Friday, September 13, 2013

the enduring false narratives of segregation...,

theatlantic | The September issue of The Atlantic, now available online, includes a "Chartist" feature that graphically synthesizes some of the research we've covered at Cities on the changing shape of segregation in America since the 1960s, its consequences and its costs for everyone.

Several people helped me pull together some of the data points mentioned in the magazine, notably the University of California Berkeley's Rucker Johnson, who has done extensive work on the life outcomes of children who attend segregated schools, and Robert Bullard, who has amassed a frightening collection of research on the health hazards of living in minority communities.

I wanted to share a few more findings that we couldn't squeeze onto the page in the magazine and then throw out some broader questions about why all of these trends persist. First, a few more data points on what segregation means today, even for middle-class minority families:
  • On average, affluent blacks and Hispanics live in neighborhoods with fewer resources than poor whites do.
  • Census data from 2000, for example, showed that the average black household making more than $60,000 lived in a neighborhood with a higher poverty rate than the average white household earning less than $20,000.
  • A longitudinal study run from 1968-2005 found that the average black child spent one-quarter of his or her childhood living in a high-poverty neighborhood. For the average white child, that number is 3 percent.
  • The black child poverty rate in 1968 was 35 percent; it is the same today.
  • Minorities make up 56 percent of the population living in neighborhoods within two miles of the nation's commercial hazardous waste facilities.
  • Middle-income blacks (with household incomes between $50,000-$60,000) live in neighborhoods that are on average more polluted than the average neighborhood where white households making less than $10,000 live.
Segregation still matters because segregated neighborhoods are associated with worse outcomes for health, educational attainment, imprisonment, access to jobs and more. In the magazine, we tried to walk through some of these consequences in terms of the economic growth of whole metropolitan areas.

But one issue we did not get into is why such stark segregation persists, now two full generations after the civil rights era. NYU sociologist Patrick Sharkey discussed this question recently with Richard Florida, drawing on the findings of his recent book, Stuck in Place.

We often blame poor people for their own poverty, and blame whole neighborhoods for the fact that government has systematically failed to invest in them – as the comments on this story recently reminded me. This narrative suggests that everyone would leave segregated, high-poverty, polluted neighborhoods if they just had the money to move out, and that people who don't live in such places arrived where they are through their own hard work and responsibility.

That story, which focuses on the faults and skills of individual people, ignores the fact that we've arrived at this picture of segregation for a lot of complicated, long-running, systemic reasons that are so much bigger than individual families (and whether they have dads or not). For decades, policies around who is eligible for home loans, where we pave highways, and what kinds of houses can be built in some communities have encouraged middle-class whites to leave the city and move into the suburbs. At the same time, ill-fated government ideas about public housing clustered low-income blacks in high-rise housing projects. Mass incarceration further weakened minority communities.

And as Sharkey points out, in the midst of all this, the changing economy also decimated the very same good industrial jobs that drew many blacks to northern cities during the Great Migration in the first place.

All of which is to say that the responsibility for lessening the consequences of segregation does not solely fall on the people who experience it.

16 comments:

ken said...

"lol, I don't believe you Ken."


You might be in a way correct that I am not being entirely honest. I was trying to avoid coming across harsh in your ability to apply Biblical text properly to the situation or issue brought forth. For instance even the name calling Sadducee is not applicable for me. Sadducees didn't believe in an eternal soul existence or afterlife, no hell or heaven, no soul condemnation. Perhaps for the type of grievance you are leveling against me, a Pharisee would have been a better choice. I personally don't think of myself that way, but I suspect the point you are trying to make about me that would have been the proper name to pull out for your name calling purposes.

CNu said...

I was trying to avoid coming across harsh in your ability to apply Biblical text properly to the situation or issue
brought forth. rotflmbao...., whew!!!!

Please don't do that Ken!!! SMDH at the functional equivalent of my son at the age of 8 berating me for not appreciating the inherent worth of some of his Pokemon cards...,

CNu said...

My "name-calling purposes" take a distant back seat to your
smug and arrogant judgement of the worthiness and worth of these
transwomen - and that's what this is really all about.

ken said...

