Headline:
RACE-CONSCIOUS AREA HAS FALLEN SHORT OF KING'S IDEAL
Byline: By Gregory Freeman
Publication: ST.
LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Date: Sun. Mar. 29,1998
Section: NEWS ANALYSIS, Page: C1, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT
And so today I still have a dream. People will rise up and come to see
that they are made to live together as brothers and sisters. - Martin
Luther King Jr. ***
When Daniel Waters
moved into the then-integrated Penrose neighborhood in 1965, he believed he
was living the dream so eloquently articulated by Martin Luther King Jr. "We
were middle-class black folks living next to middle-class white folks,"
Waters said. "We were so proud to have finally made it. We
proudly cut our grass, trimmed our hedges, did everything we could to make sure
that our homes looked wonderful."
And
then the whites left. One by one, until finally only an elderly white
woman lived on the block. "It was because we're black," Waters
said. "That's all it could be. There wasn't any more crime than before
we came, we took good care of our property, we did all the things you'd expect
a homeowner to do. And still they left."
Their
leaving saddened him. "One reason I moved here was because I thought
it would be good for my kids to have experiences with white kids, to make them
well-rounded," Waters said. The Waters' three children are all grown
and have moved away. But Waters still lives in the same house, still cuts
his hedges and trims his lawn, keeping his house in shape. "I don't
think Dr. King's dream was realized," Waters said. "We got close,
but it didn't happen."
Don't tell that
to Mike O'Brien. O'Brien, who's white, lives in a subdivision in Florissant
with black and white neighbors. "We all get along," he says.
"We have barbecues together, visit each other's homes for dinner,
do all sorts of things together." The best friend of O'Brien's daughter
is a black girl who lives a couple of houses away. O'Brien has lived in
this neighborhood for five years and has no plans to move. "This
is a great place," he said. "Nice neighborhood, good schools, good
neighbors. What else could I want?"
To
O'Brien, King's dream has been realized. "I can't imagine living
in this kind of an area 40 years ago," he said. "I think Martin
Luther King had a lot to do with that."
Clearly, the question of whether King's dream has been realized depends on whom you ask. In fact, King had many dreams: a dream of economic parity, which has yet to be fulfilled; a dream of a fair society, where blacks and whites could fairly compete for the same jobs; and a dream that blacks and whites could live, work and play together.
In the St. Louis
area, the last dream has been difficult to achieve. Ours is a highly segregated
region. With the exception of desegregated schools and integrated workplaces,
rarely do we associate with one another. There are restaurants and bars
in the St. Louis area that would m ake me uncomfortable should I walk in them.
Conversely, there are black-owned establishments here that would make
whites feel uncomfortable.
We
are very conscious of race here. Is that what Martin Luther King would have
wanted? Probably not.
Housing segregation
remains a significant problem in this region. There are plenty who would
suggest that their reasons for moving were purely economic. Research of
the 1990 census, however, shows that if family income were the determining factor,
housing patterns in the region would be 83 percent more racially integrated.
The statistics contradict a popular misconception that housing cost is the main
reason for the high levels of segregation in our communities. Housing
segregation in St. Louis breaks down along racial lines regardless of family
income.
Meanwhile,
a 1992 report in USA Today ranked St. Louis the 12th most segregated of 219
metropolitan areas. University of Chicago research showed the level of
housing segregation in the St. Louis region is consistently above the national
average for large, racially diverse metropolitan areas.
That
makes Waters' experience common for this area and O'Brien's experience less
common. Still, King wanted to see more situations like that of O'Brien.
While integrated communities exist throughout our region, they are often few and far between. O'Brien's experience in Florissant is an example; so is the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood, near Forest Park. The Westminster Place area near midtown is certainly diverse, and who could forget the diversity that is University City?
Still, while some St. Louisans have learned and appreciate the value of diversity, others are unwilling or unable to take advantage of it. Yet until we learn to live together, to know one another, to take advantage of what each other has to offer, we're doomed to suffer from racial polarization.
Somewhere, Martin Luther King is watching, with his head hanging low.
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