Since #TheVillages (FL) is trending today thanks to a presidential tweet, here's a serious discussion of how one of the US's newest large communities is also its whitest. The Villages is 2% Black or Latino in a very racially diverse part of Florida. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… (1/x)
If you missed it, here is the tweet to the video, re-tweeted by POTUS, in which a pro-Trump golf-cart driver shouts "white power!" I assume POTUS's tweet will come down before long. (2/x)
Here are the racial demographics of The Villages per the US Census. Three residents out of every 1,000 are Black. (The Villages population is much larger now, but little evidence that the demographics have changed, discussed in the paper above). census.gov/quickfacts/the… (3/x)
Think about what that level of racial homogeneity means. Meanwhile, Orlando, which is the nearest city to The Villages, is majority minority - 25% Black and 31% Latino census.gov/quickfacts/orl… (4/x)
Unlike extremely homogenous communities that have been that way for many decades, The Villages is new, started in the 1970's, after the enactment of the federal Fair Housing Act, which was designed to promote residential integration. So how did The Villages become so white? (5/x)
That's one question I examine in the essay linked above. Part of the story is probably exclusionary amenities, which I've written about at length here. virginialawreview.org/volumes/conten… (6/x)
But I think a bigger part of the story may be exclusionary vibes - repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewconten… if you go to The Villages, the built environment seems designed to repel most members of racial minorities. (7/x)
So the land underneath The Villages actually has a really interesting history, involving Native Americans, a historic Black cemetery, etc. All of it has been obscured or replaced with a fake historical narrative about The Villages origin story. (8/x)
As you stroll The Villages, the new but retro-themed buildings have plaques everywhere describing fictitious town founders and business-people. There are 69 fake people with surnames mentioned on these plaques. One surname is Sanchez, the rest are identifiably European. (9/x)
And the Sanchezes are probably Spaniards, the namesakes for Spanish Springs, one of the community's "downtowns." I don't think this is an accident, and I don't think the racial demographics of The Villages is a coincidence. (10/x)
There's another factor too, which is that The Villages are age restricted, and the racial wealth gap is larger than the racial income gap in the US. So senior communities that are costly may be more segregated by virtue of this. But The Villages is not super-expensive. (11/x)
This is a video with one of the anti-Trump protesters in The Villages, who says she was shocked to discover how homogenous the community is after moving in. It's possible she moved in sight unseen. Otherwise, it's hard to believe her explanation. (12/x)
Walking around The Villages, it's just striking how white the population is. Admittedly, I live in the very racially diverse South Side of Chicago, but still. It jumps out at me every time I visit. (13/x)
Almost as startlingly, as the first paper above discusses, The Villages is an unusually happy community. Sharon is an apparent outlier in the sense that the available data says residents are extremely satisfied with their community. (14/x)
There's really disturbing research suggesting that the community's racial homogeneity may help explain this high level of satisfaction among its residents. (15/x) But here is the kicker . . .
We've been having an overdue debate about Confederate Monuments and the way they repel and demean Black Americans. What the fake history of The Villages suggests, though, is that one community is employing subtler, less confrontational tactics and achieving similar ends. (16/x)
So it's worth thinking beyond monuments & flags, about other aspects of the built environment that create "welcome mats" for people of all kinds, or the opposite. And, as the paper suggests, historic preservation districts send signals to current populations that polarize. (17/x)
I'm working with the great @michaelcpollack this summer on a paper that reconsiders the problem of racial homogeneity in age-restricted communities, among other issues, so we will have more to say about The Villages before too long. (18/x)
It is interesting to see one video suggesting that aspects of The Villages may be cracking under the strains of our current political moment. Social capital in The Villages has been extremely high, a double-edged sword, but social capital can be brittle. (19/x)
Which affects the conservative Morse family whose patriarchs have become billionaires & GOP political patrons thanks to The Villages success. Interesting to think about how the president's tweet and resulting attention affect who does / doesn't want to live there. (20/x)
Thanks for reading my The Villages thread to the end. There's a lot more in my paper, including a broader discussion of historic preservation and fake history. Like this thread, the essay begins with Trump. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… (21/21)
