The Ghetto is Public Policy

[StrangeSox]

I posted two links directly above that were in response to almost that exact question.

[Jenksismyhero]

I posted two links directly above that were in response to almost that exact question.

 

The Moyers one didn't unless it's in the video.

[StrangeSox]

I was referring to the response I received from Prof. Sharkey in response to my question:

 

I was hoping you might be able to elaborate a little bit or point me to the citation for the part about "black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000. “Blacks and whites inhabit such different neighborhoods,” Sharkey writes, “that it is not possible to compare the economic outcomes of black and white children.”"

 

Why does that remain true today? What is it that prevents the upper-middle class black family from moving into a typical $100,000 neighborhood and instead leaves them stuck in a $30k neighborhood? Any incite you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks for your note. You might want to check out the paper that generated this statistic: http://patricksharkey.net/images/pdf/Sharkey_AJS_2014.pdf

 

Lots of factors lead to this: continuing discrimination; informal hostility toward blacks; remnants of housing policy from decades ago; continuing zoning policies that constrain the housing options of nonwhites; preferences among affluent members of all groups to not live w African Americans.

 

This article is probably the best analysis of why these discrepancies exist and are not explained by wealth and income: http://asr.sagepub.com/content/77/3/354.abstract

 

also where did you read that the practices ended in 1960? That's pre-CRA, pre-Fair Housing.

Edited May 30, 2014 by StrangeSox

[Jenksismyhero]

A central tenet of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ much-talked about new article in The Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations,” is the widespread practice of mortgage discrimination from the 1930s to the 1960s.

 

I assume if it was continuing through the 70's he would have mentioned it.

[StrangeSox]

You said they ended in 1960. They didn't. Maybe Moyers should have phrased it "from the 1930's through the 1960's" but the extent and duration of the mortgage discrimination is made very clear in Coates' original article.

[Soxbadger]

You said they ended in 1960. They didn't. Maybe Moyers should have phrased it "from the 1930's through the 1960's" but the extent and duration of the mortgage discrimination is made very clear in Coates' original article.

 

But still fails to support his premise that reparations are in anyway fair, because unlike the articles you quoted, he does not recognize a similar phenomenon occurs with Hispanics. I dont think it would be really fair to force Hispanics to pay reparations to black people. But yet the author of the original article does not even take this into account.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

Is your only evidence for your claims that his piece on the history of anti-black discrimination only talks about anti-black discrimination? I've read nothing from Coates to indicate that he is concerned exclusively with the plight of black Americans, especially not to the point you're accusing him of where he fails to recognize or actively rejects others in poverty or their experiences. I mean, brief section he actually talks about some reparations programs, he mentions this:

 

Today Charles Ogletree, the Harvard Law School professor, argues for something broader: a program of job training and public works that takes racial justice as its mission but includes the poor of all races.

 

Drop Coates a line with some of your questions, he responds and dialogues a lot. I don't see where you're coming away with the messages from this piece that your are.

[StrangeSox]

I know Cicero was mentioned in the article, and that reminded me of an episode of TAL on how Cicero came to be 2/3's Mexican-American these days:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-arch...sode/179/cicero

 

Act One:

To understand how Cicero reacted when Hispanics started flooding into town, you have to understand how it dealt with conflict in the past. For a period the town was run by Al Capone, and the mob was connected to Town Hall for most of the twentieth century. Since the 1950s, the town also had the reputation of being "the Selma of the North," with black people being driven from town by angry mobs while the authorities turned the other cheek; and a police chief who wore a t-shirt that says, "Police Brutality: The Fun Part of Police Work."

 

Act Two:

In the 1970s and 1980s, a wave of non-white migration into Cicero begins, this one primarily Mexican-American. The head of the political machine is named Betty Loren-Maltese, whose husband, now deceased, was convicted for mob-related activity. She responds to the newcomers with some of the intimidation tactics of the past, but also with some new ones that no town anywhere seems to have tried.

[Soxbadger]

Is your only evidence for your claims that his piece on the history of anti-black discrimination only talks about anti-black discrimination? I've read nothing from Coates to indicate that he is concerned exclusively with the plight of black Americans, especially not to the point you're accusing him of where he fails to recognize or actively rejects others in poverty or their experiences. I mean, brief section he actually talks about some reparations programs, he mentions this:

 

 

 

Drop Coates a line with some of your questions, he responds and dialogues a lot. I don't see where you're coming away with the messages from this piece that your are.

