The Celebration Chronicles

by Andrew Ross, Ph. D.

  In public, Cummings had the profile and style of a health evangelist, and was fond of pithy maxims: “I want you to die as young as possible as old as you can,” or “I want you to go out like a light, and not a campfire.” He was seldom short of anecdotes about witnessing the power of rejuvenation: a ninety-one-year-old resident who had asked for a Fitness Center membership, or a seventy-year-old woman who wanted braces for her teeth because “lately she was being more social and wanted to look good.” Anecdotes were all very well, but TCC and hospital officials had come up with an actual plan for quantitatively testing improvements in the health of the community. A five-year research study, called Accelerating Community Transformation, funded by Astra Merck and run by the Health Care Forum, in San Francisco, was already under way. It would establish a database of indicators of health in the civic, physical, political, and spiritual aspects of the community. In addition to the greenfield site of Celebration, five other sites had been chosen for study: Bethel, Illinois, an inner-city neighborhood in Chicago; the small southern town of Aiken, South Carolina; the semi-desert city of San Bernadino, California; the metropolis of St. Louis, Missouri; and a four corners region of Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa. The goal of the study was to synthesize the six sets of data about community behavior into a software toolkit that clients around the country could use to measure and improve the overall health of their communities.

  The research study team collaborated with a group of forty stakeholders handpicked by Town Hall and the Foundation. The task of this panel was to come up with attributes of a healthy community based on their own experience of Celebration. As a result of their meetings, the panel reviewed how well the town was living up to the principles behind its planners’ five cornerstones—Health, Education, Place, Technology, and Community. It also diagnosed the problem issues that persistently came up around town: the high cost of living and housing, poor construction quality and quality assurance, bad retail mix, destructive internal criticism and rumors, lack of economic and ethnic diversity, media and outsider misperceptions, tourist crowding, and, of course, a panoply of issues relating to the school, including the problematic us-them divisions it had created among residents.

  For some members, the stakeholders panel was yet another level of scrutiny—albeit self-scrutiny—for a community that had already been studied, surveyed, and analyzed almost before it had a chance to breathe. Since I myself was a professional scrutineer, I cheerfully compared notes with some of the others: Maureen Kersmarki, Brian Crawford, and Ernie Claxton on the Astra Merck team, and Christine Herzog from the AT&T survey. Brent Herrington did his own surveys of community behavior, based on performance indicators approved by the Community Associations Institute. TCC collected data on residents (which they would not share with me), as did the various real estate groups in town. Academics and urban planners whizzed through town, pursuing their own analyses. At times, it also seemed as if half the population of Celebration were in on the act, appraising and assessing the growth of their own community at each step of the way. In passing encounters with residents I knew, I was often grilled about my own findings. How are we doing? It was more than community pride that drew residents to identify so strongly with the data gathering and critical inquiry of others like myself. Self-scrutiny was a heady narcotic in a town that had been designed to perform, above par if possible.

  Then there was my own competition. Another couple had moved to town to write a book about Celebration. I tried to extend myself socially, and suggested that we get together for dinner or a drink. After all, we were fellow writers living in the same small community. Their editor in New York, they said, had told them not to meet with me.

  SURE TRIED

  The draw for the Phase One lots in 1995 had attracted a crowd far exceeding the company’s expectations, but there was one big letdown. As Peter Rummell recalled: “I remember when we had the lottery for the first homes, people were camped out. One of our guys came back, reporting on the crowds, and he was shaking his head. There were five or six hundred people camping out and I think there was one black family in there. We were all disappointed. Sure tried.” Following the advice of James Rouse, who had worked hard to integrate Columbia in the 1960s (and who once served as a consultant for Walt’s ur-EPCOT), TCC had advertised in minority publications, and had produced promotional literature that portrayed families and students of color going about their business in town and at the school. The video shown in the Preview Center for prospective home buyers focused disproportionately on nonwhite residents. There was nothing the company would have liked more than to see a diverse population in Celebration. But it flourished as a largely white-bread town during the pioneer years, and was likely to remain so for the near future. This had not been a foregone conclusion. Central Florida has its share of middle-class minority families living in upscale suburban communities. But they were not choosing to come to Celebration. After two years, the town had attracted only one African American homeowning family, while three single women were living in rented apartments (two of whom moved away shortly after I left town). Dawn Thomas, Town Hall’s assistant community manager, and her son Eddie were full participants in the community, and were among the town’s most popular residents. So, too, was Dorothy Johnson, an ex-teacher and librarian, who was a drama and opera fan and a regular attendee of the Celebrators retiree group meetings.

  The third renter, Wanda Wade, a young teacher laid off in April, had virtually no involvement in the community: “This town’s too interesting for me,” she joked. She rarely went out at night, at least after she had been stopped and questioned by police on more than one occasion. “I don’t pass GO, I don’t collect two hundred dollars, I go straight home to my little house, and hole up.” Wade says she hates labels—“I tear labels off beer bottles after I buy them from the store”—but was quite clear about why the town’s aspirations might not be appealing to African Americans: “For a majority of us, this concept of perfection is not reality, it’s not a realistic outlook on life. We haven’t grown up like this, we haven’t had exposure to it, and we’re not comfortable with what’s not real. African American parents wouldn’t want to sugarcoat their kids’ perception of reality in this way.” Referring to the common sight, around town, of bicycles unfettered by lock or chain, she conceded that she had “never been in a neighborhood where people felt they could leave their bikes out in the front yard.”

