Race relations

Today in school, I encountered another example of critical race theory. The students are reading the book entitled, A Raisin In The Sun. It is about a Black family living in Chicago in the 1950's. The father dies and the family receives $10,000 from a life insurance policy and they decided to move out of their apartment and buy a house in the suburbs. This story has a personal side for me. After the war the veterans were all getting married and wanted homes so large projects were built around the country where pre fab homes were set up side by side in places that used to be farm land. In 1959 I bought one of those houses for $10,000. I only needed $400 down payment and an income of $300 per month to qualify for a loan. These requirements meant that many Blacks did not qualify but the family in our story did since they did not require a mortgage. The family was barred from moving into the neighborhood not because of finances but because they were Black. The story is about how they could not get into the neighborhood and ends there. So far so good as that is history. The teacher then could have explained how that is no longer the case and today people qualify based on income and not race. In fact the country went to the other extreme and handed out mortgages to people who did not qualify and many lost their homes including a disproportionate number of Black families. The point is the country has made many mistakes including prejudice but the country has also tried to repair the damage caused by those mistakes. The white students sitting in that classroom were left with the feeling that they were somehow responsible for mistakes that occurred long before they were born. It is mindful of the old case where someone was socially ostracized because their grandfather was a horse thief. When teaching history make an effort to tell the whole story. We have a long way to go when it comes to race relations but we have come a long way.