Keywords: racism, racist, discrimination, property records, housing, racially restrictive covenant

Racially restrictive covenants, remnants of a past when such discrimination was legal, are still rampant in property records across the country, according to The Associated Press (AP), despite the fact that they have no legal standing. Hector De La Torre, a California Democratic state assemblyman, decided to take action when he found one in his property records, which would have prevented him from buying his home had it still been legal.

The covenant on his house, which was built in 1948, said the house could not be sold to anyone "whose blood is not entirely that of the Caucasian Race, and for the purpose of this paragraph, no Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, Hindu or any person of the Ethiopian, Indian or Mongolian Races shall be deemed to be a Caucasian." The year the house was built, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not enforce such covenants, and Congress eventually outlawed them in fair-housing legislation. But De La Torre doesn't want other people to have the shock of finding such documents among their housing records.

"If you believe the old adage of 'a man's home is his castle,' would you want that stain upon your castle?" De La Torre told the AP. He has introduced a bill requiring title companies to comb through property records and strike racist language whenever a piece of property is sold.

Opponents to the bill say it could cost millions to locate the documents, which are typically buried among piles of records and are often never detected by homeowners. But some owners are urging people to get rid of the racist language on their own.

Click here to read the full story in the New York Daily News.

Click here to read 'Should Black Bigots Be Tolerated?' on DiversityInc.com.