White People Who Buy Black Homes

I was being suffocated by shame. My body thrashed like a fish flapping around the deck of a boat. This destructive emotion continued to apply pressure to my fragile self.

Shame is the only word that defined how I felt when I showed my daughter the home I grew up in.

My childhood home had been the site of a hard-fought cold war. The battles were fought during a time when the word integration was for other white people and not for you or your loved ones. Our family was the black fly in the cold glass of milk: impossible to ignore and, for some — revolting.

This war was waged in my neighborhood from 1977 until 1993 without a formal declaration of war. There were no burning crosses or racial slurs used to mar our home. It was barely perceptible to anyone. It was the atmosphere that betrayed the sentiments of the white neighbors toward our black family. You could feel the tension in the breeze.

There is a misnomer for people from Minnesota: Minnesota Nice. The idea is that Minnesotans are a friendly lot. They are not. What they are is polite. Their politeness conceals cruelty and pettiness.

There were many fronts to this nameless cold war, but the one that I want to focus on today was the outside appearance of all the homes that dotted this community.

The paint on our house was immaculate, the siding pristine, the tar-shingled roof perfectly covered, the windows blemish-free, and the tar driveway darker than a moonless night and free of cracks.

The lawn was expertly manicured, first by my father, then my brother, and finally, I was bestowed with this honor. We nourished our lawn with the best fertilizer we could find. Leaves stayed on this lawn for no longer than 24 hours. The hedges were trimmed with precision.

My childhood home was the physical manifestation of subversion. Every racist narrative that existed about black folks being uncleanly was refuted by an emerald-colored lawn that seemed supernatural. Every lie about black folk being lazy was rejected by the absence of leaves that had succumbed to the autumn winds but adorned the yards of the rest of the homes in the neighborhood.

My home was perfect. I know that is what many people think about their childhood homes. The rooms are cavernous when you are a child. A well-provisioned expedition was required to traverse the spacious confines of my home and open the door after someone had summoned us to their existence by ringing our doorbell.

Yet, when you revisit these rooms as an adult, you feel how small you were—how small your world was.

My world was the block I grew up on.

I recognize the privilege that my world continues to expand as I continue to live, a privilege that not all my black brothers are fortunate to have.

I had so many fond memories of my childhood home until my best friend called me one day and warned me never to visit the old neighborhood.

His name is TJ. He lived five doors up the street from me. After my immediate family, he was the fifth unofficial resident of this home. It was his second home.

TJ was a white boy with piercing blue eyes and alabaster skin that quickly burned on the brightest summer days. His blonde hair was untamable, and his love for my family was unparalleled.

His family moved away in 1987, and we left in 1993. His dire warning came in the fall of 2001. I had been working as a dot.com tax attorney in Silicon Valley, and I was traveling back to MN to meet my niece and pay my respects to a college professor. I had left a message telling him I was returning to MN, and he called me to warn me not to visit the old neighborhood. I asked him why, and he said only my home was in complete disrepair.

To my detriment, I ignored his warning.

When I saw my childhood home, I felt shame. It is the worst home on the block—there was no dispute.

Its current owners have been derelict in maintaining the house. The paint on the siding looked muted compared to the vibrancy of the other homes in the quaint neighborhood. The brightness that leaped off the other homes assaulted your eyes. Your hand would reflexively move towards your eyes to shield them from the blinding fresh paint. That was not the case with my childhood home; it was dull. If the other homes were sparkly, this home was burnished.

Thickets of weeds had cracked the tarred driveway and had emancipated themselves from this black prison. Every other driveway was as black as Trump’s heart, but my former home was verdant. It seemed as if the Earth was engaging in a peaceful reclamation of land that had previously/historically been green pastures.

The emerald green lawn that had been our home's calling card was now besieged with splotches of brown dead grass.

The hedges that had shrouded our home in privacy had been unceremoniously ripped from the ground and deposed like an overthrown dictator.

The home was an atrocity — a blight in an otherwise picturesque neighborhood.

Twenty years later, I returned.

I was compelled to return because I felt obligated to share where I grew up with my daughter. My brow furrowed as I surveyed this eyesore. I did not feel the need to explain to my daughter and her mother how majestic this home had been when the McFadden family lived here. They had been guests at my parents' Chandler house for over a decade.

Nothing had to be explained, but they did observe the pain of seeing this relic of my past corrupted by neglect.

I sped away from this monstrosity, trying to place as much distance between us and this abomination. I took them to the house my parents had built after I had graduated from high school, and they lived there until I graduated from law school.

This newer community consisted of custom homes, all sporting three-car garages. My daughter was impressed as we pulled into the neighborhood, and as I winded the curve to approach the house that sheltered me during holidays and summers, I became crestfallen.

My parents’ former home was once again the worst in the community.

I stammered my words as I called my father, hoping that I had made a mistake — I had not.

What was supposed to be a jubilant atmosphere had turned dour as I interrogated what I had bear witness to: only the homes formerly owned by black people were now in a state of disgrace.

I was quiet when I drove away. All the air had been sucked out of the cabin of the car we had rented. It was not until Erica, a white woman, commented,…albeit a tad racist but appropriate under the circumstances: what type of white person knowingly buys a black person’s home at fair market value?

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s seminal stunning work of genius, The Case For Reparations, explored how the black community was under siege by brutal and coercive housing contracts that did not allow black people to build equity and reverted to the white or Jewish men who owned the contracts.

Black people were preyed upon and plundered for their homes, but the non-black purchasers of these homes never paid market value for these homes.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History Of How Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein explored how governmental officials conspired to build white wealth and steal black opportunities. The houses discussed in this breakthrough work were stolen from black folk.

I have yet to come across any piece of academic literature or any study that explored white people purchasing black homes at fair market value. To be even more precise, black-owned homes located in predominately white neighborhoods.

We have seen the stories of black rappers’ and athletes’ mansions languishing in the real estate market. Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson, Russell Wilson—the stories go on about black folk's inability to sell their homes and receive the market value for their homes.

This got me to think about my parents’ homes. They were both sold at top dollar and yet the white families who purchased them caused these houses to become the bane of the neighborhood.

When Erica allowed this question to enter into the universe: what type of white person buys a black person’s home? She had just unlocked what appeared to be the last vestige of modern racism.

With the use of racially restrictive covenants and segregation, black people were not allowed to live in white neighborhoods. This is only a recent development. That most likely has not been studied.

If not for my observation, I would not have known that this existed, but when I compare it to all the famous black people who cannot sell their homes, I am left to believe there is something here.

When my wife asked this question, you could see the acrid venom spray the air. Despite having a black husband and a black daughter, she is not immune from the allure of white supremacy. She is an American, and the currency of America has always been anti-black sentiment. Even black folks reluctantly harbor internalized anti-black hate.

What I gleaned from her words is how other white people would view a white person who paid the market rate for a black home.

White people could innately and intuitively understand if the black person’s home was below market rate. White people would fully support the purchasing of black homes at market rates if the area were being gentrified.

I surmise that there is a taboo of white people purchasing a black person’s home at market rate to live there.

The two white families who moved into our former homes have made them theirs in a way that is disquieting to my family. Yet, after introspection, why should it matter as long as the walls remain sturdy, the roof is attached, and the inside of the house is filled with love and safety?

I wish I could be this trite, but I feel I must know: who are the white people who buy black people’s houses at market rate?

This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Garrick McFadden's work on Medium.

What Type of White Person Knowingly Buys a Black Person’s Home at Fair Market Value?

Comments