George Latimer’s History of Slow-Walking Desegregation
New York congressional candidate George Latimer has come under fire for racially insensitive comments. His history of slow-walking federal desegregation efforts has received less notice.
Westchester county executive George Latimer in White Plains, New York, on December 12, 2023. (Jeenah Moon / Washington Post via Getty Images)
George Latimer, the corporate-funded primary challenger gunning for the congressional seat in New York’s 16th district currently occupied by Rep. Jamaal Bowman, for years faced criticism for failing to fulfill a federal mandate to desegregate Westchester County, a review of the public record shows.
Two years after winning the county executive’s office by running as an affordable housing backer who would finally make good on the county’s long-delayed and court-ordered desegregation efforts, Latimer stood accused by the attorney who had won the landmark lawsuit that spurred the court order of having “absolutely no intention of changing Westchester’s segregated status quo” and of deliberately failing to obey the order.
Latimer had “squandered” the best opportunity in twenty-five years to attack the county’s deeply ingrained segregation, that attorney charged; his administration had a “credibility problem” on the matter, a local newspaper stated. It was not an isolated incident. As a county legislator in the 1990s, Latimer had served as an obstacle to another landmark court-ordered desegregation effort in Westchester, opposing and delaying an attempt by the city of Yonkers to use a section of parkland to build affordable housing.
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