 

The article title is "The case for reparations", I dont see anywhere in the article where he makes a case for reparations other than for black people. If his piece was an article titled "the history and consequences of black discrimination" I would have no issue. But when you say "THE CASE FOR REPARATIONS" you are making an argument. Part of that argument should include why blacks deserve reparations and no one else does.

 

And why would I waste time on the author? I dont really see much to gain, his understanding of history is cursory at best and I dont usually waste my time on opinion, because everyone has one.

Edited May 30, 2014 by Soxbadger

[StrangeSox]

So your animus is based largely on an intentionally provocative title and a stubborn binary view where, if Coates is laying out the history and consequences of black discrimination and concluding with why that makes reparations a valid discussion topic, it implies that he does not recognize any other non-black racial struggles, past or present.

 

You should waste time on the author so that you can actually understand his positions instead of assigning him the ones you've so quickly jumped to. You might be surprised if you read one of the follow-ups I've linked where he explained how he came to support the case for reparations over the past couple of years. Or you could once again look at one of the reparations proposals he chose to mention which would be a jobs and education program with racial (note: not exclusively black) justice as a goal "but includes the poor of all races."

 

The only way to continue to insist that Coates only recognizes abuses against blacks and that he believes in no other forms of racial or social justice is to remain intentionally ignorant of what the man actually says and writes.

[Soxbadger]

So your animus is based largely on an intentionally provocative title and a stubborn binary view where, if Coates is laying out the history and consequences of black discrimination and concluding with why that makes reparations a valid discussion topic, it implies that he does not recognize any other non-black racial struggles, past or present.

 

You should waste time on the author so that you can actually understand his positions instead of assigning him the ones you've so quickly jumped to. You might be surprised if you read one of the follow-ups I've linked where he explained how he came to support the case for reparations over the past couple of years. Or you could once again look at one of the reparations proposals he chose to mention which would be a jobs and education program with racial (note: not exclusively black) justice as a goal "but includes the poor of all races."

 

The only way to continue to insist that Coates only recognizes abuses against blacks and that he believes in no other forms of racial or social justice is to remain intentionally ignorant of what the man actually says and writes.

 

Maybe you should read more about Mr. Coates, because its not about minority reparations:

 

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/5/29/the_...tions_ta_nehisi

 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/shani/ta-nehisi-co...ations-buzzfeed

 

SH: So, getting back to slavery: Do you think descendants of slaves deserve reparations?

 

TNC: Yes. Mostly, as the argument makes, because it didn’t stop there. We had this great moment — Reconstruction — for a brief, brief second where America said maybe we can be a new country, maybe we can imagine ourselves as a new country. And then we stopped. Had that happened, I don’t think anybody would be talking about reparations today. There are moments like this all the time. I’m sorry, I have all this history in my head, because I had to inhale so much of it for this. [but] you start seeing that — and this is one of the core arguments of the piece — as much as we love this country, on some existential level, keeping black people out is part of our identity. Keeping them over here in this place is part of our identity. It’s in our bones. As much as I support the reparations claim and I make the reparations claim, I think it’s deeply important for Americans to realize that, to come to grips with that.

 

SH: So what’s a black person to do?

 

TNC: Support H.R. 40. Seriously, I don’t know. Support H.R. 40. Vote.

 

SH: And what’s a white person to do?

 

TNC: Support H.R. 40. And support politics that support H.R. 40. A lot of people have been like, “Well, you’re really depressing these days. Stop depressing me, Ta-Nehisi. Could you dance? Tell a joke? Please?” Yeah, I know, I’m pretty dark. The thing is, I’m not religious at all, but you have these sort of existential moments where you’re like, OK, you know what, we’re all going to die one day. Everything ends — all republics, all empires, all countries, all whatever. It all ends. All family lines. Everything dies out at some point. While I think that this presents a dire picture [and] I think we have issues, on some level as an individual, you have to decide how to live morally.

 

http://conyers.house.gov/index.cfm/reparations

 

My bill does four things:

 

It acknowledges the fundamental injustice and inhumanity of slavery

It establishes a commission to study slavery, its subsequent racial and economic discrimination against freed slaves;

It studies the impact of those forces on today's living African Americans; and

The commission would then make recommendations to Congress on appropriate remedies to redress the harm inflicted on living African Americans.

 

Unlike Mr Coates, Im not lazy. I will figure out the angle, and I will expose the truth. Because Im not in it for any personal gain, I dont want my people to get anything, so I have no bias. Mr. Coates has bias, he explicitly states that white people should support HR 40, which is for AFRICAN AMERICAN reparations based on SLAVERY.

 

He doesnt say "White people should work to help all minorities", he doesnt say "White people should help create a system where everyone can be equal", he says that white people should support a program that explicitly helps 1 race, while ignoring every other race.

