Time March 2–9, 2020INEQUALITY| EDUCATION
with its cool restaurants and shops.”
The correct answer was “sordid.” Bur-
ton’s heart sank. That’s how they saw Ben-
ton Harbor, her community, her people.
Her. Sordid. She told her parents, who com-
plained, but the Lakeshore community
rallied around the teacher, forming a
Facebook group where people posted
threats and insults against the teenager.
She finished high school under a cloud
and left. She enrolled in Western Michi-
gan University, where she graduated with
a degree in film, video and media studies
and a minor in nonprofit management.
Benton Harbor continued to strug-
gle. When the manufacturers shut down,
they left behind acres of polluted indus-
trial wasteland around the river between
the two cities. In the 2000s, civic leaders
hatched a plan for that land: an elaborate
golf course, complete with million- dollar
houses and a luxury hotel. The decision
was met with enthusiasm by Whirlpool
executives and wealthy Chicagoans who
owned summer homes near the beach in
St. Joseph. To give golfers views of Lake
Michigan, the development took over
most of a park that had been bequeathed
in perpetuity to the children of Benton
Harbor “and at all times shall be open
for the use and benefit of the public.”
Annual course memberships cost more
than $3,000.
As plans got under way, the develop-
ers saw an opportunity. Some of the land
they wanted to develop was in St. Joseph.
But Benton Harbor’s acute economic dis-
tress made it eligible for state tax credits
that its richer neighbor could not access.
So they temporarily altered the border be-
tween the towns, a line that is in all other
ways impermeable. The St. Joseph land
became part of Benton Harbor, making
the development eligible for credits. The
school-district lines remained the same.
Property taxes from the luxury homes
on the transferred land won’t be used to
fix Benton Harbor High. Instead, the
money will finance roads and other im-
provements around the golf-course devel-
opment, until 2025, when the land will
revert back to St. Joseph. Benton Har-
bor voters recently passed an income tax
on people who live and work in the city.
The residents of luxury golf homes inside
the transferred parcel sued, saying they
shouldn’t have to pay.
The land-transfer scheme was first
written about by Louise Seamster, a so-
ciologist at the University of Iowa whose
doctoral thesis focused on the two cities.
She calls the process by which wealthy
white communities systematically appro-
priate the resources of cities like Benton
Harbor an “extraction machine.”
Jeff Noel, a spokesperson for Whirl-
pool, defended the development, argu-
ing it brought hundreds of new homes to
Benton Harbor, “ranging from affordable
homes to over $1.5 million in value.” He
added that the community donates more
than $14 million every year, of which over
60% comes from Whirlpool and its em-
ployees, to United Way, community col-
lege, local schools, Boys & Girls Clubs and
economic-development efforts. Whirl-
pool, which received a $3.8 million prop-
erty tax abatement on its new corporate
headquarters in Benton Harbor, made
more than $1 billion in profits last year.
Reedell Holmes, the principal of Ben-
ton Harbor High, feels the inequity more
sharply than most. He grew up in a fam-
ily of 10 in Mississippi. His father earned
$65 a week. White men on the same jobgot $250. New school supplies, he recalls,
went to the white school in the county,
while worn-out books were handed down
to the black school. His whole working
life he’s borne witness to a kind of trickle-
down inequality. “I struggled when I was
in high school,” he says. “When it comes
to funding, it was not there.”
Now Holmes is near the end of his ca-
reer, in a school that almost nobody seems
to believe in. “The field has not leveled,”
he says. “That struggle is still there.” But
at least a handful of Benton Harbor kids
weren’t willing to give up.WHen traci Burton graduated from
college in 2016, she could have gone
anywhere, but only one destination felt
right: home. She returned to Benton Har-
bor, worked for the Boys & Girls Club be-
cause they had helped her when she was
younger, then started teaching.
By January of last year, Burton could
feel the forces of criticism bearing down
on her hometown’s schools. The district
had rock-bottom test scores and chronic
financial woes. But people still had prideBENTON HARBOR The small city of 10,000 is predominantly
black, and its schools are in debt