SANTA CLARA COUNTY, Calif. (KGO) — Santa Clara County is utilizing Stanford University-developed artificial intelligence to redact thousands of racist property records from the system.
Racial covenants were utilized in the early 1900s to require property owners to follow certain rules including who can or cannot live there.
Even though they are not being enforced, these agreements still exist in documents to this day.
Stanford Law Professor Daniel Ho couldn’t believe one particular clause in the documents when buying a home in Palo Alto.
“That specified that, ‘the property shall not be used or occupied by any person of African, Japanese, Chinese or Mongolian descent, except for in the capacity as a servant to a White person,'” Ho said.
It’s known as a racial covenant: a now unconstitutional agreement put in place by property owners, as recent as the early 1900s, that the purchaser had to abide by.
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