The Contra Costa County Clerk-Recorder’s office is about to start looking for official prejudice in county property records.
The county announced Wednesday the launch of its initiative “Mapping Prejudice in Contra Costa County,” a community-driven initiative to identify and map racially restrictive covenants, clauses inserted into local property records to keep people who weren’t white from owning or occupying property.
The county is embarking on the project in partnership with the Mapping Prejudice project, a research team based in the University of Minnesota that has worked with communities across the country on mapping since 2016.
The project will engage residents to identify and transcribe information necessary to put these now-illegal restrictions on a modern map.
The Contra Costa County project is a response to California Assembly Bill 1466 from 2021 mandating that county recorders develop a plan to identify and redact racially discriminatory covenants from all property records across the state.
The county said in a statement that the initiative will take a community-centered, educational approach to its goal. The clerk-recorder’s office has initially reviewed 9 million records, with thousands of them flagged for potentially restrictive language.
Racially based covenants were once commonly inserted into property deeds to exclude minority groups from owning or occupying certain properties or living in certain communities.
Although outlawed by the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the covenants remain embedded in some property records, promoting inequality and segregation today.
“Mapping Prejudice in Contra Costa County is about more than finding discriminatory language in old documents — it’s about community education and engagement,” county Clerk-Recorder and Registrar of Voters Kristin Connelly said in the statement.
“By confronting this hidden history, we can better understand its lasting impact on our neighborhoods. I have heard from residents who are bothered by this language in the official records for their homes and want it removed. There is a real learning opportunity for all our communities about this historical existence of these illegal covenants here in Contra Costa,” Connelly said.
Officials will train volunteers, who will access a digital portal to examine historical property records flagged by the research team at the University of Minnesota. For more information on Mapping Prejudice in Contra Costa County and to volunteer, go www.contracostavote.gov or email Volunteers@cr.cccounty.us.
Nice taxpayer handout to Mapping Prejudice project, a research team based in the University of Minnesota.
When can I expect, JUNK MAIL offers to start arriving ? ? ?
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More WOKE garbage ! ! !
Omg! Stop making white people to feel guilty by doing this stupid project.
It’s not about passing blame or guilt.
~~We are from World Socialist Government… and we’re sending representatives into your neighborhoods to inspect records, survey, and “help” you to be better World Citizens.
** Please note: We do not plan to Nail a White Star or anything like that to your door…….yet. We can now use digital records for that.
California just keeps on getting dumber and dumber
Mike Judge grew up in the Bay Area or at least worked here in Silicon Valley and saw how dumbed down people were getting and becoming ideologues.
So does this mean I will be able to buy property on Indian reservations now??? “sweet!”
😂🤣😂🤣🤣🤣😂
This is just pointless & a waste of tax payer money. “Documenting prejudice” sounds just as dumb typing as reading it…
… sounds like more DEI material …. wonder if Elon knows about it?
Always digging for something racial to feed the woke morons something to whine about. Ridiculous waste of time and money.
Am thinkin’ someone came up with a woke catch phrase
to cover actual goal. Documents scanned, software will read
them looking for those BAD WORDS and not actually data mining ?
.
An will some database retain all the digitized documents ?
An what protections will there be to prevent data from being stolen ?
.
Don’t democrat politicians in state legislature have better things to do, like,
trying to keep businesses and wealth folk (who who are job creators)
for leaving the state ?
.
72 years of experience has taught me, government
is seldom deserving of trusted.
.
All this effort only for BAD WORDS ? , . . . . . I THINK NOT
.
“We have the best government, that money can buy”
—Mark Twain
What did i say?The city of Martinez/county seat has flipped out because of the make up of their panel.This is pandering big time.This will solve what for who how?A fantasy is what this is and all it is.
Make no mistake, this is done specifically to facilitate your replacement.
I’d like a map of all the stupid, hateful people please.
Any format is fine, though mobile is preferable.
What is their definition of prejudice?
And the Democratic legislators just keep find new ways the spend money they don’t have. We are 100 billion dollars short on next year’s budget.
I wish I could run my household budget like this.
In May 3, 1948 the US Supreme Court released their decision on <a href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelley_v._Kraemer”><i>Shelley v. Kraemer</i></a> and said that racially restrictive housing covenants (deed restrictions) cannot legally be enforced.
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The property record for my Walnut Creek house has a Conditions, Covenants, and Restrictions section that used to include:
<blockquote><code>4. No persons except of the Caucasian Race shall be allowed to
use or occupy said property or any part thereof.
</code></blockquote>
From what I can tell, this restriction was removed in August 1948 by Mount Diablo Community Builders, a corporation. I’m guessing that Mount Diablo Community Builders was set up as a result of the <i>Shelley v. Kraemer</i> Supreme Court decision.
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Unfortunately, Google for “Mount Diablo Community Builders” only gets one hit which is https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/26564777/boxoffice-febuary211948
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It’s a scan of the February 1948 issue of a magazine for the movie/film industry. While the magazine was interesting to flip through I could not find where Mount Diablo Community Builders is mentioned.
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Google for ‘When were Caucasian only rules removed in California’ gets a number of interesting hits but also shows that people have been trying to clean up the property records for years.