|
|
 |
|
Clearinghouse Review, Journal of Law and Poverty, Nov-Dec. 2009, Volume 43, Numbers 7–8
Reed Colfax, Relman & Dane LLP
"The maps of these data were more powerful than any oral description of the evidence of discrimination."
Denied Water Service Because of Race, African Americans Win $10.85 Million in a Jury Verdict.
Jan/Feb 2010 Miller-McCune Magazine feature:
The Revolution Will Be Mapped
GIS mapping technology is helping underprivileged communities get better services — from education and transportation to health care and law enforcement — by showing exactly what discrimination looks like.
The News & Observer
A blow against exclusion
Jul 23, 2008
Julius L. Chambers and Mark Dorosin
CHAPEL HILL - This month a jury in Zanesville, Ohio, awarded $10.9 million to residents of a mostly black neighborhood after finding that the local government discriminated against the community by denying access to public water service, even though it provided water to nearby predominantly white neighborhoods. Low-income and minority neighborhoods across the country face similar discriminatory patterns of municipal exclusion.
The verdict in Ohio recognized the disparate treatment that the Cole Run community suffered, and it provided communities nationwide with a potent tool in their struggle against racially discriminatory land-use policies and practices. The case has also highlighted an issue that results not only in inadequate public services, but also in the social and political exclusion of these communities.
The Zanesville verdict has a larger potential as well: It presents a unique opportunity for state and local governments to review and revise laws and policies that have created and entrenched similar patterns of discrimination and exclusion, and to aggressively move to remedy the ongoing impacts of such patterns.
The verdict also encourages the ongoing efforts of community-based groups to continue to push for inclusion, equal treatment and full participation in their communities. The jury's action should remind those who don't live in excluded neighborhoods that such practices diminish the well-being and quality of their lives and prevent the community from achieving the full realization of its collective potential.
Significant work on this issue is being done in North Carolina, where it is believed that more than 31 minority communities are facing some form of municipal exclusion. To document and identify these communities, the UNC Center for Civil Rights has worked with the Mebane-based Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities, which provided maps and expert testimony in the Zanesville case, and the Legal Aid Clients Council of N.C.
In Moore County, the center works with communities that have achieved success through grass-roots organizing to obtain municipal services and increase awareness of their plight. The Jackson Hamlet neighborhood's advocacy led Pinehurst to provide street lights and water and sewer services, and to pursue annexation of the community, which would allow residents to receive additional municipal services and vote in local elections.
Through organized community action, both the Midway community, working with the town of Aberdeen, and the Waynor Road community, working with Southern Pines, secured water and sewer services, an annexation commitment and increased political participation in local government. In addition, the center helped each of these organizations conduct community assessments, research funding sources for municipal services, counsel residents on their legal and political rights and become tax-exempt entities, thereby enabling them to qualify for grants to continue their advocacy efforts.
Several other organizations in North Carolina, including the Southern Moore Alliance for Excluded Communities, N.C. Rural Communities Assistance Project and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice are already assisting excluded communities to meet the challenges those communities face. These organizations and communities are bringing tangible improvements, sustainability and inclusion through a range of strategies to help remedy the discriminatory effects of current land use practices.
There remains much work to be done; many other communities still face the effects of exclusion, which are broad and deeply ingrained. A comprehensive, coordinated effort is necessary to combat the issue. Forward-thinking local and state governments, progressive community groups, lawyers and other nonprofit organizations should seize the awareness and attention raised by the Zanesville verdict to vigorously press the issue in their own communities.
(Julius L. Chambers, former chancellor of N.C. Central University, is the director of the UNC Center for Civil Rights. Mark Dorosin is a senior attorney at the center.)
All rights reserved.
"The View From the Other Side of the Tracks"
6/10/05 NPR's "The Connection" hosted a discussion of underbounding and its results. Click on the link above to
hear the show.
