The Counter Revolutionary History of Suburbs with Jane Ball and Jeff (Not That) Epstein

<br/><br/>Starting soon after the Russian revolution, we saw the advent of the suburbs. These suburbs served a counter-revolutionary purpose. They were deliberate effort by the government to prevent a similar kind of popular uprising. This was done primarily and essentially by dangling a nice home in the faces of white people, and by keeping black and brown people out via redlining and discriminatory ordinances. So not only was this country built long ago on the backs and with the blood of black and brown people, that virulent racism continues today in active policy, all around the country.<br/><br/> A Federally Designed Program of Social ControlThe segregation of the suburbs was not an accident. It was a deliberate decision at every level of government intended to stave off the spread into the US of Europe&#8217;s worker uprisings and the spread of socialism by granting the racial privilege of land ownership to the same European immigrants that only a few years before were associated with public nuisance. The &#8220;Own Your Own Campaign&#8221;, started in 1916 by the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) and taken over by the Department of Labor in 1917 was the mechanism used to do this. Through this campaign, the government produced propaganda aimed at the white working class declaring it a patriotic duty to purchase a single-family home rather than renting. Under Secretary of Treasury Herbert Hoover, the federal government went further, using popular household magazines to warn potential homeowners of the problems of &#8220;racial strife&#8221; and declining property values in integrated communities. These publications, paid for by the federal government, drove interest in racial covenants that contractually bound segregation to the land in perpetuity.&#160;<br/><br/>Working with the Department of Commerce,&#160;NAREB&#160;enforced the implantation of racial covenants by refusing certification to realtors who would not include racial covenants in their suburban subdivisions. The NAREB&#8217;s w