The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
4 — Wednesday, February 3, 2021
A significant number of Ann
Arbor suburbs and individual
houses have racially-restrictive
sections in their covenants — which
bar people of color, particularly
Black
Americans,
from
home
ownership — according to research
from University of Michigan Law
professor Michael Steinberg and
Urban Planning assistant professor
Robert Goodspeed.
Goodspeed
and
Steinberg
presented their findings to the Ann
Arbor Planning Commission on
Jan. 12, looking to raise awareness
about the covenants included in
many Ann Arbor residents’ deeds
and the looming presence of
racism they said many locals are
ignorant of.
“Most Ann Arbor residents
believe
that
they
live
in
a
progressive community that is
enlightened on issues of race,”
Steinberg wrote in a February
2020 letter to the members of
the project committee. “Racism
and white supremacy may plague
many other parts of the country,
the thinking goes, but Ann Arbor
is an island where people of color
have enjoyed equal opportunity
for
generations.
The
reason
Ann Arbor neighborhoods are
still segregated, many think, is
because housing prices are so high
in the city, not because of race
discrimination.”
But
despite
Ann
Arbor’s
progressive reputation, Steinberg
and
Goodspeed
found
66
subdivisions within the Ann Arbor
city limit with some variation
of racial discrimination in their
covenants, pointing to the legacy
of institutionalized racism in the
community.
“(The covenants) were private
agreements,
mostly
in
new
subdivisions when a developer
came in in order to get funding
from the banks or government,
they wanted to make it an
exclusively white neighborhood,”
Steinberg told The Michigan Daily.
“And so there would be portions
of the deed next to ‘no fences or
no frats’ that would say certain
things.”
One of the most common
racially-restrictive
covenants
present in Ann Arbor reads:
“no part of said land shall be
occupied by persons not of the
Caucasian race except as guests
or servants.”Other covenants say
only people of the Christian faith
are allowed to live on the property,
Steinberg said in the planning
commission meeting.
The racist agreement is typically
listed under agreements that the
homeowner must sign. When
Steinberg bought his first house on
the Old West Side in 1985, he was
surprised when he found out that
the house has a racially-restrictive
covenant.
“I read through my closing
documents and talked to my real
estate agent and I said, ‘What is
this, I can’t believe this is part of
the house I’m buying,’” Steinberg
said. “She responded that it wasn’t
enforced, and that I shouldn’t
worry about it because there are
lots of houses in Ann Arbor with
the covenants.”
When
Steinberg
originally
talked to a lawyer about removing
the racial covenant in the 1980s,
he said he was told the removal
process was long and expensive
and an attempt to remove it was
not worth it. Steinberg’s current
house also has a racially-restrictive
covenant in its deed, he said.
The covenants are no longer
enforceable, as the 1948 Shelley
v. Kraemer Supreme Court case
ruled
that
racially-restrictive
covenants are in violation of
the 14th Amendment, the equal
protection clause.
“Before 1948, if I sold my house
to a Black family, my neighbor had
the ability to sue me, preventing
a Black person from buying the
house,” Steinberg told The Daily.
“And the courts upheld them. They
said this is a private agreement
among all neighborhood residents,
and Michigan Supreme Court held
that it was constitutional to enter
into these private agreements.”
After living in Ann Arbor for
36 years, Steinberg told The Daily
he promised himself that one day
he would do something about the
covenants. He runs a clinic at the
Law School called The Civil Rights
Litigation Initiative. His clinic
gives students the opportunity
to work on civil rights cases in a
professional clinic setting.
“We decided that we would
make one of our projects a project
to educate people about racially-
restrictive covenants in Ann Arbor
and to work with policymakers
to show how racially-restrictive
covenants
cause
housing
segregation and discrimination
today,” Steinberg said. “And then
take action to eliminate them on
homes in Ann Arbor.”
Steinberg’s work in the clinic
has extended to a committee
including community members,
city officials, students and other
professors.
The advisory board and project
committee approach this topic
with an open-ended educational
aspect, as well as a hope to create
policy
changes,
according
to
Goodspeed.
Goodspeed is working with the
committee to create an interactive
map of Ann Arbor that will show
which
houses
have
racially-
restrictive covenants on them.
Mapping these covenants can help
to influence policy makers, call
for legislative action and assist in
community education, Steinberg
said in the planning commission
meeting.
