Private Property - Keep Out
Anyone see these maniacs over the weekend?
I’ve been calling them Ken and Karen Kommando but lots of other options exist. There’s been a ton of memes featuring them. Here’s a quick rundown.
Apparently, they are some kind of personal injury lawyers. Ironic, no? The people who have made what seems to be a very fine living off holding other people accountable for their reckless and harmful actions are… being very reckless and harmful. Love to see it.
I’m not really interested in these two specific white people though. They are ridiculous, for sure, but their actions are only a small symptom of what I really want to get into: private communities.
There are a couple of different kinds. Some places, like the town that neighbors mine, North Oaks, MN, are completely private. Meaning the ENTIRE TOWN is private property. The residents own everything, including the streets and sidewalks. Other private communities are gated parcels of land that exist within a given city. For simplicity, I am going to talk about them generally, but just know that I am aware some things may not apply to all circumstances.
If you know me, then you know how much I hate North Oaks. I cannot think of anything more un-American than creating a private town. This is not about whether they have the RIGHT to make a town that’s entire purpose is to exclude other people but whether or not it is moral and ethical to do so. By the way, North Oaks is 94% white. Want to guess how many black people live there? They make up .4% of their population, meaning there’s about 20 people who identify as black in a town of well over four thousand people. DIVERSITY.
As you can see, we have stumbled upon the first major issue with private communities. They are racist as fuck. There is an incredible cost to living in a private community and when you have a wealth gap as big as the one in the United States then automatically you are excluding a number of racial demographics. Whitey, the right kind of whitey anyways, will always be able to get in. But it will take an exceptional black or Asian to gain the same access. This is as much a byproduct of our system of racial oppression and white supremacy as anything, but nonetheless, it is relevant here as well. It is also by design. Do you think the first private communities were Blacks Only? Ha. No, whitey created a gated world for them to live in but they’re very different than the private communities we’re talking about here.
All you need to do is follow through with the thinking behind private communities to discover their real purpose. What was the driving force behind these kinds of places in America? They have been around since the age of Ancient Greece, albeit in different configurations. Why so popular in America now? There was a massive explosion in the early 80s of gated communities. This just so happened to coincide with white flight from cities. I wonder if they’re connected in any way? Hmmmm.
“OK, Matt. I see how they COULD be exclusionary, but can’t that be said about all expensive real estate? Aren’t disadvantaged people prevented from buying an expensive house anywhere, regardless of whether or not it’s a private community?”
An excellent point. We know real estate is racist. It has been since the beginning. It’s why black citizens live in ghettos and whites live in cozy suburbs. What makes private communities any worse than real estate everywhere? Because even if a poor black person couldn’t afford to live in a fancy house in a city, as long as they could still live WITHIN the city, they would have access to all the same amenities and community resources as everyone else. In other words, the rich folks in town would be incentivized to make sure everything within the town/city is good and functional because they have to utilize the same schools, roads, sidewalks, trails, policing, etc. The poor folks would still have access to the broad, upper-class tax base that provides a lot of those services. Hey look, the second major issue with private communities.
The privatization of spaces that were once public has a ripple effect throughout an entire community. Sidewalks, libraries, schools, parks — all of these places are essential to a vibrant, healthy, civic-minded community. As they become privatized, more and more people, the very people who need them most, are denied access. Rich white kids will always go to private schools. They will have country clubs and ski mountains to play on. They are in no danger of being denied anything. Poor kids, on the other hand, are the exact people who could benefit from all the help afforded in private communities. The rich don’t just get richer. The poor get poorer. That’s how it all works.
So once an area within a city decides, hey, we’ll take care of the roads and the sewers and the trash and all that, in exchange for being a private bubble, what happens to everyone else? The tax base shrinks and the people who have the most influence are walled off from everyone else. They’re now incentivized to be as selfish as possible. After all, they are footing the bill for it. Why shouldn’t as much as possible return to them? Well, play that cycle out a few generations and you’ll see why. As gated areas continue to gain wealth, increase in value (from limited opportunities to move inside them), and retain more and more of their tax money, anyone excluded from those walls will suffer needlessly. This is good?
