Has anybody else pretty much had it with the Northampton City Council? The context of my question is their resolution calling for city-funded reparations.
The council didn’t just vote unanimously for the measure, they absolutely fawned over it. One after the other, in their comments preceding the first vote on Feb. 2, the councilors extolled the resolution’s thoughtfulness, powerfulness, and well-crafted eloquence.
Let’s see if this resolution really merits these accolades. The resolution declares that Northampton implemented “racist and segregationist zoning.” Councilors, how could none of you have challenged or even asked for the slightest proof or clarification of such a damning charge? Northampton never had any ordinance or code explicitly mentioning race or ethnicity as a condition of residence or property ownership.
A simple bit of historical context here: The Supreme Court established the unconstitutionality of government-instituted racial segregation in its unanimous ruling of Buchanan v. Warley. That was at the dawn of American zoning codes in 1917, and it has prevailed up and through the introduction of Northampton’s first real zoning code in 1975.
The Northampton zoning code made no racial reference, and the suggestion that it had the effect of limiting Black residency in Northampton does not hold up to scrutiny.
Northampton is not like the many western suburban towns that were barely hamlets 100 years ago, which now have tens of thousands of residents living almost exclusively in neighborhoods zoned for detached single-family homes beyond the means of the broader area’s lower-income households. Rather, our city has the same 29,000 population it had in 1950, and half our housing stock predates 1940.
Northampton has consistently exceeded the state’s goals for affordable housing, and our share of households in detached single-family homes has actually gone down since the start of zoning in 1975. It was 51% according to the census of 1970, but only 47% in 2020. This is hardly a record that supports a categorical declaration that our zoning was racist and segregationist.
The resolution implies that it is our racism that led so few Blacks to move to Northampton during the great migration from the South in the last century. Councilors, how could you not see the silliness of this?
Our non-metropolitan city of less than 30,000 in New England was never going to have the job opportunities to make it an attractive destination in itself, and it wasn’t even on the intervening path from the South to anywhere else. You can’t argue that Northampton pushed migrating southern Blacks away because of racism when the far more fundamental issue is that the city would never have shown up on the radar at all.
The resolution also clearly implies that racism is the cause for low Black employment in the Northampton schools and for the dearth of Black managers at the heads of most municipal departments. Councilors, do any of you really believe for a nanosecond that Northampton has not taken seriously its equal employment opportunity policy or its commitment to affirmative outreach and action? Where are the EEOC and state actions against Northampton that would support this charge?
The resolution’s call for reparations because Northampton has never elected a Black mayor is also just jaw-droppingly nuts. How many Blacks have run? Come on councilors; the council currently has two Black members and Northampton’s 82.1% vote for Barack Obama in 2008 was just about the highest share of any municipality in the country.
The reparations resolution is right to note that Northampton has the awful stain of slavery. Recent research by Historic Northampton identified 50 people enslaved in Northampton between 1654 and 1783. The resolution ignores, however, the 751 Northampton soldiers who fought in the Civil War to end slavery and the 91 who gave their lives for this ultimate moral cause.
Does this — and our deep history of abolition and support for civil rights — really count for nothing in our city’s broader ledger of racial justice?
Residents of Northampton, this resolution has less to do with truth-telling for our city than with giving local activists the national spotlight they seek. Our City Council has abetted them in this effort, but they have maligned our city in the process and have stunningly ignored the obvious: Northampton is about the last place to have a debt of reparations.
Now let them hear from the rest of us. I hope Northampton voters this November will see a full new slate of council candidates, ones less bent on resolutions and more sensibly focused instead on legislating for a more well-functioning and prosperous city with real efforts to achieve equity for all.
Marc Warner lives in Northampton.