Kiera O’Connor is a youth
activist on the committee who
has been working closely to
develop
community
education
programs.
At
the
Planning
Commission meeting, she said as
a young woman of color, it’s hard
to imagine closing on a house and
then finding a racially restrictive
covenant in the documents.
“You know you’re buying this
wonderful house and you’re so
excited,” O’Connor said at the
meeting. “And then you see this
and you just don’t really feel
welcome in the community. And
it’s just, it’s really just imagining
how uncomfortable that would
be. And also, these restrictive
covenants have kind of created
Ypsilanti in a way, because they
drove people of color out of Ann
Arbor.”
Naina
Agrawal-Hardin,
a
member of the advisory board
committee, said racial zoning —
legal practices in urban planning
designed to exclude racial and
ethnic minorities — is responsible
for creating predominantly white
communities that isolate people of
color.
“It’s one piece of a much broader
societal puzzle that is still telling
people of color, and especially
Black people, that they don’t belong
in certain sectors of society, or that
they’re not good enough to live in
integrated neighborhoods to go
to integrated schools,” Agrawal-
Hardin told The Daily. “And that’s
just so fundamentally unjust.”
The
life
expectancies
in
Washtenaw
County
and
the
neighboring Wayne County have
over 6.5 years difference, and this is
just one of the problems that racial
zoning creates, Agrawal-Hardin
said.
These problems are shown in
disparities between Ann Arbor and
Ypsilanti. In an article comparing
Ann
Arbor
and
Ypsilanti
opportunities, Ann Arbor had
much higher levels of job access,
neighborhood stability, economic
well-being, and health rankings.
Steinberg said he and the
committee
are
focused
on
providing
education
on
racial
covenants in hope for a solution
in the future. The educational
outreach committee is focused
on making curriculum for K-12
students in the Ann Arbor and
Ypsilanti area, Agrawal-Hardin
said.
It is difficult to do a lot of
community outreach during the
pandemic, but the project is just
at its beginning and will hopefully
be ready for community education
when COVID-19 is over, Steinberg
said.
Goodspeed said the research
of the project has continued
throughout the pandemic and is
manageable to work from home on
it.
“It’s moved a lot quicker than
we expected from the goodwill of
different stakeholders,” Goodspeed
said. “The title industry and
company allowed us access to their
proprietary files to speed up our
ability to discover subdivisions that
have spatial covenants. In addition,
the County Register of deeds is
very supportive, giving us access to
files.”
Agrawal-Hardin
said
the
planning
committee
is
eager
for more information about the
covenants to be released.
“I want people to know: it’s not
your fault that you don’t know
about (the covenants) because
there’s been a concentrated effort,
both where we live and in the rest
of our country and in the rest of
our world, to cover up and deny
and minimize the these histories of
discrimination,” Agrawal-Hardin
said.
In the future, Steinberg said
he hopes the project will be able
to provide community education
on the history of these covenants
and eventually remove the racial
covenants from the deeds.
“Part of the reason we’re doing
this is to illustrate that Ann Arbor
thinks it’s enlightened on racial
justice issues, and that there’s
no history of white supremacy,”
Steinberg said. “But, there’s no
better way, in our view, to bring
that point home than to show that
the very homes that thousands of
people are living in have racially-
restrictive covenants that prohibit
people of color to live there.”
U-M research raises awareness of racially
restrictive covenants in Ann Arbor housing
Two ‘U’ professors find 66 A2 subdivisions with racially discriminatory terms in contracts
Combs took two of Chen’s
courses during his time at the
University
and
also
attended
the same church as Chen, where
Combs said he had gotten to know
Chen and his family very well.
“When I saw the email I was
like, this has to be a typo or
something, this is just crazy,”
Combs said. “I just wanted to read
through the email three or four
times to just process what they
were saying and accept it.”
Engineering
junior
James
Vidano is currently enrolled in
Chen’s EECS 482 class and said he
was also surprised when he found
out about the allegations against
Chen.
“In class, we talked about him
as being a super smart, legendary
figure who designs computer
science courses and just knows an
insane amount about the whole
computer science world,” Vidano
said. “It was really surprising, it
was the last person we (would)
possibly expect to be in this
situation.”
EECS 482 is taught by three
different professors, and Chen
had not yet taught a lecture before
being put on administrative leave,
Vidano said. The lecture has not
met since the news about Chen was
released, according to Vidano, and
the class has not yet acknowledged
the situation.
