So my hometown has the distinction of being rated the worst in the United States for African Americans.
Notice anything?
There seems to be some dark magic that keeps Black people from crossing the Illinois River. Why that is is another thread. Here we are going to talk about what is and isn't being done about it.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has released a final rule to equip communities that receive HUD funding with the data and tools that will help them to meet long-standing fair housing obligations in their use of HUD funds. HUD will provide publicly open data for grantees to use to assess the state of fair housing within their communities and to set locally-determined priorities and goals. The rule responds to recommendations of the Government Accountability Office and stakeholders for HUD to enhance its fair housing planning obligations by providing greater clarity and support to jurisdictions receiving HUD funding, and facilitating local decision-making on fair housing priorities and goals.
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/affht_pt.html
The Obama administration has been doing a lot to reverse the old policy (first stated and later implied) of putting minorities in high density urban buildings and whites in single family homes by mixing subsidized housing into richer areas but there is a lot of push back.
Scenes like that play out on a smaller scale pretty much any time a low income multi family building gets put up.
Or when schools get desegregated.
But there was election or something (who can keep up) and there is a new sheriff in town.
He doesnt have experince in housing but he does have this going for him.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/23/ben-carson-obamas-housing-rules-try-to-accomplish-/This is what you see in communist countries, where they have so many regulations encircling every aspect of your life that if you don’t agree with them, all they have to do is pull the noose.” — Interview with Jan Mickelson, an Iowa radio talk show host, on June 10, 2015.
It really is not compassionate to pat people on the head and say, ‘There, there you poor little thing, I’m going to take care of all your needs, your healthcare, your food, and your housing, don’t you worry about anything.'” — Speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 26, 2015.
So is concentrating poor minorities the answer?
Are there ways to help struggling communities and school districts in place?
Is segregation a side effect of sensible policy or the intended outcome?
Rules
Morality free zone. Racism is just a thing.
Some president guy has something going on? who cares.
Drink every time someone says social experiment.
Posts
So I cant help but think that the rich schools are spending 12x as much per student, but have long ago hit diminishing returns, and the poor schools are trying to do without text books, class room materials, or even lesson plans.
All this leads to talking points about how we are spending more on students but getting worse results, which is a huge talking point for charter / private schools. Which is also ignoring / not adjusting for inflation.
TLDR: I wish we could send all school funding to the larger municipal / state / federal education authority, and then it gets doled out on a per student basis to cut some of the overspending on schools that long ago hit diminishing returns, and put it into underfunded schools.
MWO: Adamski
Wait Wait Wait. My home town Milwaukee is the worst city for black americans
http://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/milwaukee-named-worst-city-for-black-americans
We even had a 'race riot' this fall. There is no way Peroria jumped us in the rankings.
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2015/10/06/the-worst-cities-for-black-americans/5/
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/10/13/worst-cities-for-black-americans/4/
1. Peoria, IL
> Black population: 9.3%
> Black median income: 46.5% of white income
> White unemployment: 5.4%
> Black unemployment: 15.3%
The poverty rate among black residents in Peoria is more than four times the white poverty rate of 8.2%. Multiple social and economic factors contribute to the significant discrepancy.
Black members of the workforce are far more likely to face difficulty in finding a job than their white counterparts. The black unemployment rate in the metro area is 15.3% compared to a 5.4% white unemployment rate. High incarceration rates also play a considerable role in contributing to regional inequality. Black Peoria residents are nearly nine times more likely to be incarcerated than white residents.
Cool Stuff
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1992/01/1992_bpeamicro_boozer.pdf
So at a certain point, when do you fear not so much white flight, but capital flight, where people with money who don't want to live in poor areas, just move to better areas?
Making what is left a defacto poor area.
Observable all across Europe too and even the ghetos are often ethnic - Turkish, Magreb, South Asian etc. Such a difficult thing to fight against via legislation.
Have no clue how that would work though or if that's even ethical.
You can't get a loan if you live in certain areas because those areas are arbitrarily designated as high risk for loans. No loan = no moving to better part of neighborhood.
Oh, but maybe if you're white you can get a special exception somehow that is totally not tied to being white. Literally same qualifications on paper, except race, and what do you know, some strings can be pulled!
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Is there a source on this? Do they really weight in address in loan applications in the US? Or did you mean like a mortgage or something?
When I worked in car sales there were multiple systems that classified potential customers based off of the media income of where they lived. If you were in the lower areas you were far less likely to be approved for loans through banks or manufacturers. They all have access to this data and while it's not explicitly pointed out. . .it's there.
