The Ghetto is Public Policy

[Balta1701]

I dunno about money, but it certainly centralizes the crime and the city and suburbs are all big fans of that.

(it also keeps the poor people in areas that are more polluted and still have higher rates of lead contamination, but that's also a side issue to this discussion even if it may well be the most important detail)

[Jenksismyhero]

And what I'm saying is that the data are quite conclusive. The more times you pull kids away from parents, even unfit parents, the more adults you wind up in Jail or dead. You aren't saving kids by taking them out of those homes.

 

Since it's never been tried before, you can't say for sure if that would be the result.

[Soxbadger]

It's not "making" an conclusions there but simply reporting a fact that other research has found. It's an article in a magazine about a large, broad topic, not a detailed research paper on a narrow, specific issue. Perhaps the answer to your question lies in the cited research work.

 

 

 

I don't think that's the right reading of what he's saying at all, and you can look back to some of his other articles like the "other people's pathologies" one I linked for some more writing specific to that situation. It seems to me that you're bringing a bunch of prior assumptions about what TNC is saying into your reading of the article and its coloring your response to it. And it's not something that TNC came up with, the "twice as good" idea.

 

Its not my job to write a better article, if he wants to convince me that A+B= C then he should do it. Its a bunch of pretty words and anecdotal stories. But when he wrote it, he had the conclusion already. It is self serving, even down to the slight of hand use of percentages versus fractions:

 

The Pew Research Center estimates that white households are worth roughly 20 times as much as black households, and that whereas only 15 percent of whites have zero or negative wealth, more than a third of blacks do. Effectively, the black family in America is working without a safety net.

 

So here is something interesting. See how he switches from percentages to fractions. Its clever most people arent good with fractions so he can get away with saying more than a third of blacks have negative wealth (interesting that the white percentage is exact where he rounds the black percentage). Secondly his conclusion "effectively the black family is working without a safety net" is not even supported by his numbers. Using his facts, 85% of whites have positive wealth and 67% of blacks have positive wealth.

 

So why is only the black family working without a safety net?

 

 

[StrangeSox]

What do you imagine he's "get[ting] away with" there? He could have just as easily and correctly said that blacks have a negative wealth rate that's more than double the white rate. That would be even more dramatic than whatever trick you think he's trying to pull by saying "more than a third" instead of 33%.

 

FWIW I found Sharkey's email address and dropped him a line asking if he might be able to expand on what Coates was referencing there or at least point me to the proper reference.

[Jenksismyhero]

He also ignores progress the black community has made over the years economically, educationally and socially.

 

http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/03...gn-supreme.html

[Soxbadger]

What do you imagine he's "get[ting] away with" there? He could have just as easily and correctly said that blacks have a negative wealth rate that's more than double the white rate. That would be even more dramatic than whatever trick you think he's trying to pull by saying "more than a third" instead of 33%.

 

FWIW I found Sharkey's email address and dropped him a line asking if he might be able to expand on what Coates was referencing there or at least point me to the proper reference.

 

Hes trying to imply that all white people have it made and all black people dont. Otherwise why round 1 number and not the other? Its a classic word trick.

 

If I want to make something sound smaller: "Less than 16% of white people have negative wealth"

 

If I want to make something sound bigger "Over 14% of white people have negative wealth"

 

If I want to be accurate "15% of white people have negative wealth"

 

Its clever, most people wont pick up on it.

[StrangeSox]

He also ignores progress the black community has made over the years economically, educationally and socially.

 

http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/03...gn-supreme.html

 

I don't think Noah's reading of that article by Coates is accurate. I've never taken away the message that "no progress has been made" from his writing. That's a pretty odd reading when he writes at length about the Contract Buyers League and the opening up of federal programs along with the diminishing use of legal redlining.

[StrangeSox]

Hes trying to imply that all white people have it made and all black people dont. Otherwise why round 1 number and not the other? Its a classic word trick.

 

If I want to make something sound smaller: "Less than 16% of white people have negative wealth"

 

If I want to make something sound bigger "Over 14% of white people have negative wealth"

 

If I want to be accurate "15% of white people have negative wealth"

 

Its clever, most people wont pick up on it.

 

You have a very weird binary reading of things sometimes. For what it's worth, he also rounded the white wealth percentage up from 14.5%:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/...ut-wealth-isnt/

Overall, though, blacks continue to carry more debt relative to their household assets than do whites: 34.5% of average assets, versus 14.5% for white households.

