3 ms·

Multiple Houston suburban neighborhoods have been ruined by "integrative" public housing developments. The situation you're describing sounds rather different (

by wyager 10y ago

Multiple Houston suburban neighborhoods have been ruined by "integrative" public housing developments. The situation you're describing sounds rather different (more organic, in particular). We also can't expect uniform results across the board. > "White flight" was an irrational What's irrational about it? The suburbs created as a result of "white flight" are objectively vastly safer than the places the now middle-class suburbanites were fleeing from.

tptacek 10y ago
The dominant economic power reacted to de jure segregation by creating a regime of de facto financially-enforced segregation. It's awfully nervy of you to blame the victims of that effort for its effects.
- wyager 10y ago
  Ah, so the fleeing middle class is to blame for protecting their own interests by choosing to peacefully leave the bad situation they were in? It's not like the people fleeing the inner cities salted the earth when they left. They simply refused to put up with increasing crime and poverty. I'm not sure how one would rationally consider anyone to be a "victim" of that peaceful outmigration.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Yes. Racist white people who fled an influx of black neighbors after the elimination of redlining are to blame for deliberately trying to recreate segregation. Not even a difficult call.
    - wyager 10y ago
      > Racist Why do you think they were motivated by racism? Safety and superior economic environments were far and away the most pressing factors that led the middle class to flee declining urban areas. > deliberately trying to recreate segregation. They weren't deliberately trying to create segregation; they were trying to protect themselves and their families, both physically and financially. De facto segregation may have been a consequence of that, but we have no reason to suspect that it was an explicit goal.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        Yes: white flight is obviously the product of a cascade, seeded by the belief of a core group of virulently anti-black racists that any incursion of black residents in all-white neighborhoods will bring crime with them, and bolstered by the rational belief by other white residents that the reactions of their racist neighbors will decrease property values, spur an exodus from the neighborhood that harms the tax base, and eventuate the crime that the racists were concerned about. Like I said: I'm willing to concede that not all of the participants in white flight were wearing Klan hoods. What I'm not willing to do is blame their victims for the systemic, perpetual disadvantage this phenomenon created.
        wyager 10y ago
        > black residents in all-white neighborhoods will bring crime with them Well, yes, this is unfortunately true. http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac%3A112755 http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac%3A112755 https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Survey-Analysis/Demographics https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Survey-Analysis/Demograph... http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf http://www.jstor.org/stable/2779588?seq=1 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2779588?seq=1 http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2004.037705 http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2004.0... https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-43 https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-... As I said, middle class flight was entirely rational.
        tptacek 10y ago
        You have demonstrated a correlation that social scientists have studied for more than 3 decades and presented it as if the causation was both well-understood and supported your argument. That's extremely disingenuous.
        wyager 10y ago
        http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2014/02/correlation-is-evidence-of-causation.html http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2014/02/correlation-is-evide... Your comment is severely misguided in several ways. 1. Correlation does not prove causation, but it is evidence of a causal relationship. 2. Optimal decision theory doesn't require you to be 100% sure that evidence is causal. You can still use correlations to make good decisions. "Oh, it's not clear that eating paint causes me to be sick; it could be that my body getting sick causes me to eat paint." Doesn't matter! You still shouldn't eat paint. 3. History proved the fleeing middle class correct. Inner-city urban districts did go to shit. They were right, you would have been wrong. 4. Consider the four possibilities in the article I linked. One of them is vastly more likely than the others. * Poor inner-city immigration => increased crime (reasonable, with strong evidence) * Increased crime => poor inner-city immigration (violates temporal causality) * Secondary factor => (increased crime) ∧ (poor inner-city immigration) (reasonable, but we haven't seen strong evidence for this) * No causal relationship (unlikely in the face of all the data) You can't ask people to risk life and limb on the extremely remote chance that the world happens to work the way you wish it did, despite all evidence to the contrary.

by wyager 10y ago

tptacek 10y ago

The dominant economic power reacted to de jure segregation by creating a regime of de facto financially-enforced segregation. It's awfully nervy of you to blame the victims of that effort for its effects.

wyager 10y ago
Ah, so the fleeing middle class is to blame for protecting their own interests by choosing to peacefully leave the bad situation they were in? It's not like the people fleeing the inner cities salted the earth when they left. They simply refused to put up with increasing crime and poverty. I'm not sure how one would rationally consider anyone to be a "victim" of that peaceful outmigration.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Yes. Racist white people who fled an influx of black neighbors after the elimination of redlining are to blame for deliberately trying to recreate segregation. Not even a difficult call.
  - wyager 10y ago
    > Racist Why do you think they were motivated by racism? Safety and superior economic environments were far and away the most pressing factors that led the middle class to flee declining urban areas. > deliberately trying to recreate segregation. They weren't deliberately trying to create segregation; they were trying to protect themselves and their families, both physically and financially. De facto segregation may have been a consequence of that, but we have no reason to suspect that it was an explicit goal.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Yes: white flight is obviously the product of a cascade, seeded by the belief of a core group of virulently anti-black racists that any incursion of black residents in all-white neighborhoods will bring crime with them, and bolstered by the rational belief by other white residents that the reactions of their racist neighbors will decrease property values, spur an exodus from the neighborhood that harms the tax base, and eventuate the crime that the racists were concerned about. Like I said: I'm willing to concede that not all of the participants in white flight were wearing Klan hoods. What I'm not willing to do is blame their victims for the systemic, perpetual disadvantage this phenomenon created.
      - wyager 10y ago
        > black residents in all-white neighborhoods will bring crime with them Well, yes, this is unfortunately true. http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac%3A112755 http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac%3A112755 https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Survey-Analysis/Demographics https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Survey-Analysis/Demograph... http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf http://www.jstor.org/stable/2779588?seq=1 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2779588?seq=1 http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2004.037705 http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2004.0... https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-43 https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-... As I said, middle class flight was entirely rational.
        tptacek 10y ago
        You have demonstrated a correlation that social scientists have studied for more than 3 decades and presented it as if the causation was both well-understood and supported your argument. That's extremely disingenuous.
        wyager 10y ago
        http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2014/02/correlation-is-evidence-of-causation.html http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2014/02/correlation-is-evide... Your comment is severely misguided in several ways. 1. Correlation does not prove causation, but it is evidence of a causal relationship. 2. Optimal decision theory doesn't require you to be 100% sure that evidence is causal. You can still use correlations to make good decisions. "Oh, it's not clear that eating paint causes me to be sick; it could be that my body getting sick causes me to eat paint." Doesn't matter! You still shouldn't eat paint. 3. History proved the fleeing middle class correct. Inner-city urban districts did go to shit. They were right, you would have been wrong. 4. Consider the four possibilities in the article I linked. One of them is vastly more likely than the others. * Poor inner-city immigration => increased crime (reasonable, with strong evidence) * Increased crime => poor inner-city immigration (violates temporal causality) * Secondary factor => (increased crime) ∧ (poor inner-city immigration) (reasonable, but we haven't seen strong evidence for this) * No causal relationship (unlikely in the face of all the data) You can't ask people to risk life and limb on the extremely remote chance that the world happens to work the way you wish it did, despite all evidence to the contrary.