This Article draws on the story of Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., one of the earliest cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Paul Trafficante, one of the plaintiffs, was a white tenant of a large apartment complex in San Francisco who discovered that the landlord was engaging in systematic discrimination against Black applicants. He argued that he was injured by this practice because it denied him the benefits of living in a racially integrated community. The lower courts threw out the case, ruling that he had no claim because he was not the target of a discriminatory housing practice under the Act. The Supreme Court reversed unanimously, interpreting standing under the Act broadly. It observed that “[t]he person on the landlord’s blacklist is not the only victim of discriminatory housing practices; it is . . . ‘the whole community.’” More than fifty years after Trafficante, however, it is rare that the member of a majority group (i.e., a white person) files a lawsuit alleging a violation of their fair housing rights based on discrimination against a minority group (i.e., a person of color). This Article argues that white plaintiffs have a unique role to play in furthering fair housing by bringing Trafficante-style claims. It draws on the literature in critical whiteness studies to illustrate the complexity in white American identity and to suggest that there is a significant percentage of white Americans who are ready and willing to participate in racial solidarity, but who have not been organized or challenged to engage in direct action. The act of participating in fair housing testing and serving as a plaintiff in a fair housing lawsuit should be viewed as an antiracist act that has the power to further racial reconciliation in America