 

I think it's simply a matter of stylistic choice there, and we say "a third" a lot in common speech whereas 15% doesn't break down into a nice fraction.

Edited May 28, 2014 by StrangeSox

[Jenksismyhero]

I don't think Noah's reading of that article by Coates is accurate. I've never taken away the message that "no progress has been made" from his writing. That's a pretty odd reading when he writes at length about the Contract Buyers League and the opening up of federal programs along with the diminishing use of legal redlining.

 

I guess I'm combining the two articles of his, this was from the one you linked this morning:

 

Jonathan Chait is not a politician. He needs neither to assemble a 60-vote majority nor worry about his words affecting the midterms. I'm happy that Chait decided to engage me here on a subject that he, himself, confesses is hard to quantify. I wish I'd had his input over the past few months when I was poring over redlining maps and grappling with the racism implicit in the New Deal. I wish I'd had his input when I was attempting to understand what it meant that in 1860 this country's most valuable asset was enslaved human beings. I think had we engaged each other then, he might well not have written something like this:

 

It is hard to explain how the United States has progressed from chattel slavery to emancipation to the end of lynching to the end of legal segregation to electing an African-American president if America has “rarely” been the ally of African-Americans and “often” its nemesis. It is one thing to notice the persistence of racism, quite another to interpret the history of black America as mainly one of continuity rather than mainly one of progress.

 

This certainly is a specimen of progress—much like the ill-tempered man might "progress" from shooting at his neighbors to clubbing them and then finally settle on simply robbing them. His victims, bloodied, beaten, and pilfered, might view his "progress" differently. Effectively Chait's rendition of history amounts to, "How can you say I have a history of violence given that I've repeatedly stopped pummeling you?"

 

Chait's jaunty and uplifting narrative flattens out the chaos of history under the cheerful rubric of American progress. The actual events are more complicated. It's true, for instance, that slavery was legal in the United States in 1860 and five years later it was not. That is because a clique of slaveholders greatly overestimated its own power and decided to go to war with its country. Had the Union soundly and quickly defeated the Confederacy, it's very likely that slavery would have remained. Instead the war dragged on, and the Union was forced to employ blacks in its ranks. The end result—total emancipation—was more a matter of military necessity than moral progress.

 

Our greatest president, assessing the contribution of black soldiers in 1864, understood this:

 

We can not spare the hundred and forty or fifty thousand now serving us as soldiers, seamen, and laborers. This is not a question of sentiment or taste, but one of physical force which may be measured and estimated as horse-power and steam-power are measured and estimated. Keep it and you can save the Union. Throw it away, and the Union goes with it.

 

The United States of America did not save black people; black people saved the United States of America. With that task complete, our "ally" proceeded to repay its debt to its black citizens by pretending they did not exist. In 1875, Mississippi's provisional governor, Adelbert Ames, watched as the majority-black state's nascent democracy "progressed" from terrorism to anarchy and then apartheid. Taking in regular reports of blacks being murdered, whipped, and intimidated by the Ku Klux Klan, Ames wrote the administration of President Ulysses Grant begging for aid. The Grant Administration declined:

 

The whole public are tired of these autumnal outbreaks in the South, and the great majority are ready now to condemn any interference on the part of the government.

A horrified and exasperated Ames told his wife that blacks in Mississippi

 

... are to be returned to a condition of serfdom—an era of second slavery .... The nation should have acted but it was “tired of the annual autumnal outbreaks in the South” .... The political death of the negro will forever release the nation from the weariness from such “political outbreaks.” You may think I exaggerate. Time will show you how accurate my statements are.

Ames was totally accurate. For the next century, the United States legitimized the overthrow of legal governments, the reduction of black people to forced laborers, and the complete alienation—at gunpoint—of black people in the South from the sphere of politics.

 

Chait's citation of the end of lynching as evidence of America serving as an "ally" is especially bizarre. The United States never passed anti-lynching legislation, a disgrace so great that it compelled the Senate to apologize—in 2005.

 

"There may be no other injustice in American history," said Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, "for which the Senate so uniquely bears responsibility." Even then, a half century after Emmett Till's murder, the sitting senators from Mississippi—the state with the most lynchings—declined to endorse the apology.

 

"You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches," said Malcolm X, "and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress."

