Guest post: Guess who some of those other racist developers were
Guest post by James Garnett
Today on cnn.com I see that Donald Trump gave a speech in which he says that he will “fix the inner cities”. He complained about violence and shootings, declaring “we, as a society, cannot tolerate this level of violence and suffering”. It seems like he thinks that the problem of “the inner cities” is violence, and moreover that his solution is probably stricter sentencing, prison terms, etc.
But what really is the “problem” of the inner cities in America’s larger metropolitan areas? Surely there are many causes, but one that seems to be consistent is poverty. Violence always naturally follows where poverty takes root. It didn’t used to be like that, though—poverty was not always endemic in urban areas. So what happened?
Bill O’Reilly’s hometown of Levittown can shed some light on that. Levittown was a development for returning veterans after WWII, promising affordable homes away from the city center, but with one catch: only white people were allowed to purchase the homes. This was laid out, explicitly, in the purchase contracts. Remember, these were affordable homes that people could own, rather than continuing to rent in the cities. So of course, there was urban flight of the white population from the population center, towards Levittown. If you were black, then even if you had the ability to obtain a mortgage to buy a home in Levittown, they wouldn’t sell to you. So you stayed downtown, renting, and not just any rents, either—high rents, with sometimes onerous conditions upon them.
Over time, those homes in Levittown (which is approaching 40 years old, I believe) grew in value. Equity accumulated. They are apparently quite pricey now, and those families that were lucky enough to buy in when they were affordable are now fundamentally wealthy. Meanwhile, the people left behind in the cities remain just as poor, or poorer, than they were before. They were denied the opportunity to accumulate 40 years of equity, simply because of racist policies by developers.
And guess who some of those other racist developers were, who denied housing to minorities? People like Donald Trump’s father, who built a real estate empire in the same way that Levittown was built.
That’s right, Trump: YOU and yours broke the inner cities. And now you claim that you, and only you, can fix the problem? By imposing stricter laws? How is that going to address the problem of poverty and denial of access to ways to develop real wealth—the problem that YOU caused?
Ophelia reminded me of this post of hers, which is where I first started learning about these things. Rothstein is VERY insightful.
I had a conversation online about this, elsewhere, and a very common objection came up. When I pointed out the facts that I related in the above post, my interlocutor asked: “At what point can we expect people to take responsibility for their own lives and community?”, by which he meant to imply that the problems of racial inequality and injustice are over, and that now it’s up to the black community to get ahead on their own.
But really, no, that’s not it. Things are not that much different today. The explicit laws preventing minorities from buying homes are gone, yes. But generations of not building equity means that now they are (essentially) just starting out. The children of those families from the 60’s and 70’s not only didn’t build equity, they also didn’t have the opportunity to attend university and get good jobs. Don’t forget that it was Big News in the 1960’s for a black man to attend the University of Mississippi, and when I matriculated to the college of engineering at my university in 1984, there were still no black people at all (and exactly two women) in my class. Yes, we need to change attitudes that these things are unavailable to them. I don’t think that it’s incumbent upon them to take the initiative, though. I don’t think that I can float to the moon, because I’ve never been able to do; if something has changed and that’s possible, than can someone help me do it, or teach me how? Why would I even think that floating to the moon is possible? Nobody in my family has ever floated to the moon. I heard that some white guys did it, once.
It’s not a matter of “people taking responsibility”. Yes, it’s true that to some degree we (as a society) need to demonstrate to people that they have opportunities now, and we need to do that by actually helping their children take advantage of those opportunities, among other things.
Hasn’t it been inferred that the Trump “fix” for inner cities is nuclear annihilation? Horrible that such things can even be thought, however improbable, but that is what his rhetoric laid the foundations for; as Trump Sr’s business and those of his cohort laid the ground for the present poverty, violence and crime.
Almost all of America’s inner-city hell-holes have been captive Democrat fiefdoms for decades now. Huge swaths of Detroit, for example, look like something out of an episode of “Life After People”. I doubt Trump has ever had any significant business dealings in the Motor City.
What on earth does that have to do with anything? Are you claiming that Detroit is the way it is because Democrats were in the majority there? Housing segregation and the vagaries of the auto industry irrelevant?
Motown blues?
Leavittown, built between 1947 and 51. Rather more than 40 years ago.
[…] Guest post by James Garnett, a followup to his post yesterday. […]
Speaking of racist property developers…
Not a fan of Trump by any means but blaming him for something his father did seems bizarre.