Alex Hosey and East Lansing, MI officials are showing that it’s never too early (Hosey) and it’s never too late (East Lansing) to lead for the public good.
Today we witness Stoneman Douglas students pushing for gun control reform. Fifty years ago students nationwide sought to end the Viet Nam War. Decades apart, the storyline is identical: generation after generation, groups of like-minded youth organize to seek social change.
Alex Hosey (photo, Sam Hosey, Jr., and the Lansing State Journal)
But can one student make a difference?
Meet Alex Hosey, a 15-year-old freshman basketball player at East Lansing (MI) High School. Hosey became the center of controversy recently by sitting during the playing of the National Anthem. To explain his actions, Hosey wrote an essay entitled, Why I Sit.
In it, Hosey writes about his family and what happened to them in the 1960s. His grandparents, both African Americans, were denied a housing purchase in East Lansing because of real estate restrictions.
Those restrictions were illegal, of course. As early as 1917, Buchanan v. Warley ruled that statutes couldn’t be put in place to restrict housing access. But housing restrictions were used nonetheless, mostly in response to the “Great Migration” of African Americans from Southern to Northern states. From 1915 to around 1960 about 6 million African Americans migrated North. Many settled in Michigan to work in the auto industry.
The restrictive practice used in East Lansing is called a covenant, a contract that specifies certain conditions. Illegal covenants were used by home sellers, neighborhood associations, and realtors to keep blacks from integrating East Lansing’s neighborhoods. Prospective home buyers and renters were redirected to black-accepting neighborhoods in nearby Lansing, Michigan.
Hosey says he’s protesting because he doesn’t want history to be forgotten. “My specific protest,” Hosey writes, “is to bring to light the injustices of the past and to have them discussed, recognized, and learned about.”
Hosey says he’ll stand for the Anthem if East Lansing meets two conditions:
–The East Lansing School District needs to teach the history and effects of unjust and illegal housing practices. (For reference, Hosey cites a 2015 article written by local author, Bill Castanier.)
–The city mayor needs to issue a public acknowledgment and an apology to blacks and other people of color for the City’s past discriminatory housing practice.
Courtesy: Sperling’s Best Places
How did the city respond?
The East Lansing City Council passed a resolution that states, in part, “… we … profoundly acknowledge, apologize for, and condemn all racially motivated, discriminatory or exclusionary aspects of the city’s history and deeply regrets any pain or suffering such policies may have caused to any person” (source, Eric Lacey, The Lansing State Journal). The Council will also meet with Hosey to plan an annual citywide conversation about racism and the city’s “divisive past.”
There’s more, too. Even though racist covenants and other exclusionary practices ended when Congress passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the City found that they still exist in some East Lansing neighborhoods–despite due diligence to the contrary. In response, the City said it will renew its efforts to identify and terminate such agreements.
In an editorial statement the local Gannett newspaper, The Lansing State Journal, applauded Hosey’s actions and the City’s response: “Are you listening to this dialogue? It’s about race. It’s about racism. It’s about the fight for equality. And it’s about moving forward together.”
The paper contrasted what’s happening in East Lansing to another episode that took place in the Lansing area recently. Four high school football players were benched in October after they knelt during the playing of The National Anthem. When pressed, high school officials initially refused to discuss its decision, but later relented following an expression of community concern and announcements that two of the four students would transfer.
What happened in East Lansing needs to happen more often. It’s about youth leadership and it’s about responsive government.
I like how The New York Times essayist David Brooks framed it a few days ago. Some student activism is motivated by what he calls mistake theory–when social issues are caused by “errors and incompetence, not by malice or evil intent.” Other student efforts are the product of conflict theory–when social problems are caused by “malice or oppression.”
What happened in East Lansing decades ago certainly wasn’t a mistake. But neither is what is happening there today. Alex Hosey and East Lansing officials are showing that it’s never too early (Hosey) and it’s never too late (East Lansing) to lead for the public good.
