Berkeley Discriminates

On April 2, the citizens of the campus community of Berkeley, California narrowly defeated a hotly-contested “Fair Housing Ordinance” that would have made illegal any refusal to rent or sell dwelling units for reasons of race, color, religion or national origin. To enforce it, a controversial, broadly-empowered Board was to be appointed. The ordinance was originally enacted by the city council, but a petition forced it into a referendum, and the deep political passions it stirred up eventually brought a record 83 per cent of the voters of Berkeley to the polls.

In retrospect, it is amazing that the law came as close as it did to passing. It was more than a bad law: it was a radical departure from established legal practice. It came so close because many people mistakenly presumed ittobean expression of high moral principle, while opposition to it was denounced as either legalistic or implicitly racist.

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Richard S. Wheeler

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On April 2, the citizens of the campus community of Berkeley, California narrowly defeated a hotly-contested “Fair Housing Ordinance” that would have made illegal any refusal to rent or sell dwelling units for reasons of race, color, religion or national origin. To enforce it, a controversial, broadly-empowered Board was to be appointed. The ordinance was originally enacted by the city council, but a petition forced it into a referendum, and the deep political passions it stirred up eventually brought a record 83 per cent of the voters of Berkeley to the polls.

In retrospect, it is amazing that the law came as close as it did to passing. It was more than a bad law: it was a radical departure from established legal practice. It came so close because many people mistakenly presumed ittobean expression of high moral principle, while opposition to it was denounced as either legalistic or implicitly racist.