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<p>Property and race: a few recollections.</p>
<p>1. When I was in Austin, Texas 1994-5, we had friends who lived
in a house built in the mid 1930s. There was a condition on
purchase of the house (lease? deeds?) that no-one of African
descent was allowed to be in the house during the night.
Ironically, as we are now understood to be all of African descent,
this should arguably have applied to all human beings.</p>
<p>2. As a student at Leeds University, UK, in the 1960s I remember
talking to two Kenyan postgraduates, one of whom was the novelist
James Ngugi, later Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o. They told me that on the day
after Kenya got independence from the British there were still
places in the centre of Nairobi that were open only to white
people. At that time it was still legal in the UK to bar people
from clubs and shops on the basis of colour; when students in
Leeds demonstrated against this they were attacked as vandals and
communists.</p>
<p>3. When Professor Eldred Jones from Sierra Leone, author of <i>Othello’s
Countrymen</i> (1965), came as visiting professor to Leeds, it
was extremely difficult to find accommodation for him because of
his colour.</p>
<p>So when people mock political correctness, they should be
reminded of what things were like a mere half century ago.<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Jeremy H</div>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 03.07.2020 16:01, Stuart N. Clarke
via Vwoolf wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:0FD050CE5D754D279381CF1C774D6944@StuartHP">
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<div>I hope I never said that there was “little difference
between leasing and owning except for legalities”, tho’ I
will say that a 999-year lease seems to me very close to
owning a freehold. (I am not alone in holding this
opinion.) And of course I was only talking about England
& Wales – not even Scotland – far less the US. (Perhaps
I should have been talking about Scotland – which I’m not
equipped to do – since the Ramsays’ house is in Skye!)</div>
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<div>The question I was raising was how better off you were if
you had a lease on a property as opposed to a rental
agreement. It’s impossible to answer unless you know the
individual terms of the leasehold v. the rental agreement.
Why did the Woolfs move from 52 Tavistock Sq to Mecklenburgh
Sq? Why, when they moved, were they still holding onto 52
TS? They were hamstrung by an expiring lease.</div>
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<div>(Oh, and I misspelt “peppercorn”.)</div>
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<div>After all, I *did* say that the British were obsessed
with *owning* property. Do I have to say also that it’s a
way of making money long-term?</div>
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<div>Stuart</div>
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