THE WALKING, TALKING VIOLATION OF FEDERAL FAIR HOUSING LAW

“Do you like having a nice project next to your house? I don’t think so. And with it comes plenty of crime,” he said, according to Bloomberg. He said it here in the Lehigh Valley, in my back yard. He was apparently appealing to suburban women. I feel like I’ve been assaulted.

“He” is our president.

That’s right out of a Mississippi Klan meeting, isn’t it?

The suburbs are a nice place. I grew up in Lower Macungie Township (I live, proudly, in the City of Allentown now). As I understand it, my family was the first to move into the first subdivision in the township: Pine Grove Circle, just off Brookside Road. I had a ton of fun in my neighborhood. The fact that all of our neighbors (except for one adopted kid down the street) were white never occurred to me. There was no color in my schools.

How convenient. You see, those minimum lot sizes out there in No Sidewalksland are deliberate. It ensures that you have to have the right income to be allowed in. That typically means you have to look like your neighbors.

Former President Barack Obama toughened rules on how much and whether a municipality could get federal funding like Community Development Block Grants if their practices had the effect of segregation. This president scrapped the rules, just like he did to nearly everything the last president who tried to make our country better did.

You see, there is a reason the minority population in places like the quaint township in which I was raised and my brother still lives is next to nothing and why it is substantially more than the majority in older, more dense urban neighborhoods. And why the schools don’t have any money.

When you think of a housing “project,” what comes to mind?

Right. He just didn’t use the N-word.