In today’s episode of Isn’t It Ironic: Caucasity Edition, a white woman is suing a white nationalist group that created an all-white community in Arkansas because, according to her, she applied for residency in that community but was rejected due to her Jewish roots, Black husband, and biracial children.
Meet Michelle Walker.
Walker is white, a Christian, a real estate broker, and hopping mad that the Return to the Land organization rejected her application because it “is explicitly attempting to establish an all-white community,” according to the federal discrimination lawsuit she filed against the organizers of this Caucasian-exclusive enclave in rural Arkansas.
“Its founders believe that white people are genetically superior to other races, advance the view that Jewish people are engaged in a plot to eliminate the white race, and advocate for segregated white communities for the purpose of creating a separate all-white nation state that will help avoid ‘white genocide,’” her complaint says, according to NBC News.
Walker’s attorney, Reed Colfax, posted a statement on the Legal Defense Fund website, saying, “Return to the Land’s actions constitute blatant and brazen violations of long-standing federal and state fair housing laws.”
“Ms. Walker has been deprived of her housing and civil rights, including the right to purchase land and build housing,” Colfax added.
OK, first, I’m a little confused about what’s going on here. Did Walker not know the community she was applying to join was an exclusive Klan-topia of whites and whites only? Because this all-white enclave was a pretty big story last year. Did she do no research at all before deciding to try to move her Black-ass family there? Did she think she was just going to be strolling through downtown Whitelandia on a Black man’s arm with her biracial children in tow, and it would all just be fine?
My first guess was that she knew what she was applying for, and that she applied anyway, knowing she would be rejected, so that she could file the lawsuit in protest. But that does not appear to be the case.
From NBC:
Walker, a real estate broker in and around St. Louis, Missouri, said in the complaint that she learned last summer that the group was selling land in the Ozarks, “an area where she occasionally vacationed.” She was drawn to the listing partly because the asking price was unusually low, and she decided to apply, citing both the investment potential and other possibilities the land offered.
During the application process, Walker said, she encountered “a series of questions about her ancestry and religion.” She disclosed that her father’s family had arrived in the U.S. in the 1600s and that her mother’s family were Russian Jewish immigrants. She noted that her husband is of Irish and African descent and that her children shared their parents’ mixed racial heritage.
In response to a question about her religion, Walker stated flatly: “I am a Christian. I believe Jesus died for my sins and through believing in him, I will have a heavenly eternal life.”
In the complaint, Walker said she “was surprised to see the ancestry and religion questions on the application, which she understood as clearly violating federal and state fair housing laws prohibiting consideration of race and religion in a land-sale decision.”
Walker said she recognized the ancestry and religion questions as apparent violations of federal and state fair housing laws, but completed the application anyway, hoping the organization would ultimately comply with the law. She was later interviewed by a Return to the Land member who asked whether she belonged to “any other white nationalist organizations.”
After a month passed without a word, Walker called the Return to the Land and was told she “should not expect her application to be approved.”
I mean, the application process alone revealed enough red flags to stitch together a mile-long Confederate banner. Walker couldn’t tell if she was applying for housing or filling out a Plenty of Aryan Fish dating profile—and she’s checking back to see if she’s been approved?
Clearly, she couldn’t have been consulting her Black husband about any of this, right? Imagine her filling out the application and getting stuck on a few inquiries, so she asks hubby, “Hon, are we a part of any other white nationalist organizations?”
But you know who I really want to hear from about all of this? The Trump administration.
After all, this is the administration that has solicited white men and white men only to come forward with their reverse-Jim Crow discrimination claims, launched an investigation into Nike over anti-white discrimination claims nobody actually made, tried to join a lawsuit against a Los Angeles school district because white plaintiffs were claiming anti-white discrimination, sued the New York Times for having too many Black and Latino employees, and and sued Coca-Cola for anti-male discrimination because it scheduled a women’s retreat. Surely, this administration, in its efforts to stamp out all racial discrimination everywhere, will get its Justice Department fired up and ready to get in on the legal action in Walker’s case, too, right?
Nah, but seriously—we are living on the most absurd timeline right now. But, whatever, good luck with the lawsuit, clearly confused white lady. Hope it all works out.
