The Ghetto is Public Policy

[StrangeSox]

Let me ask you this: say the American people agree to pay something. Do you honestly think it will help? Say every black person gets $50k over the next 20 years. What will that solve? Anything?

 

I noticed throughout his entire piece he doesn't mention anything about changes within the black community. That's going to be the answer, if there ever is one.

Here's that other article/post by TNC I mentionedt, Other People's Pathologies. It starts off with several links to a back-and-forth conversation he had been having with Jonathan Chait via blog posts.

[StrangeSox]

Nope, but we sure can move on.

It's probably easier to say that when you and your ancestors haven't been the target of economic and social oppression in this country since before it was even a country.

[Y2HH]

It's probably easier to say that when you and your ancestors haven't been the target of economic and social oppression in this country since before it was even a country.

 

No, but they WERE targets of this in a different country, and they moved on.

 

1) My family, and probably a lot of your families, weren't even part of this. This happened before my ancestors even arrived here. Also, as perviously mentioned, my ancestors (I'm 1st generation American), suffered horribly in Nazi Germany which wasn't a walk in the park based on any comparison, and imagine coming here during WW2 as a German family that couldn't speak English. However well you think they were received, it was worse.

 

2) My family lost everything their ancestors had built up for them in Germany when they came here, not that it was much, but all of it was taken. Gone. No property. No possessions. No money. But f*** them because they were white or something, right?

 

3) What happened during slavery was terrible, harsh, and a thousand other political buzzwords to speak on something with kid gloves. BUT, are you saying they'd STILL be better off today had their ancestors never been forced to come here? Like my ancestors, and probably like yours, their people went through hell so they wouldn't have too. And hell in the US, especially today, is absolute heaven as compare to most other nations.

 

4) ALL of our ancestors went through some terribly hard times to get us to where we are today. This isn't something African Americans or women own all to themselves. A lot of our families swam through an ocean of s*** so we could be where we are today.

 

So, yeah, I'm sick of hearing about this...and I'm sick of having white guilt forced upon me...because although I'm white, I don't feel guilty in the least.

 

Move on.

 

I had as much to do with this as I had to do with the hardships my family suffered to get me here today.

Edited May 28, 2014 by Y2HH

[StrangeSox]

No, but they WERE targets of this in a different country, and they moved on.

 

1) My family, and probably a lot of your families, weren't even part of this. This happened before my ancestors even arrived here. Also, as perviously mentioned, my ancestors (I'm 1st generation American), suffered horribly in Nazi Germany which wasn't a walk in the park based on any comparison, and imagine coming here during WW2 as a German family that couldn't speak English. However well you think they were received, it was worse.

 

2) My family lost everything their ancestors had built up for them in Germany when they came here, not that it was much, but all of it was taken. Gone. No property. No possessions. No money. But f*** them because they were white or something, right?

 

3) What happened during slavery was terrible, harsh, and a thousand other political buzzwords to speak on something with kid gloves. BUT, are you saying they'd STILL be better off today had their ancestors never been forced to come here? Like my ancestors, and probably like yours, their people went through hell so they wouldn't have too. And hell in the US, especially today, is absolute heaven as compare to most other nations.

 

4) ALL of our ancestors went through some terribly hard times to get us to where we are today. This isn't something African Americans or women own all to themselves. A lot of our families swam through an ocean of s*** so we could be where we are today.

 

So, yeah, I'm sick of hearing about this...and I'm sick of having white guilt forced upon me...because although I'm white, I don't feel guilty in the least.

 

Move on.

 

I had as much to do with this as I had to do with the hardships my family suffered to get me here today.

 

Please read the article. Slavery is only a small part of what's discussed. The focus of Coates' recent work, including a bulk of this article as well as the one linked back in the OP, are of public policy much more recent than slavery, e.g. the redlining that is still going on to this day: http://therealdeal.com/blog/2012/07/12/wel...ination-charge/

Edited May 28, 2014 by StrangeSox

[Y2HH]

Please read the article. Slavery is only a small part of what's discussed. The focus of Coates' recent work, including a bulk of this article as well as the one linked back in the OP, are of public policy much more recent than slavery, e.g. the redlining that is still going on to this day: http://therealdeal.com/blog/2012/07/12/wel...ination-charge/

 

There isn't much to read there...it's a few short paragraphs about Well's Fargo, and in this instance I'm not defending Well's Fargo, that was pretty recent, and provable.