 

So maybe before you champion Mr. Coates, you should have sent him a message and made sure that you knew what he was arguing. Cause he makes it very clear, he thinks African Americans are deserving of special treatment that no other minority is. And despite all of his smoke and mirrors about recent phenomenon, the crux is based on slavery. Because the thing he wants me to do, is support a bill that gives reparations for slavery.

 

/shrugs

 

It is what it is.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

HR40 being for the study of reparations as it relates to slavery doesn't mean that Coates wouldn't also support broader programs of social justice. You know, again, like the one he chose to mention as a potential form of reparations.

 

Coates wrote a long article detailed the public policy of racial discrimination against African Americans in this country and used to make a case for the legitimacy of reparations. He nowhere argued that only blacks have suffered, that only blacks should receive some form of social/racial justice. Sharkey's research that he references includes discussion of Hispanic housing discrimination and nowhere does TNC reject that. He's focused on the black american experience because he's a black american from Baltimore. You can't conclude that if you write about and advocate for one specific topic, it implies that you don't also support if not actively oppose related topics. No piece of writing considers every possibility.

 

As far as "smoke and mirrors," perhaps you should read his article again, or maybe even just the stated purpose of HR40 you quoted right above. The only one in this conversation who keeps focusing on slavery is you. Go back to the OP of this thread to see that Coates has been writing about this "smoke and mirrors" issue of 20th century housing discrimination for over a year now. Go read this follow-up that I've linked where he explains how he came to write this article, which sort of really undercuts your portrayal of him:

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archiv...autopsy/371125/

Hey Scott. I have an essay that's starting to brew in me that I've been thinking a lot about. Are you at all interested in a piece that makes the case for reparations? This is totally pie in the sky, but it's my take on the Atlantic as a journal of "Big Ideas." There's this great piece in the Times a few weeks back about selective schools in New York and how Asian immigrants are dominating the process. I found myself really compelled by a lot of the stories and actually in more sympathy with the Asians (now Asian-Americans) than with the blacks who were protesting. A lot of what they were saying reminded me of the sort of stuff my own parents said.

>

> And then something occurred to me. The reason why a lot of these black parents are upset is because the schools are basically credentialing machines for the corridors of power. By not going to a Stuyvesant you miss out on that corridor, so the thinking goes. And moreso the feeling is (though never explicitly said) that black people deserve special consideration, given our history in this country. The result is that you have black parents basically lobbying for Asian-American kids to be punished because the country at large has never given much remedy for what it did to black people.

 

So here he's laid out the initial thoughts on what this article might eventually become from the framework of other minorities being the target of lobbying by blacks, and his sympathy with those other minorities. Yes, he says and believes that black people deserve special consideration, and, with perhaps the exception of American Indians, I can't say I disagree. Many immigrant and minority communities have been treated poorly in this country, but blacks have gotten a particularly raw deal along the way that others really haven't. A lot of that it tied up directly in how so many black people came to be in this country in the first place.

 

White people should support HR40. White people should also support broader social justice programs. These two ideas are not contradictory or incompatible. You can advocate for HR40 or some other reparations program (or not! reparations is not universally supported even within the African American community) while still recognizing and allying with other groups. For all we know, the recommendations that would be the outcome of HR40 would be something exactly along the lines of broad educational and works programs open to the poor of all races.

Edited May 30, 2014 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Not related to anything above, just thought this was interesting when I came across it yesterday. The concept of "white" people didn't exist until an 1681 Massachusetts law.

http://books.google.com/books?id=M_e2WLcxv...681&f=false

 

The Maryland law of 1681 includes the first appearance of the term "white" used to designate a distinct group of humanity in law, and served as a corrective to the antimiscegnation law of 1664 that had the unintended effect of encouraging slaveholders to promote the very marriages the law expressly intended to discourage (Arch. Md. 7: 203-205).

 

No idea about the validity of the rest of what she is saying

[Soxbadger]

Read the bill, I would never support a bill that is conclusive in nature:

 

The commission would then make recommendations to Congress on appropriate remedies to redress the harm inflicted on living African Americans.

 

Note, an appropriate bill would say "The commission would then determine if any harm was inflicted on living African Americans and whether there should be any remedy for this."

 

His bill presupposes that there is harm.

 

And how you can even say things like:

 

The only one in this conversation who keeps focusing on slavery is you.

 

From the website on the HR 40 bill:

 

 

 

It is un-controverted that African slaves were not compensated for their labor. More unclear however, is what the effects and remnants of this relationship have had on African-Americans and our nation from the time of emancipation through today.