Interesting choice of describing your actions as you proclaim the value of the Bible. You can repent you know...

CNu said...

Because you believe the bible to be the inspired "word of god" from one end to the other, I put as much stock by your exegesis and historical acumen as I put by the proclamations emanating from an excitable 8 year old. This is all.

"If instead of religion in general we take Christianity, then again there exists a Christianity number one, that is to say, paganism in the guise of Christianity. Christianity number two is an emotional religion, sometimes very pure but without force, sometimes full of bloodshed and horror leading to the Inquisition, to religious wars. Christianity number three, instances of which are afforded by various forms of Protestantism, is based upon dialectic, argument, theories, and so forth. Then there is Christianity number four, of which men number one, number two, and number three have no conception whatever.

"In actual fact Christianity number one, number two, and number three is simply external imitation.

Only man number four strives to be a Christian and only man number five can actually be a Christian.

For to be a Christian means to have the being of a Christian, that is, to live in accordance with Christ's precepts.



You've made it clear that you don't value the lives of these transwomen, that you believe they should be ashamed of themselves, marginalized, consigned to darkness - and policed by your judgemental gaze. Seems to me that you're the one with a whole lot of splainin to do Lucy!

ken said...

"You've made it clear that you don't value the lives of these transwomen, that you believe they should be ashamed of themselves, marginalized, consigned to darkness - and policed by your judgemental gaze."

Oh my, that's some mighty strong projecting, please do show where my discussing my surprise that these people made an issue around this man's activity for a half an hour could not even discuss his family and wife somehow constitutes my opinions of what their lives are worth?

You yourself picked a scripture that you thought I should take to heart in reference to the transwomen ... "There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?”

Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.”

And He said to him, “You have rightly judged.”

Now why should you infer the idea of needing more forgiveness? Why did you pick this scripture for these people. My point to you in response to your scripture you chose was I would expect not to see or have them acknowledge a faith in Christ and therefore bowing and asking for forgiveness like we all must do who believe Christ as our Lord.

Since you do give me credit of believing the Bible from end to end, you must know than that I also believe the scripture that follows directly after the Romans scripture I quoted:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans%202:%201-13&version=NKJV

There is no partiality with God.... All are worth the same. What did God say to Cain in the same vein after Cain thought his offering was worth less than Abel's

So the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”



You completely misread me noting what someone is doing and what they are encouraging others to do, and have somehow decided I am connecting the action with their worth.

ken said...

In case you are wondering woodensplinter, we all are.

woodensplinter said...

It's John, and no, "we" aren't all as you choose to imagine.



Every individual needs revolution, inner division, overthrow of the
existing order, and renewal, but not by forcing them upon his neighbors
under the hypocritical cloak of Christian love or the sense of social responsibility or any of the other beautiful euphemisms for unconscious urges to personal power (Jung, 1966:5).

CNu said...

Good morning gentlemen.

Ken, first you othered them:Why did you pick this scripture for these people. My point to you in response to your scripture you chose was I would expect not to see or have them acknowledge a faith in Christ and therefore bowing and asking for forgiveness like we all must do who believe Christ as our Lord.As though membership in your particular flavor of "profess Christ as your personal savior" collective security club is a prerequisite for humanity.

You completely misread me noting what someone is doing and what they are encouraging others to do, and have somehow decided I am connecting the action with their worth.

Classic. "Hate the sin love the sinner". Ken, coupled with casting shade a la Simon the PhariseeNow when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he spoke to himself, saying, “This Man, if He were a prophet, would know who and what manner of woman this is who is touching Him, for she is a sinner.”I'ma have to go with John splinter-in-your-eye's diagnosis of hypocrisy.

http://jezebel.com/laverne-cox-and-janet-mock-quit-stigmatizing-men-who-d-1318850728 This article does a fine job of summarizing what made the discussion interesting to me in the first place.

CNu said...

