Just started reading Michael Eric Dyson’s newest book, and it already speaks directly to something I have been thinking for a long time: That white people need to listen to black people. Here’s an excerpt talking about a meeting with some prominent black folks (Horne, Belafonte, Baldwin) and Bobby Kennedy.
“In fact, the brutal battering he suffered at the hands of the Baldwin crew offers an important lesson to white people about how to start real change. And that involves sometimes sitting silently, and finally, as black folks have been forced to do, listening, and listening, and listening, and listening some more.”
Why should white people listen to others complaining about how awful they supposedly are? Where is the advantage in that?
People are motivated by self-interest. They're not going to do anything unless it benefits them. As far as I know, endlessly apologizing for things beyond your control does not benefit anyone. It simply makes you look weak, and gives others license to try and take more from you.
‘
I Put in White Tenants’: The Grim, Racist (and Likely Illegal) Methods of One Brooklyn Landlord
May 12, 2015
‘I Put in White Tenants’: The Grim, Racist (and Likely Illegal) Methods of One Brooklyn Landlord
A book you might want to read.
Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City
Baltimore is the setting for (and typifies) one of the most penetrating examinations of bigotry and residential segregation ever published in the United States. Antero Pietila shows how continued discrimination practices toward African Americans and Jews have shaped the cities in which we now live. Eugenics, racial thinking, and white supremacist attitudes influenced even the federal government's actions toward housing in the 20th century, dooming American cities to ghettoization. This all-American tale is told through the prism of Baltimore, from its early suburbanization in the 1880s to the consequences of "white flight" after World War II, and into the first decade of the twenty-first century. The events are real, and so are the heroes and villains. Mr. Pietila's engrossing story is an eye-opening journey into city blocks and neighborhoods, shady practices, and ruthless promoters.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1566638437/?tag=slatmaga-20
White racial attitudes over time: Data from the General Social Survey
“In 2008, a nontrivial proportion of whites nationwide, 28%, still support an individual homeowner’s right to discriminate on the basis of race when selling a home, and even nearly 1 in 4 highly educated Northern whites adopt this position.”
- One part of more recent surveys (2000) showed respondents a “card depicting a 15-house neighborhood with their own home in the middle, and asked to indicate their preferred racial mixture by writing a ‘W’ (for white), ‘B’ (for black), ‘A’ (for Asian), or ‘H’ (for Hispanic) in the remaining homes.” The results “highlight the likely difficulty of creating stably integrated communities,” the researchers write. Indeed, “1 in 5 whites nationally created an ideal neighborhood that was all white; 1 in 4 created a neighborhood with no blacks in it; and 1 in 3 created a neighborhood with no Hispanics or no Asians.”
- Preferences among minority groups were different, but not without other bias: “Similarly, though fewer than 1 in 10 blacks created an all-black neighborhood or one with no whites, almost 2 out of 5 created ideal neighborhoods with no Hispanics or Asians in them.”
- In 1990 white respondents were asked if they were willing to live in a neighborhood where “half of your neighbors were blacks” and only 10% said they would. That figure rose to 25% in 2008.
- “When first measured in 1990, fully 65% of whites opposed a black-white union, while 40+% opposed Asian-white or Hispanic-white unions. The data since then reveal both a general decline in objection to racial intermarriage and a considerable narrowing of the size of the gap between opposition to black-white unions and either Asian- or Hispanic-white unions. Nonetheless, even in 2008, 1 in 4 whites either ‘opposed’ or ‘strongly opposed’ a close relative or family member marrying a black person.”
- “In 1990, when first assessed, roughly 65% of whites rated blacks as less hard-working than whites, while just under 60% rated blacks as less intelligent than whites. Such negative stereotyping subsequently falls for both traits, particularly between 1990 and 1996, remaining relatively stable over the ensuing decade.”
.” However, “despite accepting integration as a general principle and a small minority presence in schools, neighborhoods or other public social spaces, whites express strong social distance preferences; indeed, a racial hierarchy of association remains, with African Americans at or near its bottom.”
White racial attitudes over time: Data from the General Social Survey - Journalist's Resource
A Tax on Blackness
Racism is still rampant in real estate.
Compared to whites,
according to a 2013 study from the Urban Institute and Department of Housing and Urban Development, black renters learned about 11 percent fewer rental units and black homebuyers were shown roughly 20 percent fewer homes; Asian renters learned about 7 percent fewer properties, while Asian homebuyers also learned about 20 percent fewer homes; and Latino renters learned about 12 percent fewer units. (There was no difference in the treatment of Latino homebuyers.)
As NPR points out in its analysis, this wasn’t a regional problem: Researchers ran their experiment in 28 different metropolitan regions, with similar results.
Finally, we see it in the financial penalty that accrues to middle-class blacks who live in predominantly black, middle-class neighborhoods. Here’s how the
Washington Post describes the phenomenon,
writing about the largely black Prince George’s County, Maryland. “Most whites live in largely white neighborhoods, where homes often prove to be a better investment because people of all races want to live there. Predominantly black communities tend to attract a narrower group of mainly black buyers, dampening demand and prices, they say.” For wealthy blacks who bought into Prince George’s County for the comfort they felt in a mostly black community, that “meant their home brought them less wealth than if they had purchased elsewhere.”
"Put differently, they suffered a kind of tax that reflects the stigma associated with blackness, independent of wealth or status. It doesn’t matter how rich the inhabitants are. If a neighborhood is black, other groups don’t want to live there, hurting the value. And on the other end, while we tend to associate gentrification with poor minority neighborhoods, the reality is a little different.
According to a Harvard study on Chicago neighborhoods, full gentrification only happened in low-income neighborhoods with substantial white populations, 35 percent. If there's an equally substantial black population, around 40 percent, the process either slowed, or stopped altogether."
"Don’t fool yourself into thinking the Brooklyn landlord is a New York problem. He is just a dramatic example of a dynamic that happens in neighborhoods across the country, in subtle, often imperceptible ways. Realtors discourage black and brown buyers; lenders charge higher rates to them"
"Despite the laws we pass and the values we say we have, discrimination is part and parcel of how Americans do housing. It’s how it was 100 years ago, and it’s how it is now."
Persistent Racism in Housing Is a Tax on Blackness
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