Repealing Your Racist Covenant Is Only a Step on the Road to Housing Justice
By Edward Madrigal and Johnathan Johnson (U-M Civil Rights Litigation Initiative)
You repealed your racially restrictive covenant! And you might be feeling a sense of relief which makes complete sense. It’s heavy, uncomfortable work to look at your property deed and see the literal language of exclusion written into your home’s history. Repealing and replacing those words with language preventing discrimination is a powerful symbolic win.
However, as we recognize that progress, it's important to remember that while the deed is amended, the effects of the restrictive covenants are still all over Washtenaw County.
These racially restrictive covenants are more than racist words on a page. They explain the segregation we still see throughout Washtenaw today. These covenants decided who got to build generational wealth and who was pushed to the margins. Amending the language is an important first step, but it doesn’t fix the decades of housing inequality that built Washtenaw County.
Disentangling that history takes more than a legal repeal. It takes a community effort and commitment to continue fighting racism. We encourage you to continue this fight by engaging in some of these activities listed below:
Encouraging your neighbors, friends, and family to repeal the racial covenants on their homes through holding community conversations and using the repeal toolkit. Showing them their racial restrictive covenant and the exact language in it on the mapping tool on Justice InDeed’s website could be very effective here.
Speaking to your elected officials at every level about crafting policies and legislation that will help remedy the effects of residential segregation and its effect on the racial wealth gap, including reparations.
Supporting fair housing organizations (such as the Fair Housing Center of Southeast and Mid Michigan) and advocates to help prevent further entrenchment of residential segregation and racial wealth inequality.
Working to support the efforts of Washtenaw County and the City of Ann Arbor to institute reparations to repair the harm done by racial covenants and other forms of discrimination.
These activities are not just for homeowners or those who repealed the racial covenants on their homes with our help. We encourage all Washtenaw County residents to take steps to advance racial justice in Washtenaw County.
Again, we want to thank those of you, including the residents of neighborhoods who have repealed the racial covenants of the entire subdivisions, for taking determined action to remove remnants of racial discrimination, but want to emphasize that repealed does not mean repaired. We are asking that you stay engaged with racial justice issues around housing, and to go further than the repeal, with the potential to have a bigger positive impact in our community now and in the future.