  The only black homeowners, Bob and Mountrey Oliver, had built a solid brick Colonial Revival mansion at the top of Longmeadow. They had moved from Torrey Pines, an exclusive development in the Dr. Phillips area of Orlando, where there were several black families. From the look of the promotional literature, they had expected at least 30 percent minority population in Celebration, especially since the range of advertised housing prices was so broad. The Olivers, who moved partly because they did not want their children to grow up “too bourgeois,” faulted the media for portraying Celebration as all white, but reported what several of their black friends had said: “Why spend $300,000 for such a small lot?” Forgoing a larger lot, it was implied, was an extravagance that white folks could more readily “afford” to do. Materialism for the black middle class is harder to come by and thus more difficult to compromise. As for the Olivers themselves, they retained most of their friendships outside of the community, especially through their ties to their church in Orlando.

  They had almost been joined in the ranks of homeowners by Beulah Farquarson, a feisty, self-described “Harlem child,” who withdrew her children from the school and herself from the town after signing builders’ contracts. Farquarson, who sells time shares, had run twice for the school board (and once for county commissioner), and was collecting signatures for another bid, unsuccessful as it turned out. Described to me by another resident as a “negative black person,” Farquarson had little good to say about the reality of Celebration, although she praised some of the planning behind the town. When her children turned sour on the sc
hool (they “signed themselves out”), there was no reason to stay, especially in a town that lacked black residents. She blamed the inflated price points. “Black people aren’t stupid. Folks here are starving their behinds off just to pay their utility bills. We are not a cash-flow people. Once we’ve made it, we stay put in our mansions and don’t think about starting new communities. Besides, we aren’t interested in a ‘community.’ Black folks grow up in a ‘culture,’ and it’s a noisy one. Celebration’s downtown is noiseless. It’s a joke for us.” Since she moved down from New York City nine years before, Farquarson had become active in the Republican Party: “All my friends grew up on welfare, but I had a different attitude. I wanted more, so I didn’t need to be a Democrat.” In Osceola County, she had found the Dixiecrat good old boys to be much like the Republicans in the North, and felt more welcome in the GOP. In the school board election, she was planning to campaign against Mumey by exploiting his association with a school that she had no love for: “There’s no American flag, no dedication to country … and all of the teachers are gay, so there’s no sense of right or wrong at that school.”

  Celebration also had a sprinkling of South Asian physicians and a range of Hispanic residents—Cubans, Dominicans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and South Americans—but none of them (with the exception of MENSA kingpin Joseph Palacios) figured among the town’s most active citizenry or had forged a prominent role in the community. Minority students from Osceola County had a much more visible presence in and around town, and so it was the school, again, that provided the active ingredient of diversity in Celebration.

  In my interviews with the mostly white residents, I always asked why they thought the town had not attracted more minority residents and whether their relative absence was a source of concern. These interviews were informal conversations, lasting for ninety minutes or longer, and mostly took place in residents’ homes. I tried to ask the questions about race in a way that did not put anyone on the defensive, but they often did.

  A few retirees were clear examples of “white flight” from urban areas that they considered to have “declined.” For one couple from Miami, the “last straw” had been a DEA agent at their door asking to park a car in their driveway because he anticipated a shoot-out across the street—“This was not the ghetto,” they explained to me. “It was not Overtown, or Liberty City, it was a nice middle-class suburb, where Jackie Gleason lived.” “We are so happy to have been delivered,” they declared, adding, “We’re not racist, but some people are used to living at a lower level of life, and what can you do? You try to be a model and hope they will follow.” Other stories from elderly residents about Miami typically distinguished between the good exilio Cubans and the bad new immigrants, starting with the “social deadbeats and psychos” who came with the Mariel boatlift, as one prominent resident put it. “Florida’s public schools,” he continued, “teach to the bottom third of each class, and these are mostly the Hispanics. The rest are bored to tears as a result, and they are the ones with the talent.”

  Some residents’ perceptions of Osceola County were not exempt from that notorious white rule that divides the good minority from the bad one. One Celebration businessman spoke of the recent “Latin influx” in the county. “These are not Latins from Long Island, mind you, they are from south of the border and Puerto Rico.” Slighting “the Oriental families who own all the small hotels on 192,” he praised “the original Osceola County folks, the white folks; they are good people, who put down roots, they are hamischer people.” Despite the locution, he himself was not Jewish. Another woman, who was Jewish, observed that “Osceola is a low-rent county with too many ethnics—it’s basically a bedroom community for hotel domestics.” In the same vein, a resident with a Ph.D. commented that “comparing us to Osceola County is like comparing us to retarded children.” Route 192, running along Celebration’s property line, was perceived by one resident as “full of racial gang activity” that “we cannot let in here.” Apparently, these were the same gang activities that had determined him to move his family from their former home in Maryland’s Columbia (several Celebrationites had moved from Columbia). Another resident described that same town as an “LBJ Great Society–type experiment in integration” that had failed miserably.

