Under the Obama administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) plans to "track diversity" in America's neighborhoods; if a community appears to the feds to discriminate, its residents will be bussed to other locations to make room for the new owners of their previous homes, the racial or ethnic groups whom the government regards as being "underrepresented."
"This is outrageous," complained Ima Whitey. "I worked hard all my life to afford a home in one of Detroit's better neighborhoods and now, just because in Barack Obama's opinion, my community isn't "black" enough or "Asian" enough or "Latino" enough, I have to move?"
B. Black, Whitey's neighbor, also thinks "they goan too fuh" in forcing residents to bus to other neighborhoods. "I done marry a white man to get out da ghetto, and now I be here, Obama goan make me bus back to da slums? No way, Jose!"
Likewise, some Latinos have voiced concerns about the government's interference in their lives. Hy Spanick said, "I want to be down with my homies, not forced to live next to some stinkin' gringo. My 'hood may not be all that, but it's my home turf."
HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said that people have "misunderstood" the "intent" of the program. "Bussed residents do not have to give up their homes," he said. "They will only have to vacate them so others can occupy them. The original owners still own them. In effect, the owners become absentee landlords." The same is true whether one moves from a gated community to an inner-city neighborhood or vice versa, he explained. "In the interests of social justice, we're spreading the population around."
President Obama himself, Donovan added, will be moving from the White House to Chicago in three years, helping to increase the Windy City's African-American population by four, "assuming that Michelle and the kids are still with him then." (Reportedly, Michelle Obama has privately told friends, "I ain't goan back to Chicago, not after I seen D. C. I be the bettah half myself now, and I ain't gaon live like da other haff do. Once you had white, you neveah go back."
Data collected by the program, through wiretapping, satellite surveillance, and Internet espionage assets, would be used in conjunction with zoning laws, housing finance policy, infrastructure planning, and transportation to "mix races" to the level desirable to the federal government."Some places are 80 percent white and 20 percent 'other.' We'd like to reverse those statistics."
Critics contend that the policy will interfere with commercially zoned properties and turn "other cities into bankrupt disaster areas like Detroit, imposing unmanageable burdens on state and local governments, just as Obamacare will do."
B. Black's son, M. E. Black has a different, but equally passionate, concern about being bussed from South Central Los Angeles to Bel Air or Brentwood: "They ain't got no basketball courts in them neighborhoods, and there ain't no liquor stores or whorehouses. It be hard even to mug somebody who live behind them walls and gates."
The president--and Donovan--however, remain committed to the program and its policies. "Change a person's ZIP code," Obama said, "and you change his life."
