We are told segregation ended. The signs came down, the fountains were shared, the laws were rewritten. But segregation did not end—it evolved. It put on a suit, crept into zoning ordinances, disguised itself in environmental reviews, and polished its face with neighborhood covenants. The violence is bureaucratic now. The cruelty is hidden in civility.

This is blindfold altruism: compassion performed at a distance. Affluent neighborhoods hang banners, vote for bonds, write checks to charities—so long as the solution remains invisible. They will pay for shelters, but not live beside them. They will endorse “affordable housing,” but only if it rises elsewhere. They will pay their bourgeois HOA tax of philanthropy to keep their streets pristine while poverty is displaced.

Affluent white America has decided not only how much the people who make them wealthy are worth, but also where they are allowed to exist. Labor is welcome; presence is not. The janitor may clean their offices, the cook may serve their meals, the driver may deliver their packages—but none of them are invited to be neighbors. Their value ends the moment their work is done.

NIMBYism is not a quirk. It is the designed offspring of systemic disempowerment. It grants the powerful the right to say no while denying the powerless any voice at all. Every luxury condo preserved means another neighborhood burdened. Every “pretty street” defended means another community condemned to ugliness, pollution, and neglect.

This system congratulates itself for “good governance.” It cloaks segregation in the glamour of policy: “neighborhood character,” “historic preservation,” “environmental review.” But these are not shields of progress—they are weapons of displacement. Problems are not solved, they are moved. Misery is not alleviated, it is hidden.

And the irony is grotesque. In Portland’s Pearl District, an entitled hand scrawled “No Shelter” on the wall of a refuge-to-be. Graffiti—the art of the erased—was repurposed as the art of erasure. Bad graffiti, bad faith, bad politics. Even rebellion was reduced to aesthetic litter in the service of exclusion.

The devil is not in the details—the devil is the details. Jim Crow announced itself with a sign on a fountain. Today’s segregation hides in spreadsheets and lawsuits. That makes it harder to name, harder to fight, and far more insidious.

We reject blindfold altruism. We reject displacement disguised as compassion. We refuse to let suffering be shuffled out of sight so affluence can sleep at night. We demand that the burdens be shared where the wealth is. We demand visibility, not erasure.

Segregation has dressed itself up as progress. But we see the seams. And we will tear them out.