The Savage Republican

"Like many towns across America, the exclusive lakefront community where Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. grew up during the racially turbulent 1960s and '70s once banned the sale of homes to nonwhites and Jews. "

"Just three miles from the nearly all-white community of Long Beach, two days of looting and vandalism erupted when Roberts was 15, barely intruding on the Mayberry-like community that was largely insulated from the racial strife of that era."

Mayberry like community????? I grew up in the Chicago area and this part of Indiana is hardly rural South Carolina.

"It was here that the 50-year-old Roberts lived from elementary school until he went away to Harvard in 1973, and that decade — as well as the rest of his life — is receiving intense scrutiny as the Senate gears up for its Sept. 6 confirmation hearings on President Bush' s first Supreme Court nominee.

Roberts' criticism of racial "quotas" in some documents from his work as a White House lawyer has alarmed civil rights groups and some Democrats, who say he may be a partisan for conservative causes. Other memos from his time in the Reagan Justice Department portray an attorney who urged his bosses to restrict affirmative action and Title IX sex discrimination lawsuits.

It is hard to know how much Roberts' upbringing in this northern Indiana community on the shores of Lake Michigan influenced his views. Some say the fact that there were riots and restrictions on home ownership is not relevant at all."

OK - this is where (I think) Mr. Babbin is getting his inference. I understand that a parent can (and does) have influence on a young person, but that does not mean that they stay that way. For example, your humble writer. My family used to joke about Norman Lear having a camera in our home. Why you may ask? My father WAS Archie Bunker! Given that he grew up as a Mexican in Colorado and faced some pretty nasty discrimination of his own, that puzzled me growing up. Now does that mean that I am equally racist or does that mean my father is still Archie Bunker like? No and no! In my case, I could not see the logic of my father's position, so I rejected it. In his case, he finally realized that his actions were not right as well.

"The family purchased land a few blocks from the beach in 1966 and built an unassuming tri-level house. The Roberts property did not include a racially restrictive covenant, according to LaPorte County deed records, and the restrictions had begun fading away by then.
Other homes built decades earlier in the town had covenants. Deeds on file from the 1940s in Long Beach ban the sale or lease of houses to "any person who is not a Caucasian gentile."
The covenants date to the community's early days in the 1920s as a summer getaway for Chicagoans.
"Every time you would go to an area you would find there were restrictions against a certain type," said Phyllis Waters, who moved to Long Beach in 1958 and bought Century 21 Long Beach Real Estate in 1967. "What they didn't like, they'd restrict."
Fern Eddy Schultz, the county historian, said the covenants were common for property near Lake Michigan. "They didn't want particular people to have homes around the lake areas," Schultz said.
Covenants have gotten attention in the past. President Bush purchased a house in 1988 in Dallas with a covenant restricting blacks from buying the property. His staff said Bush was unaware of the deed restriction, which was void under Texas law, when he purchased the home.
In Long Beach, nearly all residents were white when Roberts was growing up, a makeup that has changed little in four decades. Today, nearly 98 percent of the town's 1,500 residents are white."

The article goes on further, but what I posted above is the jist of the story. Please follow the link, read the whole story and decide for yourself. Is the AP trying to infer that John Roberts is a racist based on where he was raised, and isn't that a racist assumption in and of itself????