Racist covenants still exist

Judy L. Thomas and Gregory S. Reeves of The Kansas City Star studied homeowner association rules in the Kansas City area, finding that "more than 1,200 documents involving thousands of homes still contain racist language banning blacks, Jews and other ethnic groups. For the first half of the 20th century, racially restrictive covenants were routinely recorded in plats and deeds and placed in many homeowner's association documents not only here, but nationwide. Yet many of the covenants never were removed, even after being ruled unenforceable by the U.S. Supreme Court as long ago as 1948 and banned by the Fair Housing Act of 1968. And their vestiges of discrimination - a kind of 'curse of the covenant' - still linger locally."