Newsflash: Everyone was really really racist a while back. We know, you’re totally shocked. Who would have thought the residents of an area that was worked by slaves would be racist, but it’s true. Here’s the proof:
A viewer alerted News 4 of an old covenant in the Osage Hills neighborhood. After an investigation, it was revealed that a 1926 agreement between the original neighbors blocked certain races from occupying homes.
“No building shall at any time be occupied by negroes or malays, except in capacity of bona fide servants or employees,” the covenant read.
Yup, that’s horrible, but it’s really not an issue now because we all know that’s horrible and it’s an unenforceable law since the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Normally, you’d just get rid of the law, or if it’s some crazy thing that you can’t remove for some reason, then you just do one of those “Wow, can you imagine?!” conversations, take a picture for the history books, and forget about it because it really doesn’t matter nowadays…but we’re talking about Kirkwood and these people need something to do with their time, so here we go!
“You have different races that live in this neighborhood. Absolutely,” she said. “We have a multi-racial family that lives right there, another family right up the street. And they’re all friends, they’re friends of ours. We have block parties. It’s just not an issue.”
“…so, ok. It’s just the two black families really…and we just have the block parties so that they can set the table and we count that as enough ‘service’ to abide by the old bylaws. We don’t want to break the neighborhood rules, but we don’t want to be sticklers or anything. For instance, we also all go to them if anyone is out of sugar. It’s just little things we can do to make sure we’re ok legally.” she (probably) continued.
“The city has no control over it, it’s an agreement written by the original homeowners when they established the subdivision,” said Kirkwood spokeswoman Beth Von Behren,
“It does get people’s attention and it is ridiculous. Both state and federal law anti-discrimination laws overrule it in any event,” said Von Behren. “The neighborhood has been trying to change the covenant for years.”
A law you don’t enforce is pretty much meaningless, so unless you’re being a super dick about the “rules” the law is basically nullified by default. For instance, according to dumblaws.com, it is illegal to have oral sex in the state of Missouri, and it’s illegal to sit on the curb of a St. Louis city street and drink from a bucket, but we’re guessing you could drink from a bucket without issue if you wanted to, and we’re not in jail now, so that other thing must not really be illegal either! High five! You know what we’re talking about! …blow jobs. We just wanted to be clear, we were referring to our earlier law about oral sex. Now for sure you know what we’re talking about!! Woo!
Still, residents feel it could be worth the hassle [to change the covenant]. With the covenant on paper, meaningless as it is, there’s still a cloud over a peaceful neighborhood.
It’s an issue because you’re making it an issue. If you want to make a big deal about something stupid from the past, your time would be better spent trying to tell that TV Land cable channel to stop creating new horrible shows featuring old washed up sitcom actors and get back to airing some “Who’s the Boss” up in this bitch!
via KMOV
