A whiter shade of pale…

Pink Lady (inthepinktexas.com) couldn’t let this one pass. I present it as evidence that it’s not us West Texas fronterizados who are necessarily bigots and fools (it’s just that our crappy local newspaper is edited by folks from Odessa who don’t know how to read Spanish or check facts.

Those folks down in Farmers Branch sure do come up with the darndest ways to get rid of Mexicans. Now they’re targeting colored houses. This reminds me of the blatant discrimination my family encountered after my father decided to paint our shutters neon blue. They had been an acceptable sky blue prior to his sixth martini.

…So I feel the pain of the colored houses in Farmers Branch, and the unfair treatment that they have received. Take resident Robin Bernier, who has petitioned the City Council to require permits and color approval before people paint their houses. “When you paint your house some fluorescent or garish color scheme, you negatively affect my [home] value,” Bernier said. Uh, you live in Farmers Branch. How much lower could your home value go?

According to business owner and colored home supporter Elizabeth Villafranca, this is just another jab at Hispanics in this once quiet little town. “We know who has the bright colors,” she said. “Latin Americans.”

Tom Bohmier lives near a house with an offensive bright blue garage. He said he didn’t want his neighbors “for whatever reason, mental incompetence or poor judgment, to paint their house electric something.” You see? If everyone lived in a nice white trailer like Mr. Bohmier, we wouldn’t have these problems.

The president of the Code Enforcement Association of Texas, Neely Blackman, said that house color doesn’t make a difference in property values. “Now neighbors make a difference,” he said, citing issues such as Hispanics.