[StrangeSox]

I meant read TNC's "The Case for Reparations" article, I added the Wells Fargo thing in an edit, sorry that wasn't very clear. TNC's focus is more on mid-20th century public policy to plunder black americans, as he puts it, than on slavery or even Jim Crow. The Wells Fargo example is just another example that this sort of thing isn't some long-ago sin for which few if any people who actually suffered or profited are still alive. It continues to this day, and the effects of the centuries of plunder continue as well.

 

In 2010, Jacob S. Rugh, then a doctoral candidate at Princeton, and the sociologist Douglas S. Massey published a study of the recent foreclosure crisis. Among its drivers, they found an old foe: segregation. Black home buyers—even after controlling for factors like creditworthiness—were still more likely than white home buyers to be steered toward subprime loans. Decades of racist housing policies by the American government, along with decades of racist housing practices by American businesses, had conspired to concentrate African Americans in the same neighborhoods. As in North Lawndale half a century earlier, these neighborhoods were filled with people who had been cut off from mainstream financial institutions. When subprime lenders went looking for prey, they found black people waiting like ducks in a pen.

 

[..]

 

In 2011, Bank of America agreed to pay $355 million to settle charges of discrimination against its Countrywide unit. The following year, Wells Fargo settled its discrimination suit for more than $175 million. But the damage had been done. In 2009, half the properties in Baltimore whose owners had been granted loans by Wells Fargo between 2005 and 2008 were vacant; 71 percent of these properties were in predominantly black neighborhoods.

 

 

 

But, ultimately, I think this is the main thrust of his argument, which comes in the context of relating how Germany initially rejected any sort of national responsibility for what the Nazis had done to the Jews but ultimately came to terms with their responsibilities and reparations:

 

John Conyers’s HR 40 is the vehicle for that hearing. No one can know what would come out of such a debate. Perhaps no number can fully capture the multi-century plunder of black people in America. Perhaps the number is so large that it can’t be imagined, let alone calculated and dispensed. But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as—if not more than—the specific answers that might be produced. An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future. More important than any single check cut to any African American, the payment of reparations would represent America’s maturation out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders.

 

An America that has this discussion and acknowledges the past, present and future sins is an America that can be honest and honestly work to prevent the present and future sins from continuing to happen.

 

 

[Y2HH]

I meant read TNC's "The Case for Reparations" article, I added the Wells Fargo thing in an edit, sorry that wasn't very clear. TNC's focus is more on mid-20th century public policy to plunder black americans, as he puts it, than on slavery or even Jim Crow. The Wells Fargo example is just another example that this sort of thing isn't some long-ago sin for which few if any people who actually suffered or profited are still alive. It continues to this day, and the effects of the centuries of plunder continue as well.

 

 

 

 

 

But, ultimately, I think this is the main thrust of his argument, which comes in the context of relating how Germany initially rejected any sort of national responsibility for what the Nazis had done to the Jews but ultimately came to terms with their responsibilities and reparations:

 

 

 

An America that has this discussion and acknowledges the past, present and future sins is an America that can be honest and honestly work to prevent the present and future sins from continuing to happen.

 

For all of these recent dealings, which can be tracked, traced and proven, I have absolutely no issues with reparations being paid by the Fargo's or BOA's who are lending with predatory practices. I'm not saying "move on" to things that occurred 5 years ago.

 

I'm acknowledging the past, and in doing that I'm not saying to "forget the past" so we can repeat the same mistakes, but I am saying it's time to move on from it, and start concentrating on the present/future.

[StrangeSox]

I'll just quote bmags again, because he does a good job of summarizing some of the keystone 20th century public policies that deliberately excluded black america.

 

Did your family ever benefit from Social Security? GI Bill?