There is also an opportunity cost associated with private communities that’s invisible. Back when these areas were being created, who was able to get in on the ground floor? Almost exclusively wealthy white people. You don’t really think that during an era of redlining that expensive gated communities were looking to help out minorities? LOL. Nope. And if you missed out on the early stages it became harder and harder to join in. Imagine when plots are first being sold, say 10 in total (small numbers to keep it simple), that several are bought by young-ish families. They will likely be living there for decades. At the beginning, there were ten spaces available. But once those are gone, now it becomes a waiting game. Maybe one property goes for sale each year and because there is a high demand and low supply, the numbers are insane. What cost $100k when there were ten now costs three to four times that. Maybe more.
Plain and simple, it’s wealth hoarding. It is white people ensuring that their white children will have the MOST. It is white people saying that they do not want to live with everyone else. They do not want to cast their lots with us. They want their own thing, separate from the rest of us. This is not to say the individuals living within these places are racist in the classic sense. They might be (OK, they probably are). But they are not helping the situation and are actively making the gap between families within the SAME COMMUNITY even bigger.
What is it about us that they don’t like?
We’re good enough for them to employ. We’re good enough to cut their grass, clean their bathrooms, and wash their cars. We can answer their phones, manage their calendars, cook their food, and care for their children. We educate them, nurse them when they’re sick, and fix their homes. They don’t mind us when we’re increasing their wealth and maintaining their property. But when it comes to living with us, that most sacred of places in America, we are no longer acceptable. They will not share their tennis courts with us. They will not swim with us. They will not bike with us or allow our children to sell cookies door to door. No. That space is reserved for them and their white children. Others, need not apply. There are literal security booths at every entrance to ensure that nobody unwanted gets in.
This is American? This sounds more like 18th century France, to be honest. The rich gentry have their palatial homes in the country while all the poors struggle and die in the streets. In fact (and I wish I could find the article from the local paper about this but I think they went out of business) there was a story not long ago about the private town next to mine. They were building a new Public Works building at the backend of their property. Residents complained about all the truck traffic and noise so the town built an access point and diverted all the traffic INTO OUR TOWN. It caused a 2-mile detour but hey, at least THEY didn’t have to deal with the noise. Just us. Talk about elite. They can’t even be bothered to suffer through noise for their rich community. Instead, they would prefer that we deal with it. Actually, they think it’s our lot in life to make theirs easier.
It isn’t that they hate us. It just that they would prefer we not exist beyond our usefulness to their wealth.
Which brings us full circle and back to Ken and Karen Kommando. These are people who claim to “support” Black Lives Matter. How they can do that from their mansions (yes, they own more than one) is beyond me. Talk about not getting the message. Wealth hoarders supporting a movement that demands financial equity. Goddamned rich white people, always making us look oblivious, which they are. Take a look at this exchange from an interview with the couple:
Welcome to the hysteria that White Seclusion creates. These people imagined a broken gate (it was fine at the time and only damaged after the fact), they imagined a violent mob, they imagined their lives were in danger. Did any other houses on that street get looted? Did any other residents get injured? On what evidence was this couple basing their fears upon? None whatsoever. They saw a group of diverse protesters entering a space that they did not think they belonged in and reacted. They made no attempt to engage with them. Their first thought, the same for many white folks, was to get the guns. Their imagined threat was converted into a real one because of their racial fears. They had no idea that they were the ones posing the biggest danger as they recklessly waved guns at unarmed strangers.
The unspoken question that remains is what drove white people to think they needed the gates in the first place? Who are they trying to keep out? And why do they react so violently, so absurdly, to their private spaces being utilized by others?
Wealthy white people may like to separate themselves from us, but just so we are clear, it is an illusion. They only have their private spaces because WE consent to their existence. As a people, we could easily outlaw gated communities and force the rich elites to live in the slop with the rest of us. Because of some shared cultural delusion held by lower-class whites, there is a belief that someday, if we’re good, we might be able to join them. This is partially why we don’t tax wealthy people at appropriate levels. As long as that delusion persists, we will continue to have spaces only for the “haves”.
Private communities are a gross extension of white supremacy. They should have their gates struck down, their resources redistributed, and their citizens forced to live with the rest of us unwashed masses. Don’t worry though. This is still America. They can keep their guns.