“When a town gets below 50 percent white, it makes it very difficult for the town to maintain services.”
When Angela Freeman moved to Pennsauken in the mid-1980s, she wasamong a wave of black teachers hired to reflect the township’s changingracial demographics.
The idea was that African American educators could better relate tothe small but growing number of black students at the high school.Freeman felt welcome enough, but she noticed that any discussion ofrace was conducted in code, with teachers and administrators avoidingwords like black and white.
It was always “the school is changing,” Freeman said. “One day I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and there was silence. But I knew what they meant.”
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In 1980, white residents accounted for 91 percent of Pennsauken’spopulation. By 2000, 60 percent of the town’s 36,000 residents werewhite. In those 20 years, there had been a doubling of minorityresidents, drawn by the same relatively low property taxes andproximity to Philadelphia that had attracted families for decades.
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In 2001, the township created a commission on integration, phasedout NEP, and committed public money to billboards and other effortsdesigned to market Pennsauken’s diversity to white families looking foran alternative to more homogenous suburbs.
“People were asking why I, a black man, wanted more white peopleliving here. It wasn’t an easy sell,” said Adams, 50, a real estateassessor. “We were coming at it from a practical standpoint.”
According to studies, he said, the market value of homes tends todecline as more minorities move into a neighborhood. That translatesinto lower revenue from property taxes.
“When a town gets below 50 percent white, it makes it very difficult for the town to maintain services,” Adams said.