 

The notion that black America's long bloody journey was accomplished through frequent alliance with the United States is an assailant's-eye view of history. It takes no note of the fact that in 1860, most of this country's exports were derived from the forced labor of the people it was "allied" with. It takes no note of this country electing senators who, on the Senate floor, openly advocated domestic terrorism. It takes no note of what it means for a country to tolerate the majority of the people living in a state like Mississippi being denied the right to vote. It takes no note of what it means to exclude black people from the housing programs, from the GI Bills, that built the American middle class. Effectively it takes no serious note of African-American history, and thus no serious note of American history.

 

You see this in Chait's belief that he lives in a country "whose soaring ideals sat uncomfortably aside an often cruel reality." No. Those soaring ideals don't sit uncomfortably aside the reality but comfortably on top of it. The "cruel reality" made the "soaring ideals" possible.

 

He basically scoffs at the idea of any progress because whites don't properly recognize the history of the black man. That's my take away from it.

[Soxbadger]

I don't think Noah's reading of that article by Coates is accurate. I've never taken away the message that "no progress has been made" from his writing. That's a pretty odd reading when he writes at length about the Contract Buyers League and the opening up of federal programs along with the diminishing use of legal redlining.

 

He may not say "no progress has been made", but he clearly believes that we are doomed to failure

 

Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

 

And its interesting that he uses "WE", cause I dont really think he believes he has a moral debt.

[StrangeSox]

What he's talking about there, given the larger context of his back-and-forth with Chait, is our society's reluctance to ever actually honestly and deeply discuss race and our country's past. From Coates' POV, "black culture" and "but look at the progress!" are used as diversionary tactics. His tone can be pessimistic, but I don't think it's right to claim that he pretends or doesn't believe that there's been no progress. To expand on the Malcolm X quote, sure, it was progress when the Reconstruction Amendments were passed, but that knife was still six inches deep in the form of Jim Crow and white terrorism that would follow over the next century. And I don't think he's wrong in arguing that the progress that has been made hasn't come out of alliance with the US government but through ongoing opposition and struggle to the racial policies it kept enacting.

[cabiness42]

You have a very weird binary reading of things sometimes. For what it's worth, he also rounded the white wealth percentage up from 14.5%:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/...ut-wealth-isnt/

 

 

I think it's simply a matter of stylistic choice there, and we say "a third" a lot in common speech whereas 15% doesn't break down into a nice fraction.

 

I'm not going to get into his head to try and determine whether or not he was trying to be misleading, but if you want your work to hold any validity in the statistical community, you can't do stuff like that.

 

[StrangeSox]

He may not say "no progress has been made", but he clearly believes that we are doomed to failure

 

Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

 

Until is the key word there. America isn't and cannot be whole until those debts are reckoned with. That does not say or imply that America cannot or will not reckon.

 

And its interesting that he uses "WE", cause I dont really think he believes he has a moral debt.

 

Why would a black american have a moral debt with respect to anti-black public policy?

[StrangeSox]

I'm not going to get into his head to try and determine whether or not he was trying to be misleading, but if you want your work to hold any validity in the statistical community, you can't do stuff like that.

This wasn't some policy piece and he wasn't doing anything with the numbers but repeating them. It's a rhetorical piece, and he presented the numbers accurately. Rounding to the nearest whole number, 15% of whites have zero or negative net wealth. More than a third, which to me and I expect most people reads as somewhere between 33.4% and maybe 40-45% (otherwise you'd say "nearly half" if you were trying to '"get away with" something), is an accurate representation of 34.5%.

[StrangeSox]

Coates also wrote this follow-up piece on his Atlantic blog, explaining how he moved from being opposed to reparations four years ago to his position today:

 

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

 

he also links to this interview with Duke professor William Darity, who has studied black reparations for twenty years. Links on top of links on top of links in all of these posts.

Edited May 28, 2014 by StrangeSox

[Soxbadger]

Until is the key word there. America isn't and cannot be whole until those debts are reckoned with. That does not say or imply that America cannot or will not reckon.

 

 

 

Why would a black american have a moral debt with respect to anti-black public policy?

 

Right, the ultimate point of the article is that its not at all the fault of black people. That it is OUR fault because before any of us were born, people made laws that were unfair. Its defeatism. It completely takes away the ability of black people to stand on their own two feet.

 

He doesnt even see his own racism, thats the shocking/tragic part. That he somehow believes that blacks are incapable of rising on their own, that they need OUR help.