I do agree that there is a very strong correlation between where one lives and the likelihood to be approved for a loan. Still, if the "address" is part of the evaluation formula, that would be very different than how it's done over here and totally not cool.
That's more like it, and fuck companies that do stuff like this.
Might be a little off topic, but this is something I have experience in. Having done programs at a kind of shitty urban school, a lot of money is spent on unnecessary technology. For example, every classroom has one of these shiny new smart monitors where you can take a stylus and draw on it and it's all very cool.
But it's also expensive and fills the exact same niche as the chalkboards and blackboards every classroom was already equipped with. Meanwhile, the classrooms are overcrowded, a lot of the less sexy equipment like chairs were falling apart, and the teachers were all overworked. Ooops.
That's just from a couple of years of subjective observation when I was in grad school, mind you. It's not like I was attending school district budget meetings or setting up state grants or anything like that. But it seemed very much as if there are some pretty obvious ways to spend smarter, to improve outcomes without having to further increase budgets, even if you're looking at how money is spent at a specific school (whether by the school district itself or by the state).
It's worth noting that you almost certainly still live by section 8 housing.
It's just single or low density multi family and not a thousand unit monster.
Warning- it may make you cry and be filled with powerless rage. ... Also, It's like an hour long.
I see two problems occurring while trying to desegregate areas. If you move poor people into well off neighborhoods, NIMBY kicks in and people whine on and on about diminishing property values and rising crime rates (the last isn't necessarily true, but it's a perception that exists). If you move well off people into poor neighborhooods, people complain bitterly about gentrification.
People can be motifvated to move into new neighbourhoods, but existing residents typically resent the newcomers.
Yeah, sorry, I kind of assumed that redlining was more common knowledge nowadays, or at least it would be to the people in this particular thread.
While it's officially illegal now, it's sure easy for companies to come up with other arbitrary criteria that aren't totally tied to this illegal kind of discrimination, yet somehow manage to allow them to achieve the same ends.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
This problem unfortunately arises from 'well-intentioned' wealthy tech and science folk on the left who want to provide money to the schools in a helpful way, and then look at their own background to decide "What would have helped me when I was at my school?"
Overwhelmingly the answer they come up with is more technology, more freedom, more access to elite lecturers, more ability to work independantly away from school etc. Because they likely went to a decent school. So they set up programs to give every school child a tablet, or provide these fancy digital whiteboards. They might even want to be fair about it, since they know poor children have the most problems, so they have the program focus on poor inner city schools.
But, what these schools really need are things like new flooring, or functional heating, or an extra $1000 a year per teacher to attract better staff. This is all boring and uninspirational. Noone wants to be the tech guy who is making sure that every school in Minnesota has access to sufficient floor cleaner, bleach and mops. Or sufficient chalk. That's all 'boring'.
I saw the same problem when I used to work at a summer camp. We got a tonne of big donations each year. But each always came with strings. This big donation was to build the John Biggs Visitor Center. This one was to install a hummingbird observation walk through the swamp area.
Now, sure, it was great to have these things. But what would have been far more useful would have been taking that say, $5 million dollar visitors center budget and assigning it to generate $10K a year to pay for the camp to always have new netball nets and plenty of balls for sports. Everyone wants to give 'exciting things' not the mundane necessities.
I think the answer to whining is doing at a level where local concerns cannot stop it.
Does such a level exist?
https://youtu.be/wra-krMEvlU
http://www.mtv.com/news/2958552/hud-games/
NNID: Hakkekage
Most authorizers have no diversity requirements to meet before they grant a charter to a school, but they do have a lot of leeway in defining the requirements by themselves. Add on to that the fact that a lot of these authorizers are public university based, which are often dedicated pretty publicly to civil rights and social justice, and there's a chance to organize for big change. Interstate communication between authorizing bodies coming up with serious targets for maintaining diversity could do a lot of good without requiring much in the way of legislation, keeping things feasible even in our horrible new world.
I bolded all the words that mean "care for the poor."
so pretty much all the things conservatives think aren't part of the constitution
strong military!
that's it!
Explicit redlining is illegal, but one form of implicit redlining that is still a problem is that homes in predominantly black neighborhoods get appraised for lower values than equivalent homes in white neighborhoods, even after controlling for things like school quality and crime rate. This is enough of a problem that it's one of the causes of slower wealth accumulation among black people even when they're high income.
This works out in your favor if you're moving in to such a neighborhood, but not if you're moving out.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
School desegregation seems like a way to go about that. College is good about broadening horizons because it exposes you to different kinds of people, and that should happen in youth if at all possible.
