“These exuberant proclamations of equalitarianism in sundown towns exemplify not only base hypocrisy but also what sociologists call “herrenvolk democracy” – democracy for the master race. White Americans’ verbal commitment to nondiscrimination forms one horn of what Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal famously called “The American Dilemma.” Blatant racism forms the other horn. In elite sundown suburbs, this dilemma underlies what we shall later term the “paradox of exclusivity.”