  Younger nester parents, born after the civil rights era, were less likely to make bigoted comments, and many felt they had moved from communities riddled with prejudice to a town that was much more tolerant. Several regretted the lack of diversity here—“We need to be diluted”—and confessed to being embarrassed that there was “very little coloring in town.” For a small number, usually those who had a spouse with a Latin background or who were Jewish, diversity was an aspect of community life that did register on their scale of priorities. For the majority of white residents, it did not. Most felt “it was not natural” to identify others by skin color, and so it was not something to which they gave much thought. “We don’t really notice it.” Those who acknowledged that they did notice race, believed, however, that it was “not natural” to try to integrate communities. In general, it was assumed that integration had been “artificial” because it had been done “for show” and had not happened “naturally.” Diversity, as one put it, was “good for the right reasons, and bad for the wrong reasons.” A typical pattern of response was to acknowledge outright that race was “not an issue,” to be followed by some qualification that veered way off track into the subconscious hinterlands of white, propertied America.

  “I’m not prejudiced, though my parents were. I look at people as people. But I don’t like to hear people complaining about slavery and all that, or using their color as a crutch. Though I know what it’s like for them to feel left out. If I go out with my husband and his friends and they talk about football, I feel left out.”

  “We don’t really notice the color issue, but let me tell you, we resent people hanging clothes over the balcony, and that can happen in fancy homes too, but luckily it doesn’t happen in Celebration.”

  “I don’t look at people as colored one way or another, and I don’t think it’s natural to do social engineering. You can’t mandate an idea. Bussing screwed up in most cases. But you shouldn’t have to be stepping over homeless people in order to feel like you live in the real world.”

  “90 percent of us wouldn’t mind. I don’t know what Arabs or Hispanics or Blacks want, but they’re welcome to live next to me. Here Christian, Jewish, and Muslim kids play together. Besides, the black people have progressed so quickly. I may have set them apart at one time, but since 1970 or so, they are like us.”

  “I don’t care myself, although this is a white ghetto. I would welcome more diversity as long as it doesn’t drive the prices down.”

  “We don’t like the fact that this town is so unbelievably white, but we don’t lie awake at night thinking about it. People are not willing to move out of their own culture just to experience other cultures.”

  “It’s just not an issue for us. We don’t see it in terms of minority this or that. We’re from Miami.”

  For the most part, white Celebrationites were politely stumped when asked why the town had not attracted more minorities, but there were several theories offered. The architecture of the town, some of it directly evoking plantation houses, was perceived to convey the feel of an all-white community of yore and might be off-putting to nonwhites. Disney, some said, was also considered the essence of white-bread family values and not very inclusive in its approach to the marketplace or to its own corporate culture. The theory of black middle-class materialism was echoed by at least one other resident: “Blacks are smarter with their money, they work hard for it, they want a big lot, and a good-sized shelter, and don’t want to plop down $300,000 for something that’s so … small.” Other views aimed at being more sociologically acute:

  “Members of ethnic groups don’t often move freely from state to state because of their close-knit families and communities.”

  “Minorit
ies lose more of themselves than they gain when they move to places like this. They give up a lot of their own culture.”

  “African Americans don’t go out of their way to invite risks. This is a test community, and they already have enough tests in their lives. Their culture is less receptive to change or risk.”

  Black tourists sometimes commented, when I asked them, that the town seemed a little “scary,” but this was a common observation on the part of many first-time visitors, of whatever racial background. Whatever distillation of “white fear” resided among townsfolk was strangely reflected by a “fear of Celebration” evinced by outsiders. But fear, I concluded, is not the signature mark of whiteness in Celebration. Indeed, liberal guilt about the community’s demographics is widespread enough among residents to generate a veneer of regret. Instead, I found that the key to whiteness lay in the many comments I heard about the invisibility of race: it’s “not natural” to view people in terms of their skin color. In truth, nothing has ever been natural when it comes to race in America. What seems natural at any time and in any place usually corresponds to what white folks feel comfortable with seeing. At the end of the century, whites seem increasingly comforted by the notion that race is becoming invisible, once again. It had been so, for different reasons, before the ferment of the civil rights era, when minorities had simply been eclipsed from the public eye. Recently, the force of conservative opinion that a “level playing field” has been achieved for all races has prepared the way for a new kind of colorblindness. Today, white people are often at their most white when they believe that consciousness of race is not natural. In many ways, it is a belief that most defines us as white. Seventy years ago, what united whites was the perception that their racial designation was an outcome of biological nature, in the same degree as, but superior to, other ancestral groups. It is much less acceptable now to believe that biology is responsible for the differences between people. But white-skin privilege abides and goes unexamined when it’s no longer “natural” to think about someone’s racial background and is perceived to be racist to do so. As Malcolm X pointed out, “racism is like a Cadillac. There’s a new model every year.”