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I live in a neighborhood built in the early 40s in the East Bay, and is marked red in the NYT article. This crisis is one of those "You reap what you sow" mome

I live in a neighborhood built in the early 40s in the East Bay, and is marked red in the NYT article. This crisis is one of those "You reap what you sow" moments caused in large part by institutionalized racism. It is not hyperbole, I have seen the old covenants included with my parent's house, also in the East Bay, that literally said no POC could live there. These covenants are of course now invalid, but thats where zoning comes to into play. The rules now latched on by NIMBYs, such as minimum lot sizes, low lot occupancy, low heights etc. were precisely implemented to keep POC from being able to afford to move into largely white suburban neighborhoods. Depending on the racial composition of certain neighborhoods, they would be zoned to allow denser development, or restrict them to SFH. All this combined with lending practices where banks "redlined" neighborhoods that were deemed too full of POC has brought us where we are today, even in the progressive Bay Area [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/books/review/richard-rothstein-color-of-law-forgotten-history.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/books/review/richard-roth...

DoreenMichele 9y ago
Of the first 67,000 mortgages insured by the G.I. Bill, fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites. * It is a figure that makes me want to throw up, and I'm not even black. I feel like this country owes blacks (as a group) probably a few billion dollars in some sense. Barriers to home buying for African Americans constitutes actively preventing them from creating savings and financial security. Homeownership has historically provided half or more of the value of the nest egg for most ordinary (aka not rich) Americans. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_and_the_G.I._Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_and_the_G.I....
- mercutio2 9y ago
  Much more than single digit billions. This, and redlining, are the core of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s very compelling argument for reparations on the order of trillions in 2017 dollars. We’ll never do it, of course, but it would be the moral and just thing. It’d probably have a positive effect on the economy, too, but Trump voters wouldn’t stand for it.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    Thank you. I had not heard of that. It tends to go poorly to try to fix such things with money per se. I saw a thing on TV years ago about someone rich whose will stated their estate should be spent on something like medical care for blacks. Nope, it didn't happen. A different show indicated someone gifted an island to the black slave descendents. It was being profiled because they would sell their land, blow the money on a car or whatever and ...it just did not give these folks access to real wealth and power. Kind of like the "Black Wall Street." Whites burned it down, then instituted new building codes to prevent them from rebuilding. The excuse was these were fire safety codes. The reality was it burned down because whites burned it down, not because the buildings were defective in some manner. But I wonder if perhaps smaller initiatives that aren't simply a case of throwing money at the problem might grow out of the growing realization that, no, seriously, they are poor because they were denied access to the means to not be poor, not due to ignorance, laziness, etc. My off the cuff thought is that someone should start a no money down mortgage program for descendents of people of color who were veterans of WW2. Maybe even our government.
    - mercutio2 9y ago
      Coates’s proposal isn’t (much) money in individual pockets, it’s very much like you suggest, subsidies and capital infrastructure. Like I said, pretty compelling arguments and plan.
      - DoreenMichele 9y ago
        I was just kind of thinking out loud. I should probably look the thing up. I have zero familiarity with it. I only recently heard of the very low numbers I cited above and have been feeling like "Damn! Someone should do something to redress this!" And then you said your thing and my big feels and half baked idea came spilling out. It very much upsets me. My dad was career army and fought in WW2. I grew up in a nice house in the suburbs financed by the GI Bill. My dad was part Cherokee. Only about 1/16th, but there is an actor who is full blooded Iroquois who looks uncannily like my father in some photos. Dad was very white passing. But then about 70 percent of African American DNA is European. In the US, if you are 1/8th African, you are "black." It is very arbitrary. So, I find myself pretty incensed. It hits a nerve for me.
- GiorgioG 9y ago
  > I feel like this country owes blacks (as a group) probably a few billion dollars in some sense. This might come as a surprise to you...but this country has exploited many people (immigrants, non-whites, etc.) over the course of history - if the country had to pay for all the wrongs, we'd be bankrupt.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    Or maybe women, people of color and others would be more comfortable and a small subset of ultra wealthy folks would merely be rich.
    - ra1n85 9y ago
      >and a small subset of ultra wealthy folks would merely be rich. Do you genuinely believe this to be a possible outcome? The incentives for those with wealth, and very real political power, would be to rest any financial burden upon the tax payer. We have sent thousands overseas to die or be horribly maimed forever, and then burdened their children with the bill for the whole endeavor - what would be different here?
      - DoreenMichele 9y ago
        Slavery was outlawed. That was likely unimaginable at one time. Women eventually gained the right to vote. That was a long, hard battle too. Average education level of women in the era of Lincoln was elementary school age. Slaves were forbidden from being allowed to learn to read. I have read that in terms of relative wealth, our first president was the richest president we have had. So it seems to me that we have made progress on that at the societal level already. It doesn't have to happen, say, in the span of a year or two for me to think it worth espousing. I am an old woman who raised two special needs kids. I am okay with taking a longer view than the next 5 minutes, so to speak.
    - Buge 9y ago
      Gender seems different than race. With race the inequality is passed on through the generations. You inherit the discrimination against your ancestors. Gender inequality is not really passed on, because whether someone is rich or poor, male or female, they have a 50% chance of having a son or daughter.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