 

Did your family ever own a home? Were they able to get a 30 year fixed mortgage? Did they use that mortgage to move into their desired neighborhood? Did that neighborhood have good schools?

 

All of these had specific structural barriers practiced on black americans. Imagine if that wealth was denied to your family in these points by the government.

 

Worse, imagine that the denial of those legitimate means of achieving those goals (mortages from banks) pushed your family to try and achieve their dreams through other ways, which were predatory and artificially sucked more money than would be allowed to a non-black family, pushing many into foreclosure and many into poverty.

 

"You" may have not done anything, but you have benefited from a social system that has by and large placed a high premium on building the wealth of white communities, at the very least, at the expense of black communities. And that's the nicest reading of it. The other reading is that it placed a high priority of building wealth of white citizens, and preventing any wealth of black communities.

 

[Y2HH]

I'll just quote bmags again, because he does a good job of summarizing some of the keystone 20th century public policies that deliberately excluded black america.

 

And do they still exclude black america?

[StrangeSox]

For all of these recent dealings, which can be tracked, traced and proven, I have absolutely no issues with reparations being paid by the Fargo's or BOA's who are lending with predatory practices. I'm not saying "move on" to things that occurred 5 years ago.

 

I'm acknowledging the past, and in doing that I'm not saying to "forget the past" so we can repeat the same mistakes, but I am saying it's time to move on from it, and start concentrating on the present/future.

 

I think it's important to note that TNC does not actually call for any specific sort of reparations in his article. He mentions some things that have been tried, and brings up HR 40 several times which would merely study the issue. He also points out an idea by Charles Ogletree:

 

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.

 

In the present black america suffers from a huge wealth gap from white america. Educational resources are worse. Economic resources are worse. Employment across all levels of education is worse. To again quote the article, "Sharkey’s research shows that 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.”"

 

How do you concentrate on the problems of the present if you aren't willing to use the same tools that created so many of these problems (government policy) to correct them today?

[Y2HH]

I think it's important to note that TNC does not actually call for any specific sort of reparations in his article. He mentions some things that have been tried, and brings up HR 40 several times which would merely study the issue. He also points out an idea by Charles Ogletree:

 

 

 

In the present black america suffers from a huge wealth gap from white america. Educational resources are worse. Economic resources are worse. Employment across all levels of education is worse. To again quote the article, "Sharkey’s research shows that 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.”"

 

How do you concentrate on the problems of the present if you aren't willing to use the same tools that created so many of these problems (government policy) to correct them today?

 

I think this is irrefutable...but the entire point of these posts of yours is that we learn from the past. We have. And things ARE getting better, it just doesn't happen overnight.

Edited May 28, 2014 by Y2HH

[StrangeSox]

And do they still exclude black america?

No, but plenty of people who directly benefited from or were injured by those policies over the decades are still alive. Unless your family came over here in the 1970's or later, you can't say they didn't benefit from it.

 

But after centuries of enslavement, exclusion, terrorism and plunder, are things suddenly equal once we change the law to color-blind policy? Is it not legitimate to ask what the same governments that deliberately ghettoized these communities could do to address the current issues that arise from ghettoization?

[StrangeSox]

I think this is irrefutable...but the entire point of these posts of yours is that we learn from the past. We have. And things ARE getting better, it just doesn't happen overnight.

Well, it doesn't really get better when we as a society refuse to actually talk much about the problem and pretend its all just something from the past that we have no responsibility for today.

[Y2HH]

Well, it doesn't really get better when we as a society refuse to actually talk much about the problem and pretend its all just something from the past that we have no responsibility for today.

 

Society doesn't refuse to talk about it...I hear about things like this on a daily basis. Hell, we are actively discussing it right now, so to pretend nobody talks about it is disingenuous.

 

Edit: Also, if we truly want things like this solved, people need to stop re-electing congressmen and politicians that have approval ratings in the low single digits. Otherwise, this is what we get.

Edited May 28, 2014 by Y2HH

[Balta1701]

I think this is irrefutable...but the entire point of these posts of yours is that we learn from the past. We have. And things ARE getting better, it just doesn't happen overnight.