 

I chose the number of the bill, 40, as a symbol of the forty acres and a mule that the United States initially promised freed slaves. This unfulfilled promise and the serious devastation that slavery had on African-American lives has never been officially recognized by the United States Government.

 

Seems the entire purpose of the bill is to redress the harms of slavery.

 

Do you really believe what you are typing? That this has nothing to do with slavery?

 

Or are you just pinned into a bad corner, because you didnt write the article, you can disagree with the author, you dont have to champion him...

 

[StrangeSox]

Again, weird binary thinking. If it mentions slavery, everything else must be smoke and mirrors. If you claim it's not focused on slavery, that means you're saying that it has nothing to do with slavery. The summary of HR40 you posted mentioned more things than slavery.

 

I'm not sure what's wrong with presupposing harm from the legacy of slavery and the ensuing racial and economic discrimination. I'm still thinking you haven't actually bothered to read Coates' article if you're saying something like that.

 

 

[Soxbadger]

Again, weird binary thinking. If it mentions slavery, everything else must be smoke and mirrors. If you claim it's not focused on slavery, that means you're saying that it has nothing to do with slavery. The summary of HR40 you posted mentioned more things than slavery.

 

I'm not sure what's wrong with presupposing harm from the legacy of slavery and the ensuing racial and economic discrimination. I'm still thinking you haven't actually bothered to read Coates' article if you're saying something like that.

 

I read the article, as well as the other pieces that I quoted. That is a poor diversion technique. Why dont you actually argue the facts.

 

Here is the words from the bill (which you obviously havent read):

 

A BILL

 

To acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequent de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.

 

How is that not focused on slavery.

 

This isnt even an argument, the bill is about slavery and what reparations should be given to ex-slaves. This isnt weird binary thinking, this is just a fact that you seem to not want to admit. Because you know if I attack the core "slaves deserve reparations" the rest of the smoke/mirrors fall away.

[StrangeSox]

This is from the bill. This is in the text that you quoted.

 

subsequent de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African Americans,

 

Things can be about more than one thing. This is where you're being weirdly binary. I'm not sure why you keep insisting that the detailed examiniation of racial oppression in the post-Reconstruction era and into modern times that Coates details in this article and others (along with many other writers and scholars) and to which HR40 explicitly refers to alongside slavery is just "smoke and mirrors." I don't even understand your drive to "attack the core" in the first place versus discuss the topic. Not everything is an adversarial court battle.

 

Honestly, whatever form reparations would take and whether or not its actually justified beyond something like HR40 which in my mind would function more like a truth and reconciliation committee than anything is the least interesting part of the article. Even if you don't ultimately agree that reparations are appropriate, the article still gives a background on how we arrived at the present. Even if HR40 was explicitly and exclusively about reparations solely for slavery, arguing why reparations for slavery aren't appropriate fails to engage or discuss the overwhelming bulk of the article. If all you want to do is say that Coates (and HR40) only care about slavery and that there shouldn't be reparations for slavery, then there's not much else to discuss.

[Soxbadger]

My drive to attack it is because articles like that do more to hurt the advancement of minorities/underprivileged in America then help them.

[gatnom]

This is from the bill. This is in the text that you quoted.

 

 

 

Things can be about more than one thing. This is where you're being weirdly binary. I'm not sure why you keep insisting that the detailed examiniation of racial oppression in the post-Reconstruction era and into modern times that Coates details in this article and others (along with many other writers and scholars) and to which HR40 explicitly refers to alongside slavery is just "smoke and mirrors." I don't even understand your drive to "attack the core" in the first place versus discuss the topic. Not everything is an adversarial court battle.

 

Honestly, whatever form reparations would take and whether or not its actually justified beyond something like HR40 which in my mind would function more like a truth and reconciliation committee than anything is the least interesting part of the article. Even if you don't ultimately agree that reparations are appropriate, the article still gives a background on how we arrived at the present. Even if HR40 was explicitly and exclusively about reparations solely for slavery, arguing why reparations for slavery aren't appropriate fails to engage or discuss the overwhelming bulk of the article. If all you want to do is say that Coates (and HR40) only care about slavery and that there shouldn't be reparations for slavery, then there's not much else to discuss.

 

To speak for badger a bit here, I think what he's trying to say here is that the proposed bill is specifically for African Americans and not just the disadvantaged. And, if I may add in my own two cents, that sort of race-specific type of focus can be something of a hindrance to what we're trying to accomplish. I can see reparations being much more divisive than actually being effective.