Of the first 67,000 mortgages insured by the G.I. Bill, fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites. * It is a figure that makes me want to throw up, and I'm not even black. I feel like this country owes blacks (as a group) probably a few billion dollars in some sense. Barriers to home buying for African Americans constitutes actively preventing them from creating savings and financial security. Homeownership has historically provided half or more of the value of the nest egg for most ordinary (aka not rich) Americans. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_and_the_G.I._Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_and_the_G.I....

mercutio2 9y ago
Much more than single digit billions. This, and redlining, are the core of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s very compelling argument for reparations on the order of trillions in 2017 dollars. We’ll never do it, of course, but it would be the moral and just thing. It’d probably have a positive effect on the economy, too, but Trump voters wouldn’t stand for it.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  Thank you. I had not heard of that. It tends to go poorly to try to fix such things with money per se. I saw a thing on TV years ago about someone rich whose will stated their estate should be spent on something like medical care for blacks. Nope, it didn't happen. A different show indicated someone gifted an island to the black slave descendents. It was being profiled because they would sell their land, blow the money on a car or whatever and ...it just did not give these folks access to real wealth and power. Kind of like the "Black Wall Street." Whites burned it down, then instituted new building codes to prevent them from rebuilding. The excuse was these were fire safety codes. The reality was it burned down because whites burned it down, not because the buildings were defective in some manner. But I wonder if perhaps smaller initiatives that aren't simply a case of throwing money at the problem might grow out of the growing realization that, no, seriously, they are poor because they were denied access to the means to not be poor, not due to ignorance, laziness, etc. My off the cuff thought is that someone should start a no money down mortgage program for descendents of people of color who were veterans of WW2. Maybe even our government.
  - mercutio2 9y ago
    Coates’s proposal isn’t (much) money in individual pockets, it’s very much like you suggest, subsidies and capital infrastructure. Like I said, pretty compelling arguments and plan.
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      I was just kind of thinking out loud. I should probably look the thing up. I have zero familiarity with it. I only recently heard of the very low numbers I cited above and have been feeling like "Damn! Someone should do something to redress this!" And then you said your thing and my big feels and half baked idea came spilling out. It very much upsets me. My dad was career army and fought in WW2. I grew up in a nice house in the suburbs financed by the GI Bill. My dad was part Cherokee. Only about 1/16th, but there is an actor who is full blooded Iroquois who looks uncannily like my father in some photos. Dad was very white passing. But then about 70 percent of African American DNA is European. In the US, if you are 1/8th African, you are "black." It is very arbitrary. So, I find myself pretty incensed. It hits a nerve for me.
GiorgioG 9y ago
> I feel like this country owes blacks (as a group) probably a few billion dollars in some sense. This might come as a surprise to you...but this country has exploited many people (immigrants, non-whites, etc.) over the course of history - if the country had to pay for all the wrongs, we'd be bankrupt.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  Or maybe women, people of color and others would be more comfortable and a small subset of ultra wealthy folks would merely be rich.
  - ra1n85 9y ago
    >and a small subset of ultra wealthy folks would merely be rich. Do you genuinely believe this to be a possible outcome? The incentives for those with wealth, and very real political power, would be to rest any financial burden upon the tax payer. We have sent thousands overseas to die or be horribly maimed forever, and then burdened their children with the bill for the whole endeavor - what would be different here?
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      Slavery was outlawed. That was likely unimaginable at one time. Women eventually gained the right to vote. That was a long, hard battle too. Average education level of women in the era of Lincoln was elementary school age. Slaves were forbidden from being allowed to learn to read. I have read that in terms of relative wealth, our first president was the richest president we have had. So it seems to me that we have made progress on that at the societal level already. It doesn't have to happen, say, in the span of a year or two for me to think it worth espousing. I am an old woman who raised two special needs kids. I am okay with taking a longer view than the next 5 minutes, so to speak.
  - Buge 9y ago
    Gender seems different than race. With race the inequality is passed on through the generations. You inherit the discrimination against your ancestors. Gender inequality is not really passed on, because whether someone is rich or poor, male or female, they have a 50% chance of having a son or daughter.