Give me a break, you don't hold yourself to this type of scrutiny when talking about humans you are observinglol, I've actually taken to carrying a small pair of calipers with which I lightly and teasingly pinch selected individuals and tell them, "just checking you for tallow content, because when this thin veneer of civilization we grimace and pretend to uphold finally and completely disintegrates, I intend to corner the market on premium soap and candle manufacturing"

You jumped all over my connection to the Manning link you supplied and how the people you linked to can talk of Calvin's activity and mind set and not bring up his family.I haven't given one moment's thought to Calvin and his infrasexual failings as a man, husband, father, human being. That useless tallow-sack didn't stir the slightest ripple in my consciousness because he is the ultimate hypocrite in this whole sordid debacle.

It is you who brought this scripture in as informative and to be used as a teaching moment. If you have a problem with my interpretation of the scripture of the woman washing Jesus feet with her hair, please explain.lol, I don't have a problem with your interpretation of that scripture Ken, I don't share your particular emphasis wrt to that tableau. To me, its importance is entirely elsewhere, specifically for she loved much.

So scripture wasn't part of my comment or observation as I observed some of what Manning was saying about men and the people around them valuing their family so little, that when trying to get in the mind of Calvin and why he is embarrassed the topic of his family and wife wasn't even a factor in the conversation.lol, that was "message to the black man" material strictly for Bro. Feed., strictly wrt breaking down all the idiosyncrasies that have grown up in his presentation and which detract from its otherwise laudible clarity.

CNu said...

How is my interpretation of the text you brought forth shading me as a Pharisee?It's not. The pharisee was "throwing shade" at the woman (and at Jesus as a representative of prophetic force "surely he knows better")

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=throw%20shade

ken said...

"To me, its importance is entirely elsewhere, specifically for she loved much."

And her actions of this love that Christ described, when comparing to the other person he was talking to, was manifested on who?

To me it's all connected Love of your brothers is a commandment, and Christ says in John when I thought it was such an interesting question and answer from Judas:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2014:21-24&version=NKJV

CNu said...

lol, you can't have it both ways Ken. We know that in terms of exoteric keeping commandments, she "missed the mark".

The exoteric "useful idiot" in Luke 7:36-50 was not the "sinful woman" rather, it was the judgmental Pharisee.

The woman, her actions, and Jesus response - is the esoteric part of that tableau, signified, as at every other place in both old and new testaments, by the symbolism of feet and of water.

for she loved much is about as much as you have to work with on an exoteric level wrt the "sinful woman" - and that more nuanced part of this teaching is something you have left entirely out of your consideration.

This is what I pointed out to you in the first place. Your stubborn and irremediable inability to understand what you're reading has you damn near an extremely impertinent contradiction/repudiation of Christ's teaching in Luke with the psuedo-litigious and utterly irrelevant citation of John 14:21-24

Now that Pope Francis has come out in favor of Christ's teaching - rather than the dogmatic "abuse of sex" so crucial to the wattles - it will be very amusing to watch this pitiful exchange replay itself over and over and over again - both in my own parish, and, on the larger stage where the nuanced teachings of the gospel are completely lost on the dogmatic, authoritarian, and more than a little hysterical wattles.

ken said...

I think you miss my point, to love is a commandment, I get you are coming at this from your own ideas on what you think I think Christianity is, however...to follow Christ commandments shows you love Him, there is not following the commandments (yourself) and loving as having it both ways they are not separate ways. Loving your brother is a commandment...Sorry I will put the text this time, a text that has it both ways...1 John 2:

My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.



Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.

Brethren I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.

He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. **end**



This is both ways, or what authentic Christian circles would be the only way...

CNu said...

I get you are coming at this from your own ideas on what you think I think Christianity is...,No Ken. I've encountered literally hundreds like you over the years in which I've conversed with conservative, evangelical, imitation Christians. In fact, I'm "related" to some by marriage. I know the exact length, depth, breadth and height of what you call "Christianity".

ken said...

Here is a thought that might sound a little familiar to you...

"Being a Catholic doesn't mean having to choose between doctrine and charity, between truth and love. It includes both. We are grateful to Pope Francis for reminding us of that vision," he said.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57603897/pope-francis-denounces-abortion-after-decrying-churchs-focus-on-rules/

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