On Ratemyprofessors.com, a
site where students rank their
professors in terms of difficulty,
likability
and
quality,
Chen
receives a high rating of 4.6 on a
5-point scale. He also received
a 99% rating on University of
Michigan’s course atlas, which
provides
course
information
like enrollment numbers and
instructor ratings based on data
collected from previous semesters.
Chen has also been awarded
the
Eta
Kappa
Nu
EECS
professor of the year five times,
which takes undergraduate and
graduate students’ opinions and
experiences into the selection of
the award. The award is given
to a professor who has made
beneficial contributions to the
community and had a profound
impact on students.
Ross and Engineering junior
Gloria Stach was enrolled in
Chen’s ENGR 100 class a year
ago, which she said motivated
her to learn more about computer
science.
“I was completely shocked and
still kind of in disbelief, of the
news that came out today, just
because I remember from day
one in class, he would talk about
how he was such a religious man
and he was also a family man,
and he seemed to have very high
morals and standards,” Stach
said.
The
announcement
comes
after recent controversy in the
CSE
department
regarding
the appointment of assistant
professor Jason Mars, who faced
allegations of sexual misconduct
at his startup Clinc in Feb. 2020,
to teach EECS 370 for the winter
2021 semester. An email template
calling for Mars’ removal from
teaching the course, which is
required for all EECS majors,
circulated over winter break,
though Mars continues to be an
instructor for the class.
Elkolaly
said
Gallimore
emphasized in the meeting the
rarity of two professors in the
same department getting accused
of sexual misconduct in one
year, referring to both Mars and
Chen. Elkolaly said she thinks the
decision to keep accused faculty
on staff has made it difficult for
students to focus on learning.
“With Jason Mars, he was on
tenure, and the administration
basically said that he’s still
teaching because he did not do
anything to remove his status
as a professor,” Elkolaly said. “A
bunch of other women that are
terrified to go to class now would
say otherwise — I’m of the opinion
that it shouldn’t even be an option
to interact with him.”
Chen was appointed to interim
chair of the CSE department after
predecessor Brian Noble stepped
down two weeks after the first
public allegations against Mars.
Only six months later, Chen also
stepped down from the position,
citing “personal reasons” in an
email sent to COE faculty in July
2020.
Separate from the allegations
against Chen, Combs reflected
on the typical culture within the
University’s
computer
science
department, which he said is often
focused around getting to one of
the top five tech companies. To
rebuild trust and community in
a department that has now been
rocked by two recent allegations
of misconduct, it needs to be more
than that, Combs said.
“I’ve been a personal believer
for a long time that (the computer
science department) in general
really
needs
to
get
serious
about ethics and just think as
a profession taking the human
aspect more seriously,” Combs
said. “Obviously, there’s an aspect
of diversity there and an aspect of
empathy that’s necessary.”
And even outside of CSE,
considering the string of sexual
misconduct allegations against
faculty and staff at the University
within the last few years, Combs
said he wishes the mentality at
the University was more that
everyone had a responsibility
towards society as a whole and to
one another.
“The University often talks
about getting the Leaders the
Best, we often pull ourselves up
and think of ourselves as being
different or special, because we’re
a little smarter, or because you
got into Michigan,” Combs said.
“We have been given positions
of power, either as faculty or
students who have been given
the opportunity to come here,
and I really think there is a need
to refocus our culture on using
that power responsibly towards
thinking about those who are
marginalized or those who don’t
have a voice in our community.”
Many parents and Ann Arbor
residents who oppose a return
to in-person learning fear that
opening schools could widen
disparities that exist for people of
color, particularly Black people,
who
are
disproportionately
affected
by
the
COVID-19
pandemic. The district, as well
as some parents and teachers,
also cite the lack of vaccines for
teachers and the cluster of the
B.1.1.7 COVID-19 variant in Ann
Arbor as reasons to stay with
virtual learning.
Since
the
state
began
distributing
the
COVID-19
vaccine
in
December,
more
parents are pushing to put their
children back into a classroom
rather than in front of a screen.
In mid-January, teachers became
eligible to receive the vaccine
under Phase 1B, though limited
supply has meant that most
AAPS teachers have not yet been
vaccinated.
