs to build apartments. 

The judge wrote "there appears to be a concerted effort, through stall and
delay tactics, to simply outlast Provident's efforts while avoiding a
substantive decision on their application." Berrigan believes the parish's
strategy is to make it impossible for Provident to meet a Dec. 2010
construction deadline, which would disqualify the firm for the
affordable-housing federal tax credits it expects. 

Berrigan says opponents of the proposed apartments used "camouflaged racial
expressions," but she didn't say they camouflaged their expressions very
well. A petition circulating before an April 28 St. Bernard Planning
Commission meeting warned "the criminal element is spilling over into our
beautiful parish!" A commissioner at that meeting made plain his belief that
"apartments draw criminals." 

One resident praised a certain "polite" black family he knows, largely
because they don't play "their music." But he predicted having "a problem
with someone that's going to be coming up the street, gang-banging somebody
or they're kicking the door down every couple of days." 

At a June 23 meeting, a commissioner engaged a resident in a discussion
about the Black Panthers, a group that's apparently going to take over any
apartments built in the parish. 

Those are the kind of ignorant and provocative statements unabashed racists
made in response to the integration efforts of the 1950s and '60s. And St.
Bernard officials -- including Parish President Craig Taffaro, Councilman
Wayne Landry and Planning Commission chair Earl Dauterive -- are playing the
same role that officials of that bygone era did when they looked for ways to
ignore the federal courts and implement the racist policies some
constituents demanded. 

King described an opponent as having "lips dripping with the words of
interposition and nullification," that is, challenging the federal
government's right to enforce its civil rights laws. 

A federal judge has found St. Bernard Parish in violation of such laws. How
long -- and at what cost -- will its officials remain defiant?