Economically there is a real strong case to be made that as of 2008 this is no longer true. Thanks to the combination of a housing crash and a stock market boom, the average African American family has less wealth available than a couple decades ago while the average white family has basically recovered, and that was from a place where the average white family already had a huge lead.

[Y2HH]

Economically there is a real strong case to be made that as of 2008 this is no longer true. Thanks to the combination of a housing crash and a stock market boom, the average African American family has less wealth available than a couple decades ago while the average white family has basically recovered, and that was from a place where the average white family already had a huge lead.

 

That's a very short term outlook -- housing will recover along with the rest of it. In either case it will only get better with time...there is no switch we can flip to fix this overnight.

[Y2HH]

This is just one instance, but let's look at Chicago.

 

Rhammel was overwhelmingly elected by both white and black Chicago, hail him as the savior.

 

We have no money for poor schools, but we have a few hundred million dollars to tear down a perfectly good park (Daley Bicentennial Plaza), and rebuild it into Maggie Daley park.

 

This is just one that's seared into my mind as I work right across the street from what was a beautiful, perfectly fine park and watched them tear it down to it's foundation and rebuild it (in progress), to the tune of hundreds of millions.

 

But f*** schools, we need a new park.

[Balta1701]

That's a very short term outlook -- housing will recover along with the rest of it. In either case it will only get better with time...there is no switch we can flip to fix this overnight.

Let's state more clearly how this is not a short term outlook.

 

The wealth of the average African American household is comparable to what it was in 1990 right now and it's more than 5 years since the crash. 2 decades of even tiny wealth growth have been wiped out completely and 5 years later have not recovered. Furthermore, even when things were "improving", the gap was still widening.

[Y2HH]

Let's state more clearly how this is not a short term outlook.

 

The wealth of the average African American household is comparable to what it was in 1990 right now and it's more than 5 years since the crash. 2 decades of even tiny wealth growth have been wiped out completely and 5 years later have not recovered. Furthermore, even when things were "improving", the gap was still widening.

 

A lot of white families lost a lot during this crisis too...but lumping them all into "white families" is what makes this comparison look worse than it is.

 

The top 1% of white families in Chicago will largely offset the losses suffered by the bottom 90% of white families.

 

You may not believe this, but I'm a white guy who happens to know a LOT of white families...and not many of them are doing very well compared to the housing boom, so I'd put them in that same group with the black families that lost just as much.

[Balta1701]

A lot of white families lost a lot during this crisis too...but lumping them all into "white families" is what makes this comparison look worse than it is.

 

The top 1% of white families in Chicago will largely offset the losses suffered by the bottom 90% of white families.

 

You may not believe this, but I'm a white guy who happens to know a LOT of white families...and not many of them are doing very well compared to the housing boom, so I'd put them in that same group with the black families that lost just as much.

Now you've just gotten onto a thread I believe in a lot more. IMO the problem is much more the one you just discussed than the one that has been discussed already. I think that the complete breakdown of how our society distributes wealth is the elephant in the room that underlies this entire discussion and I think fighting that should be our number 1 priority. The top 0.01% have skyrocketed to the detriment of everyone else because they've been able to rig the system. Fix that problem and suddenly you'll discover you've taken large steps towards fixing the others

[cabiness42]

Now you've just gotten onto a thread I believe in a lot more. IMO the problem is much more the one you just discussed than the one that has been discussed already. I think that the complete breakdown of how our society distributes wealth is the elephant in the room that underlies this entire discussion and I think fighting that should be our number 1 priority. The top 0.01% have skyrocketed to the detriment of everyone else because they've been able to rig the system. Fix that problem and suddenly you'll discover you've taken large steps towards fixing the others

 

I agree with this completely, though the bottom 99.99% help the top 0.01% continue to be able to rig the system by continuing to vote for Democrats and/or Republicans.

