Exclusions
Image generated by ChatGPT
Aug. 22, 2025
I’m trying to figure out what broke inside me when I read this piece about a couple of dudes who are creating a community in the Ozarks where they will permit only verified white people to buy property.
The community’s two architects — a classically trained French horn player who has livestreamed his own sex videos, and a former jazz pianist arrested but not charged for attempted murder in Ecuador — say they must personally confirm that applicants are white before they can be welcomed in.
As do many in the White Supremacist world, these two men are convinced that immigration is at the root of the problem. One of these men proclaimed: “If we never had mass immigration, if we were still a homogeneous nation, we would not feel as much of a need to form communities like this.”
Sigh. This profound lack of knowledge of the history of this land and the fact that the real “mass immigrants” are white people from Northern Europe, many extremely desperate, who brought about the destruction and often wholesale slaughter of the real residents who had made their lives here for thousands of years.
This kind of ignorance, very much infiltrating the highest levels of our government today, makes me want to weep.
But even as I write, I know how very hard it is to live in a multi-cultural world, one that pushes us to embrace other ways of thinking, other family forms, other customs radically different from our own.
Liberalism is a luxury for the privileged few
Frankly, that kind of liberalism is a luxury available only to a privileged few. For good reasons, it is far safer to be conservative, to assume that our ways of living are right and everyone else is wrong, to build high walls to protect against anything that might challenge our thinking patterns or way of living.
I am excruciatingly aware of the privilege I enjoy which allows me to find the energy to think about these things. I live in a gated community, governed by an active HOA. Security personnel try to ensure that non-residents entering our hallowed streets have been properly vetted, ideally each armed with a QR code verifying that a resident has given permission for entrance.
Rules abound, each intended to promote both the safety of those within and also to enforce a certain level of conformity in this enclave. Most exterior modifications must be approved before they can begin, including the removal of large trees, even diseased ones near the end of their life. Landscaping must meet specific standards; trash cans must be carefully hidden except for a few hours on collection day. Ideally, cars are to be driven, but not seen. All motor vehicles are supposed to be housed in garages when not in active use.
And yes, most of us come from the kind of ancestry that the two men described in the article would approve of—nice and white.
Voting records indicate that this is a primarily Republican neighborhood, looking approvingly upon the interrogation, arrest, internment in places terribly reminiscent of concentration camps and deportation of those with skin of a different color and who speak different langauges, despite the fact that it is of those who keep our common grounds carefully groomed, clean our houses, nanny the children, and make up much of the labor behind the carefully-vetted architectural modifications.
Restricted
image generated by ChatGPT
We shop at grocery stores with shelves piled high with luscious fresh fruits and vegetables, exquisite meats, varieties of freshly baked goods, cheeses from around the world, and multiple pre-prepared meals, all touched by the labor of non-white people, many undocumented. If we can’t be troubled to cook, we eat out at one of the hundreds of nearby restaurants, blissfully unaware that without the labor of those same undocumented, desperate, poorly-treated and underpaid immigrants, none of these would be possible.
Our closets bulge with designer bags, shoes, and clothes. Our bodies drip with jewelry, all made possible by the very ones we despise because they are not like us.
But we are safe. We don’t have to think hard about it. And the pursuit of safety is a basic need for all creatures and must not be discounted.
Anything that uses non-white labor? Out it goes.
And so I circle back to those two men who want their all white, fully safe community. Personally, I say, “forget the legal challenges and let them.” However, deny them any service of any kind that uses the labor of non-white people.
That would eliminate all grocery/clothing/appliance/home repair stores. Residents of this exclusive community must never avail themselves of government services of any kind, including public roads, law enforcement personnel and fire protection. Electricity/gas must be banned if even one non-white person is involved anywhere in its creation or dissemination. No mail-order services of any kind can be allowed.
No books, no smartphones, no Internet services, no newspapers. No fabrics to make their own clothes, or fertilizer to help them grow food. No commercially produced seed. No lumber or nails or hammers. No labor-saving equipment of any kind. No medical care or any medications.
One more thing: no practice of Christianity, or anything related to the Bible, may be permitted—Jesus was anything but a white European, the Bible was not written in a context of whites-only, and nothing from Jesus’ life or teachings would be acceptable.
Yes, let them live in their lily-white world and see how they do. As for the rest of us, it might do us all some good to recognize that without immigrant labor, and much of it will remain undocumented until we finally fix our broken immigration system, we may as well turn off our own lights and quit eating as well.
Christy Thomas
Courtesy Photo
The Rev. Dr. Christy Thomas is a retired clergy member of the former North Texas Annual Conference, now Horizon Texas, of the United Methodist Church. This post is republished with permission from her Substack blog, "Pondering Life, Old Age and a Crazy World."