Mapping segregation, and the promise of unveiling

Ann Arbor, the home of the University of Michigan and the Washtenaw County seat, has long held a reputation as a progressive bubble in the state. While my spouse and I were house hunting years ago, it wasn’t uncommon to hear a real estate agent describe it as ‘the People’s Republic of Ann Arbor’ because of it’s left-leaning sensibilities. Can’t go wrong with the most educated city in America, right? Well…

It’s not going to come as a surprise to anyone reading this that this is a community that has often fallen short of those values. It’s reputation amongst Black residents — a county where you will still be harassed by police and sheriffs touting their diversity training, progressive prosecutors still find themselves charging activists with trespassing, and a school district that has a history of tracking minority students away from AP & into special education — is one well earned, but often not taken seriously by folks who by all accounts want to make this place more equitable.

A few years ago, I was part of a cohort created by the Nonprofit Enterprise at Work (NEW) called Champions for Change; CFC is a racial and social justice fellowship designed to diversify the leadership of nonprofits and social benefit agencies in a county where the nonprofit industrial complex is immense in size and scope. (I grew a lot, both in competence and confidence through this fellowship and heartily recommend it; if you’re in the Washtenaw or Detroit area, I highly recommend checking it out - applications are opening up at the start of November!)

We took a walking tour of what were the historically Black neighborhoods in Ann Arbor (now the more gentrified areas of Kerrytown, Water Hill & Northside) that filled in the gaps of what I knew about these neighborhoods, and squared the stories that my parents told me about visiting relatives and friends here with the modern day erasure of Blackness on those streets. Folks working on the history of the area mentioned there was an ongoing project to document and identify the racial covenants created in the Ann Arbor area to prevent anyone other than white families from moving in — and how many of these covenants could still be found on housing deeds today when families went to closing. Having been told frequently that Ann Arbor wasn’t “like that” when it came to redlining and housing discrimination, I was getting exhausted at having Housing 101 level discussions at every public engagement event.

From then on, whenever I encountered a shitty opinion about housing online — a NIMBY campaigning against an affordable housing development, racist snoops on Nextdoor, you name it — I would hop on to our Zooniverse page for the project and start coding covenants. It’s understandably disturbing to see written evidence of just how much people hated the idea of you, especially when it’s stamped, notarized and filed away neatly like this, but for me it was a surprisingly empowering activity. Every record confirmed was hard, detailed truth that undercut the excuses given around the segregation of this area. The people who held themselves as important voices against new developments, a status earned by being part of generations of residents in these towns, suddenly had a lot less to say when confronted with the unalloyed truth. Rerouting my angry commenter energy into those records helped keep me off Facebook, which we all recognize is a positive mental health outcome.

What’s more, I didn’t only do this work holed up in my office; I’d regularly join our little core group of volunteers, led by the vibrant souls at Futureroot on Saturday afternoons and type away around Yodit’s dining table. Plugging away at these artifacts of animus, sitting shoulder to shoulder, nibbling on treats and sharing bits of joy from our weeks, or uplifting needs, was a vibrant reminder of how much community we’ve built here despite all that was arrayed against us. It was work nearly anyone with a laptop could do, and with about 15-20 minutes of instruction, you’re good to start contributing to a large-scale community data effort. If you’re local to Washtenaw County, the project team is holding three public gatherings in the month of October - one at U-M’s School of Architecture, and one at the Ypsilanti & Ann Arbor Public Libraries, respectively. Registration is free here, and the events will have both food and childcare!

We’re living in a fairly ridiculous time, where bad faith actors lie about their reasons for enriching themselves at the expense of the rest of us. I find myself often holding the words of Frederick Douglass, that power concedes nothing without demand; that demand is strengthened by understanding and wielding our histories, even if they are records of how we’ve hurt each other. Sometimes you get to learn something that rewrites an internalized story, and this next step is making sure that the entire community confronts these unveiled facts and has to revise how it thinks about itself. The burden of this knowledge should fall heaviest on those with the ability to address it; the electeds and power brokers should need to acknowledge the truth of our communal exclusion in every decision about housing moving forward.

I can’t guarantee that at all, and am not inclined to bet on it. That’s not my ministry.

What I can guarantee is that everyone who participated in coding these records — transcribing those words typed out in black and white, recognizing addresses they pass on the way to work — will be changed by that knowledge. I don’t think it’s possible to volunteer for this work and hear the usual dismissals of housing segregation and not speak up; we’ve got all the receipts now. There are other communities undergoing the same process - the Mapping Prejudice project, of which this work in Ann Arbor was a part of, has been touched by over 12,000 volunteers and is actively working in Washington DC, Forsyth County NC, Ramsey County MN & Contra Costa County CA to provide this same kind of rhetorical and historical backup. We can’t change how a place sees itself overnight, but luckily we don’t have to; sometimes truths can be unveiled over time, block by block, until it’s made plain. Without belonging, there’s no responsibility; without responsibility, there’s no change.

Thanks for reading - your support means a lot! Seeing my writing & art circulate does a lot to help keep me going. This issue’s featured image is A Limber Landing, a shot I captured of a Red-Winged Blackbird landing on a cattail in spectacular fashion. If you’d like to purchase a print of this little dynamo, use the coupon code ‘careiscool’ for 10% off the cost.

Til next time, be safe and be well.