 

[Y2HH]

Now you've just gotten onto a thread I believe in a lot more. IMO the problem is much more the one you just discussed than the one that has been discussed already. I think that the complete breakdown of how our society distributes wealth is the elephant in the room that underlies this entire discussion and I think fighting that should be our number 1 priority. The top 0.01% have skyrocketed to the detriment of everyone else because they've been able to rig the system. Fix that problem and suddenly you'll discover you've taken large steps towards fixing the others

 

I won't disagree with you here...the concentration of wealth also concentrates the power. They're the ones that basically chose politicians, fund them, get them elected, and then have them pass laws that benefit them. Corporations do this on a national level, and individuals tend to do it on a local level...in either case, the rich get richer, and the powerful get more powerful.

 

The issue is electing politicians that will actually help the poor/middle class, versus electing the ones that CLAIM they will help the poor/middle class, but don't. And then re-electing them after they've proven time and time again they won't help anyone but themselves and their rich owners. And then re-electing them AGAIN after that.

 

Something important to remember is that ultimately, the system is rigged because the poor/middle class ALLOW it. They have the numbers to vote these people down and out while electing the guy nobody ever heard of that would actually do something ... but they won't.

 

And why?

 

Because we're too busy worrying about Kanye and Kim's wedding to give a f*** about NOT electing some corporations/rich persons hand picked rich politician friend.

 

I'm sure Blue-Ivy is up to something pretty awesome today with JayZ and Beyonce, too...

 

So, wait, what were we talking about?

[Jenksismyhero]

Now you've just gotten onto a thread I believe in a lot more. IMO the problem is much more the one you just discussed than the one that has been discussed already. I think that the complete breakdown of how our society distributes wealth is the elephant in the room that underlies this entire discussion and I think fighting that should be our number 1 priority. The top 0.01% have skyrocketed to the detriment of everyone else because they've been able to rig the system. Fix that problem and suddenly you'll discover you've taken large steps towards fixing the others

 

Wealth isn't a zero sum game though, so i'm not sure this theory works. The rich can still get insanely rich without affecting the middle class IF the middle class acts appropriately. The problem we have as a society is that every major product we buy - and consumerism is obviously the bedrock of our economy - is made/sold by very few companies. We're not local at all anymore. We buy from national/global companies. And so of course the few at the top of those businesses make all the money.

 

I don't buy this nonsense that the rich have rigged the game. Yes, they have been able to get out of paying some taxes here or there. They get favors more than your average person. But at the end of the day it comes down to consumer choice. Stop shopping at big box stores, stop buying mass produced goods, let the money fan out and we'll all be better off.

[iamshack]

Wealth isn't a zero sum game though, so i'm not sure this theory works. The rich can still get insanely rich without affecting the middle class IF the middle class acts appropriately. The problem we have as a society is that every major product we buy - and consumerism is obviously the bedrock of our economy - is made/sold by very few companies. We're not local at all anymore. We buy from national/global companies. And so of course the few at the top of those businesses make all the money.

 

I don't buy this nonsense that the rich have rigged the game. Yes, they have been able to get out of paying some taxes here or there. They get favors more than your average person. But at the end of the day it comes down to consumer choice. Stop shopping at big box stores, stop buying mass produced goods, let the money fan out and we'll all be better off.

Yeah, certainly the rise of your Wal-Marts and the demise of your main street small businesses has hurt local economies quite a bit.

 

I posted this a few weeks ago in another thread, about us being in the "new" Gilded Age, where the top 1% just keeps getting more wealthy. I found it to be quite interesting.

 

[Soxbadger]

Sometimes the govt isnt the answer. You cant just wave a magic wand and fix it. You keep saying that blacks were excluded, well news flash, many minorities were excluded. This entire nation was built on exclusion.

 

Here is a fun one, women have been excluded in this country since its inception.

 

Should women get reparations?

 

Because here is the odd historical twist. Almost every person in America had some family member who was excluded to their detriment at some point in American history. Whether its race/religion/gender, someone somewhere did not get a fair shake.

 

So its great that he thinks his people are deserving of something more, that they were treated unfairly. But it just doesnt solve anything, if anything it would probably be counter-productive. You cant force people to like a race or religion.