NOT IN MY BACKYARD: THE ROAD TO HOUSING DESEGREGATION IN YONKERS, NEW YORK, FROM LISA BELKIN’S SHOW ME A HERO TO ITS ADAPTATION FOR TELEVISION
NOT IN MY BACKYARD: THE ROAD TO HOUSING DESEGREGATION IN YONKERS, NEW YORK, FROM LISA BELKIN’S SHOW ME A HERO TO ITS ADAPTATION FOR TELEVISION

Summary/Abstract: Almost twenty years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968,whose goal was to prevent housing discrimination based on race, color, religion,gender or national origin, the city of Yonkers, New York occupied central stage in alandmark civil-rights suit (1983). In it, City officials were accused of havingintentionally followed a systematic pattern of selecting sites for subsidized housingprojects that perpetuated racial segregation. My paper discusses the manner inwhich the ensuing battle to desegregate Yonkers was portrayed in Show Me a Hero:A Tale of Murder, Suicide, Race, and Redemption (1999), the nonfiction narrative byformer New York Times writer Lisa Belkin, as well as in its subsequent adaptation toscreen in a six-part HBO miniseries by the same name (2015). It seeks to reveal thedysfunctional politics of urban America in a city paralyzed by fear, corruption, andracial ignorance, which was nonetheless to become the birth place of scattered-sitelow-income and affordable housing.

• Details
• Contents