I can agree with this. It was really disappointing getting to college and seeing how unprepared a lot of students from poorer schools were. There was a disproportionate racial make-up and it really came right down to where they were born.
Now, of course with the right stuff a lot of those students are able to pull through but there is still a definite divide.
It doesn't help that college towns are some of the worst offenders of socioeconomic division. Article from 2 years ago, but I can tell you nothing in Madison has changed about this.
Also, here's a couple articles from earlier this year, by a local and active white BLM and YGB (Young Gifted and Black)member, talking about the racial and economic segregation in Madison and Wisconsin, where 31 of 56 black neighborhoods are actually jails.
I wish I could offer some real policy solutions that don't include fantasy, such as ending the war on drugs or a guaranteed universal income or just everyone being kind and fair to everyone else. My own personal solution though has been to stop being all Midwest Nice and to call out racist bullshit when I see it. It's not easy, it has and will continue to lead to some interesting arguments, but I'm tired of not being able to fight back and it's all I've got left at this point.
I think if the focus were more on improving the lives of others and not on how everyone is secretly racist more would be accomplished.
It's not secret racism, it's unconscious bias. It's subtly ingrained attitudes that people have been raised their whole lives with and not even realizing.
Because it's not people actively hating minority children. They just don't want their own children suffering on behalf of other children benefiting, you see. Even if their fears are completely, utterly unjustified.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I didn't say anything about calling people racist, I have but only after they've admitted to it first, but I will point out that their actions and expressed thoughts are being perceived as racist. It's less about changing the racists mind and infinitely more about the people around me and telling them that the racists actions are not ok.
Or teachers not realizing their implicit biases are making them grade minority children's work tougher, or give more severe punishments for the same infractions that white kids get away with. Long article from the American Federation of Teachers on this subject. It's not just the police that have a problem with this issue.
Implicit bias is absolutely a thing and is why, when I do get called a racist, I actually I agree with that assessment of myself. First, it usually throws the other person off of their current mental track because it is a completely unexpected response so they'll listen to my response, and secondly because we all are, to some degree, racist because of our biases and it needs to be recognized for us to do anything about it.
This is a false choice--there is no mutually exclusive relationship between "acknowledging the impact of racism" and "calling everyone else racist all the time". Further your example is hardly a standalone remedy for entrenched trends in housing and school development that enforce historical racial segregation that perpetuates itself unless concerted, direct and racially mindful efforts are maintained to combat them.
Socioeconomic status alone does not explain poor outcomes, and it has already been mentioned above that more funding does not necessarily ensure wise spending. While more funding for troubled/poor outcome areas and more equitable funding across the board are clearly desirable, they cannot operate alone as methods to mitigate racial segregation in school districts. It is at best a narrow-scope solution that ameliorates some of the inequity but does not remedy the most pernicious outcomes. Additionally ensuring that low SES schools receive adequate funding means restructuring how public schools are typically funded (extremely localized property taxes for the most part), which is a tall order and violates your recommendation to focus on things "unlikely to be controversial" (local control of school districts, on the basis of direct stakeholders having direct impact and control, is highly controversial at local levels; shifting off property tax would almost certainly require a revenue increase somewhere else in state budgets, and that means politically contentious tax raises; shifting tax revenues from high income earners to low income is obviously a controversial mandate, particularly for the high income earners). That is not to say that funding equity is not important--it certainly is--but it is hardly enough.
Secondly your framing leaves no room for disparate impact of laws and practices that are not expressly racially motivated but result in pernicious effects along racial lines. There is a very recent (and of course narrow) SCOTUS case affirming this interpretation of discriminatory effect in the housing space, and I will find it and post tomorrow--it's late.
NNID: Hakkekage
The problem is that we have been doing that since we started and the gaps between white and black achievement remains.
Like, Non controversial is putting your new housing project on the cheapest land available (the black part of town) which concentrates poverty in the black part of town which drives down land prices making it cheaper to put the next project there.......
Controversial is things that actual work like school integration.
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/who-wants-affordable-housing-their-backyard-equilibrium-analysis-low
Goes into great detail of this, but in low-minority neighborhoods in the 3rd quartile(38k-55k) for income, the total utility generated per household by a LIHTC project is -$4,605, for the 4th quartile(>55k) its -$14,232
Talking about "things that actually work" is easy to do when it's some theoretical thing, but it's different than raising taxes, it's picking a specific group of people to lose thousands of dollars. When it's 3% off the value of your house, the single biggest investment most people own, that's something people will fight against.
From Ta-Nehisi Coates's essay in the Atlantic, "The Case for Reparations":
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/