Lena Kaufman, A2R2 rally
organizer and Ann Arbor parent,
said the goal of the rally was to
support
Whitmer’s
guidance
and encourage schools to offer
in-person options for younger
students and students who have
special needs, since their well-
being relies on professionally
trained staff provided by the state.
“We’re
putting
this
day
together
because
we
really
believe that Governor Gretchen
Whitmer is right about the fact
that schools can be safe, low-
risk environments for children
and teachers,” Kaufman said.
“They have a lot of data now that
backs that up over here. Her goal
of getting kids, especially the
youngest and special needs kids,
giving them an option (...) by
March 1st is quite reasonable and
we want to show up and signal our
support.”
Ann
Arbor
resident
Sara
Talpos, a science journalist at
Undark
Magazine,
told
The
Daily she attended the rally
because she was concerned about
students’ mental health. After
reading a New York Times article
discussing how Las Vegas public
schools were pushed to re-open
due to an increase in teenage
suicides, Talpos said she hoped
AAPS would open safely to avoid
this kind of mental health crisis.
“I came out because I’m really
concerned about the mental health
effect of keeping students outside
of classrooms for too long,” Talpos
said. “I know that remote learning
is working for some kids, but a lot
of our kids are very isolated right
now, and our local pediatricians
have been talking about increases
in depression and anxiety, and the
recent article by Erica Green on
suicides really worries me a lot.”
Kai Cortina, a University of
Michigan professor of educational
psychology and parent of two
AAPS students, spoke to the
crowd about how his home
country of Germany kept schools
open while also ensuring student
safety.
“Why is it that the Ann Arbor
Public Schools, one of the richest
school districts (...) is unable
to learn the same way that the
entire country has learned how
to handle the crisis in schools, I
don’t understand it,” Cortina said.
Alan Simpson-Vlach, a math
teacher teaching in person in
Oakland County and parent of
two AAPS students, said while
he is impressed by the district’s
investments in virtual learning
technology, he worries about
the impact of virtual learning on
student achievement.
“The
achievement
gap
continues to widen,” Simpson-
Vlach said. “Reading progress has
come to a standstill. Depression
and
anxiety
have
become
entrenched, and the well-being
of whole families has suffered.
Since when did the education of
our children become a third-tier
priority?”
Kim
Monroe,
pediatric
hospitalist and AAPS parent, also
said virtual classes have led to an
increase in mental health issues.
Monroe said she believes AAPS
is capable of safely reopening
schools.
“By this point in time, it’s not
even a question of whether it’s
safe or not,” Monroe said. “It’s a
question of whether we’re going
to do it or not, and I truly believe
that the AAPS teachers, school
board and superintendent can do
this. I believe in them and I think
that we can make this happen.”
Ann Arbor resident Krysten
Salla told The Daily she has
observed a lack of resources for
students with disabilities and
English language learners.
“(Students
with
disabilities
and English learners) are really
suffering and it’s really hard for
them to get the services they
need,” Salla said. “It’s really
making a bigger achievement gap
of kids that have the money and
the resources to learn at home,
or to get extra tutors and the kids
that don’t, and those kids are
really suffering.”
One Ann Arbor parent, Kristine
McWilliams, told The Daily she
opted to move her children to a
nearby school holding in-person
classes.
“Sadly, I am a former parent
of Ann Arbor school district
children,” McWilliams said. “I
have a first and fourth grader, and
virtual education was just not an
option for us, so we transferred
this year to a local charter school.”
Like other parents at the
protest,
Alan
Simpson-Vlach
said
he
believes
that
with
determination and vision, AAPS
can bring students back into
classrooms safely.
“I call on the leaders of my
school district, the Ann Arbor
Public Schools, to get off the
dime,”
Alan
Simpson-Vlactch
said.
“Stop
congratulating
yourself on how well you are
serving our top students and start
serving all students. Get them
back in school.”
CHEN
From Page 1
RALLY
From Page 1
Daily Staff Reporter Shan-
non Stocking can be reached at
sstockin@umich.edu.
Daily News Reporter Shan-
non Stocking can be reached at
sstockin@umich.edu.
Daily News Editor Jasmin
Lee can be reached at itsshlee@
umich.edu. Daily Staff Reporter
Nina Molina can be reached at
nimolina@umich.edu.
SHANNON STOCKING
Daily Staff Reporter
A significant number of Ann Arbor suburbs and individual houses have racially restrictive sections in their covenants.
ALLISON ENGKVIST/Daily
CITY