Independence Day
This past week-end America celebrated the Fourth of July. Fireworks, cook-outs, patriotic songs, plus a day off from work; what could be better? As I contemplate the years I have been in the real estate business, it’s clear to me that the truths embodied in the Constitution, albeit somewhat inadvertently, are gradually penetrating the mainstream, at least here in New York. During my career, we have sold property to African-American families, to Irish and Italian families, to Chinese, Japanese, and South Koreans, to Indians, to South Americans, to gay couples and straight couples and single people. In this environment, it’s easy to forget both how far we have come and how far there is to go.
New York City has some of the toughest anti-discrimination laws in the country. While the interpretations of some of these laws can be a bit silly (I think in particular of the embargo against the use of the word “family” in advertising as it might be construed as discriminatory to people who want big apartments but don’t have families!) it is always important to remember the environment from which they sprung. These laws were created in response to serious and systematic housing prejudice. Landlords still instruct agents NOT to rent to certain age groups or ethnicities (although like most agents, we will not work with such landlords). Co-op Boards regularly make decisions based in whole or in part on these prohibited categories. (They often believe they are exempt from the Fair Housing laws as private corporations. They are not!) And it’s only in recent years that gay or interracial couples have both been allowed to purchase or rent a home together.
Over the nearly two-and-a-half centuries during which the United States have existed together as a country, we have welcomed successive waves of immigrants to our shores. One after another, they have been confronted with xenophobia and prejudice, and one after another they have become part of the fabric which has made our country so extraordinary. The Chinese who originally came here to build the railroads. The Italians and the Irish, driven here by famine or lack of opportunity, both of which groups struggled for many decades against ethnic and Catholic prejudice from the established Protestant families. The Jews, seen by many (still!) as manipulating the world’s banking systems from behind the scenes – no one seems to remember now that the Jews became moneylenders because they were not permitted to own land! And of course, most shamefully, the Japanese, interned in prison camps during World War II in their own adopted country.
Today, if you look at the leaders of our most significant industries: technology, finance, manufacturing, sports – the names at the top represent the whole rainbow. Each one of the groups mentioned above, and members of many others, has come here and made America both their own and better than it was before they arrived. There is far less prejudice today than when I was a child, and I see even less in my own children. Hopefully, for THEIR children, it will be barely a memory.
I am proud, as I have always been, to lead a firm which does not and will not traffic in any sort of prejudice or exclusion. Our goal, always, is to rent or sell a qualified client whatever they want. One hears a lot of talk in this election cycle about dangerous groups who should not be permitted access to this country. We have heard it before: anarchists, Communists, almost all the groups detailed above. It will pass. In the meantime, Warburg remains committed to serving everyone, regardless of where they were born, or to whom, or under what circumstances. That’s way of honoring the inalienable, self-evident truths of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.