Enveloped By The Modern World

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Jan. 13, 2008

It remains for me a striking image: Five Old Order Amish men sitting in a sterile, modern, community hearing room inside West Chester Borough Hall, listening to a family describe how one of their number’s perceived racism had damaged them.

Here were people — who, because of their religious faith and practice, work in varying degrees to separate themselves from the outside “English” world — being brought kicking and shouting, figuratively, into that sad feature of the modern world — the racial dispute.

To recap, a black family from Valley had been looking for a new home to rent that would take them out of the urban setting where they lived. Responding to an advertisement, the wife went to look at a home for rent in Little Britain, just across the Lancaster County line from Oxford. She fell in love with the picturesque, rural property and eagerly told the landlord, an Amish carpenter, that her family would like to rent it.

But later that night, the landlord called and left a phone message that another tenant had complained about her race and had threatened to leave the property if they moved in. “I’m sorry,” the Amish man told her. Shocked and angry that the color of their skin would be reason for rejection, the family filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission.

Attempts at reconciliation with the parties failed, leading to Thursday’s hearing.

The black family was accompanied by a lawyer from Philadelphia; the Amish landlord was accompanied by four men from his church district and a non-Amish fellow who drove them from their homes 35 miles away.

The rejected family spoke eloquently about the pain, humiliation and anger they endured because of the denial. With his head bowed, his traditional black brimmed hat laid on a chair next to him, the landlord sat silently alone at the defense table that had been set up for him.

Factually, the case against the man seemed strong. His voice could be heard on a tape saying how his other tenants didn’t want a “colored” family living next door. His argument that the lease application started by the wife hadn’t been fully completed and was thus still not formally “rejected” seemed forced. But there was no hateful monster sitting there to despise, just a man seemingly caught up by something he had not anticipated.

I am not one who looks at the Amish through the misty-eyed romanticism of “Witness,” or the Lancaster County Tourist Bureau, viewing them as plain, uncorrupted folk who just want to be left alone to live their simple life. The Amish have bad apples and good ones, just like any community, and can be just as wrong in their decisions as you or I.

But as used to seeing the courtroom dynamics of practiced attorneys and judges and litigants as I am, I will long remember the response of the landlord when asked by the commission’s hearing examiner if he had any more evidence to provide.

Sitting quietly for as long as 20 seconds, scratching his beard and fiddling with his hands, the man finally spoke.

“I can’t understand what any of this is about,” he said.