Some Words Must Not Lose Their Meaning!

I was watching Ted Lasso a week or so back, and he was using the word plan. Suddenly he stopped and stated, “I’ve used plan too many times. It’s losing its meaning.”

As with seemingly almost everything on this show, it was rather humorous, but has it ever happened to you?

It’s called semantic satiation and it’s loosely defined as “when words become a sound.”

Systemic is a word I think most prone to this situation. Systemic.

Now say it again, “systemic.”

It just sounds like hooey, right? It could be a vegetable or a disco or a disease or just complete jibberish.

Systemic.

Now add racism to it. Systemic racism.

It’s really no wonder white people’s eyes roll back in their head when they hear it. Six syllables for two words.

Nothing bores southern white people like multisyllabic verbiage. Aw damn, eight syllables in two words. Sorry about that.

So just forget I said that term, systemic racism, and instead, let’s talk about weird stuff in the real estate business.

Did you see the horror genre tv show Them on Prime Video last summer?

I love a good horror/scary/thriller and this one did not disappoint. It was kind of a rip off of Lovecraft Country and Get Out by Jordan Peele, and even though it garnered only a 60% at Rotten Tomatoes, I highly suggest it!

The premise was based on a Black family moving from the rural south to a burgeoning new neighborhood in 1950s Los Angeles. But there was some crazy stuff going on in this subdivision.

These folks started experiencing ghosts and visions and voices and none of them were pleasant. Bad things had happened to the previous owners. Very bad things.

This would foreshadow bad things in our current family’s future.

Now back to the real estate connection. If you’ve ever tried to build a house in a neighborhood, you should know there are “covenants” to be considered. Most common is the house must be a certain square footage. But in other upscale areas, things like even having a pickup truck parked out front is frowned upon.

Well back in the glorious 1950’s real estate developers, always the altruists, came up with the idea of including race as part of the covenant.

Yep. Exactly. You know what I’m talking about.

And that’s what happened to these folks in East LA. And that’s what happened to the folks before them.

And so horror ensued.

The fair housing act, I think of 1968, supposedly did away with this kind of overt discrimination. However, as we all know, it didn’t do away with the discrimination.

No instead, it just moved underground, or more accurately under the breath of racist realtors and their associated institutions.

Did you hear the story about the Black couple in San Francisco, who had spent the last five years renovating their house, but when it was appraised, it came in extremely low? Well okay, it came in at around $900,000.00.

Yeah, this was no dump. And it’s San Francisco. Real Estate is a big deal in San Francisco.

Suspecting something fishy was going on, the couple decided to get a second opinion and “whitewash” their house.

By whitewash, I mean they removed all ethnic art, and references. They even removed their family pictures. And then they had a white friend meet with the next appraiser.

Guess what? Yep, the appraisal increased by 50%!

Is this an isolated incident? Sadly no. Google this phrase: racist appraisal story. What you’ll find is story, after story, after story.

Now I bet you could ask a real estate agent about this situation, and they would deny such type of discrimination happens. But, if you go back to our previous term of “under the breath” conversation, what I suspect you would find would be a shared racism, based on the greed of the agent, and the stereotyping of their buyer.

Put all this stuff together, and you have a “system.”

The listing, the buying, the selling, the financing, the whole system of real estate is corrupt. And has been for a long time.

And that is the definition of systemic racism.

You’re welcome.