 

Many blacks treat their own kind poorly. There were black slave holders, black businessmen, black pastors, black slum lords. But they have no moral debt right? Even if they actually caused harm, they have less moral responsibility than me, because I may have gotten some sort of tangential benefit from a policy that no one in my family ever supported.

[StrangeSox]

I don't take away from his writings that he believes black people have no agency.

[Soxbadger]

Then I dont get the point of his article.

 

Wasnt the argument that they started off the race with a disadvantage, so they can never ever catch up, unless of course someone else helps them.

[StrangeSox]

Help, or restoration for generations of exploitation and plunder, doesn't imply that you have no agency.

[Soxbadger]

Help, or restoration for generations of exploitation and plunder, doesn't imply that you have no agency.

 

According to his very article it does:

 

The kind of trenchant racism to which black people have persistently been subjected can never be defeated by making its victims more respectable.

 

No matter what black people do, they cant fix it.

 

He wrote this, not me.

[StrangeSox]

According to his very article it does:

 

 

 

No matter what black people do, they cant fix it.

 

He wrote this, not me.

Yes, and what was the very next sentence he wrote?

 

The essence of American racism is disrespect.

 

So no, his argument isn't that black people are powerless, it's that black people becoming more respectable in the eyes of white society won't fix it because at its heart American racism is about disrespect. So black people have agency, but they cannot change the nature of the racism of society. That is not the same as saying black people are powerless, can't stand on their own two feet and can't do anything on their own. I think he's riffing off of what black nationalist writers, like Malcolm X, have said in the past when he says that.

[Soxbadger]

Yes, and what was the very next sentence he wrote?

 

 

 

So no, his argument isn't that black people are powerless, it's that black people becoming more respectable in the eyes of white society won't fix it because at its heart American racism is about disrespect. So black people have agency, but they cannot change the nature of the racism of society. That is not the same as saying black people are powerless, can't stand on their own two feet and can't do anything on their own. I think he's riffing off of what black nationalist writers, like Malcolm X, have said in the past when he says that.

 

The problem is that if you dont try and fix your own problems, no one is going to help you. And when you have an author completely dismiss anyone who says "We should do more to improve ourselves" it shows a complete lack of understanding of the issue.

 

I have no problem helping people, but Im not sure what good my help will do. You just said it yourself, black people becoming more respectable wont fix it. So no amount of money, education, etc will fix this problem because black people will still be disrespected by white racists.

 

But it has a lot of words, so it must be smart.

 

(edit)

 

Its actually really disheartening because it completely diminishes the accomplishments of many well respected black Americans.

Edited May 28, 2014 by Soxbadger

[southsider2k5]

Yes, and what was the very next sentence he wrote?

 

 

 

So no, his argument isn't that black people are powerless, it's that black people becoming more respectable in the eyes of white society won't fix it because at its heart American racism is about disrespect. So black people have agency, but they cannot change the nature of the racism of society. That is not the same as saying black people are powerless, can't stand on their own two feet and can't do anything on their own. I think he's riffing off of what black nationalist writers, like Malcolm X, have said in the past when he says that.

 

There is an inherent contradiction there. On one hand he is saying that blacks are disrespected by whites in the American society, but then respect seems to be defined by what "white society" does apparently respect, which is power and money, or some other sort of retribution.

[StrangeSox]

When I read those sentences from him, this is what comes to mind for me:

 

Black college student arrested for buying designer belt

Young black woman swarmed by police after buying designer handbag

 

Or Coates' article titled "The Good, Racist People" that was spawned by Academy Award-winning actor Forest Whitaker being accused of shoplifting and frisked in a deli.

 

It doesn't matter how respectable these people made themselves, they were still viewed as criminals or likely criminals. That, I believe, is what he's getting at when he says that racism can't be defeated by blacks becoming more respectable.

[southsider2k5]

When I read those sentences from him, this is what comes to mind for me:

 

Black college student arrested for buying designer belt

Young black woman swarmed by police after buying designer handbag

 

Or Coates' article titled "The Good, Racist People" that was spawned by Academy Award-winning actor Forest Whitaker being accused of shoplifting and frisked in a deli.

 

It doesn't matter how respectable these people made themselves, they were still viewed as criminals or likely criminals. That, I believe, is what he's getting at when he says that racism can't be defeated by blacks becoming more respectable.

 

You don't see the inherent contradiction in defining respect as what "white society" sees as "respectable"? At that point, you set yourself up for a subservient role when you define yourself by someone else's standards.