"Small town America is seeing a new front in the historical struggle for equality. Civil rights leaders say it's
a form of residual segregation and it's showing up in places like California, Ohio and North Carolina.
Many towns are becoming ever more prosperous, while their original minority neighborhoods are still kept outside city
limits. In some cases the black and Latino neighborhoods are all but encircled by big homes, but left without sewer pipes,
police and fire protection.
In places like Pinehurst NC, long-time residents have septic tanks leaking up through their lawns while they live next
door to a golf course so pristine it hosts the U.S. Open. Some local elected officials argue the disparity is not deliberate.
It just reflects the natural course of development and they can't afford the bill."
|
|
|
|
|
By Julia Oliver, Published May 2, 2004
Civil rights organizations are studying the way black communities
have been affected by their exclusion from some Moore County towns. The Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities,
a nonprofit organization in Mebane, uses advanced mapping technology and North Carolina census data to find boundaries drawn
along racial lines. It also looks at where utilities are built.
The institute says that Pinehurst's boundaries, while
not unique in their exclusion of black communities, raise concerns. The boundaries keep some unincorporated communities under
zoning control, but do not provide them services. Pinehurst controls zoning within a two-mile radius of the village.
The
institute's research has gotten the attention of the Center for Civil Rights at UNC's law school. "It seems like something
that is both old and new," said Jack Boger, the center's deputy director. He considers the new mapping technology a fresh
look at discrimination that may have been going on for a long time. He said the center wants to find out whether black communities
are being excluded in a manner that violates civil rights protections. "We want to find out the extent to which this is permissible
and appropriate."
Anita Earls, director of advocacy and senior lawyer at the center, said she is concerned that residents
are being regulated without a voice. "They don't have control over their property and they don't have representation in the
body that does have control over their property," she said.
Responsibility for the phenomenon that some have called
"municipal underbounding" is unclear. Town laders in Moore County say that decisions to annex are based in economics, not
race: Towns are most likely to consider annexing wealthy neighborhoods that can bring in taxes to offset the services the
town provides. The towns say that the communities that seem excluded have resisted annexation.
Andy Wilkison, Pinehurst's
village manager for 15 years, said maps showing the racial disparity in and out of the village boundaries are misleading.
"I think if you just looked at the map and didn't know the background, you would think, 'Gosh, Pinehurst is trying to keep
those people out,'" he said. He said residents of Monroe Town and Jackson Hamlet, a black neighborhood to the south of Pinehurst,
were asked whether they wanted to be part of the village. Afraid of higher taxes, they said no, he said. "These maps don't
tell you that story."
Recent meeting
The Center for Civil Rights met recently with members of four black communities
in Moore County that do not have reliable water or sewer service, said Heather Hunt, a fellow at the center. She said the
center is trying to help the communities figure out whether they would like to be part of a town.
"A lot of people
have questions about, what does it mean to be annexed?" she said. "We're here to tell them, 'if this is what you want, here
is the procedure.'" Hunt said the center has met with people from:
A neighborhood northeast of the airport off N.C.
22 that has neither water nor sewer service.
A neighborhood between railroad tracks and Saunders Road that is almost
surrounded by Aberdeen and has no water or sewer service.
Jackson Hamlet, which is sandwiched between Aberdeen and
Pinehurst and has water, but no sewer service.
Taylortown, an incorporated town to the north of Pinehurst that has
both water and sewer, but has had problems with water quality.
Because a federal grant brought Monroe Town water and
sewer service last year, and because the center did not have any contacts there, Monroe Town was not included, Hunt said.
But she said the difference in racial makeup between Pinehurst and Monroe Town is striking. "It just seems kind of egregious
when you're outside the town but you're surrounded by it," she said.
| Exclusion of Minority Neighborhoods. |
|
| CLICK ON MAP TO ENLARGE. |
Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities
6919 Lee St. * Mebane * NC * 27302
phone (919) 563-5899 * fax (919) 563-5290
|
|
|
|
