Thomas Sowell‘s Townhall column today debunks the notion of “white flight, citing a recent Wall Street Journal article about two Silicon Valley high schools that are losing white students as Asian students move in. Sowell’s point, which he has written about extensively before:
The phrase “white flight” is completely misleading. All over the world and throughout history, groups have collected together with people like themselves, whether by race, income, education, religion, or any number of other characteristics. There is nothing unique when white people do it.
When Poles moved into Detroit, Sowell notes, blacks moved out. When Eastern European Jews moved into German Jewish neighborhoods in Chicago, the German Jews moved out. And here come the toenails:
When blacks move into a neighborhood and whites move out, that is something visible to the naked eye but there is nothing unique about such “white flight.” The phrase is misleading for the same reason that saying white people have toenails would be misleading. It is true in itself but suggests something unique that is in fact common to human beings of all sorts.
Sowell’s main point, of course, is much more profound than his “toenails” comment:
The decades-long attempts to mix black and white school children through school busing produced no real educational benefits but much racial polarization and ill will. The same thing continues to be done in colleges in the name of “diversity” — and with the same bad results.
This comparison of — indeed, virtual equation of — “diversity” with busing is one I’ve made many times, such as here about a year and a half ago:
… busing, i.e., assigning students to school by race to promote integration, was the first major instance where liberals abandoned color-blindness in favor of “taking race into account.” The arguments that were crafted in the busing controversy to justify racial assignments were later used, with little modification beyong changing “integration” to “diversity,” to justify hiring, promoting, and admitting by race.
“Busing,” like “quota,” came to be reviled as a code word, but it is difficult to see how anyone who favors racial preferences could have any principled objection to it.
Here in Detroit busing was a huge and acrimonious issue. It should not be surprisisng that the people who were most vocal in instructing working class and middle class people as to what should happen to their local schools tended to be those whose own schools would be unaffected by the busing plan.
As someone who went through busing as a young child, let me just say that myself and everyone else who went through it became terribly prejudiced on account of what we were exposed to.
It had the exact opposite effect of its intention on me. Busing is a horrible thing for all involved.
Do you believe Thomas Sowell is defending defacto segregation by defending “white flight?”
–Cobra
Cobra,
Sowell doesn’t seem to me to be “defending” “white flight,” just pointing out that changes of neighborhoods’ ethnic composition happen all the time, and it is not always the whites who leave as someone else comes in. As for “defending de facto segregation,” I don’t know what Sowell’s intent was, but I’d cheerfully defend it myself. You really think there’s nothing to be said for Chinatown, Japantown, Little Italy, the various ethnic neighborhoods of urban America? Nothing to be said for Muslim immigrants grouping together, so that there are halal butchers and sellers of Arabic-language newspapers within walking distance of their homes?
Never mind. I’ve said all this many times, and it hasn’t made a dent yet.
Insofar as defacto segregation is voluntary segregation, what’s wrong with it? Insofar as its not voluntary, what’s defacto about it?
Michelle writes:
>>>”As for “defending de facto segregation,” I don’t know what Sowell’s intent was, but I’d cheerfully defend it myself. You really think there’s nothing to be said for Chinatown, Japantown, Little Italy, the various ethnic neighborhoods of urban America? Nothing to be said for Muslim immigrants grouping together, so that there are halal butchers and sellers of Arabic-language newspapers within walking distance of their homes?
Never mind. I’ve said all this many times, and it hasn’t made a dent yet.”
You’ll have to swing a little harder to make a dent with me, because you’re apparently using the same argument I used on this blog to defend Dr. Claud Anderson’s “Africantown” project in Detroit.
John writes:
>>>”Insofar as defacto segregation is voluntary segregation, what’s wrong with it?”
It’s always very interesting to hear an individual who espouses “color-blindness” discuss segregation, and I wanted to know if you supported it, as apparently Sowell does.
–Cobra
It’s always very interesting to hear an individual who espouses government regulation of the racial market, i.e., who favors both carrot and stick inducements to ensure that individuals and organizations make the correct racial choices regarding school, neighborhood, job, etc., discuss voluntary segregation. Obviously you oppose it. Ah, people are so unreliable if left to their own choices….
Cobra,
If self-segregation is wrong, the Florida A&M and Howard University should have been shut down long ago along with the Black Student Unions, the Society of Black Male Engineers, etc. Yet, when blacks self-segregation you and many other view it as a good thing.
Remember, blacks can live in an all white neighbhorhood but choose not to just as whites could live in a previously all black neighbhorhood but choose not to. Why are the whites called racist for living in an all white neighborhod but blacks called unified?
“The decades-long attempts to mix black and white school children through school busing produced no real educational benefits but much racial polarization and ill will. The same thing continues to be done in colleges in the name of “diversity” — and with the same bad results.”
Wow. So AA in higher ed has had the same result as busing?
John writes:
>>>”It’s always very interesting to hear an individual who espouses government regulation of the racial market, i.e., who favors both carrot and stick inducements to ensure that individuals and organizations make the correct racial choices regarding school, neighborhood, job, etc., discuss voluntary segregation.”
You pegged me, John. I believe in government regulation of many things primarily because I don’t trust the base, selfish nature of mankind. If nobody violated the law, there’d be no need for police. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that type of world.
Superdestroyer writes:
>>>”Remember, blacks can live in an all white neighbhorhood but choose not to just as whites could live in a previously all black neighbhorhood but choose not to.”
Where do you get this stuff from? Cite your sources. Second, my point is that segregation and “color-blindness” are not compatible concepts, and if Sowell is defending segregation in his collumn, then he cannot honestly endorse the latter.
You can’t have it BOTH WAYS.
–Cobra
You pegged me, John. I believe in government regulation of many things primarily because I don’t trust the base, selfish nature of mankind.
Well, it’s a good thing government regulation is not carried out by human beings. Oh, it is? What? I see, the human beings who decide what races get what benefits, what the proper mix of which races is in different venues, the exact number of minorities that must be gerrymandered into electoral districts before adding one more becomes racist gerrymandering, etc., etc. are a better sort of person than the rest of us. What was that? Oh, you trust them to make the decisions. That’s why you like unelected judges making important decisions for you, not your elected representatives. Unless, of course, those judges rule in a way you don’t like; then their decisions become judicial imperialism.
Makes perfect sense.
Cobra,
You’ll have to swing a little harder to make a dent with me, because you’re apparently using the same argument I used on this blog to defend Dr. Claud Anderson’s “Africantown” project in Detroit.
No, I’m not. To me there’s every difference in the world between allowing a neighborhood to develop organically on one hand, and engineering it top-down from scratch as a sort of ethnic theme park on the other. Also every difference in the world between engineering a Black-themed “business district” and merely allowing mixed-use districts where residents can decide themselves where to live, and risk launching small businesses catering to some, er, “critical mass” of the actual residents already there. SF’s Chinatown may be obviously packed with ethnic kitch, but a lot of ethnic Chinese do live in it, and they built it themselves. It’s not just a business district built to bring in tourists in search of ethnic tchotshkes, if you’ll pardon the term. The Detroit project is different in a number of ways — not least because the special needs I mentioned (finding particular foods, finding literature in particular languages, and finding them all close to where you live) don’t really apply to Detroit’s Black population, do they? The actual population of Detroit is, what, close to 90% Black, yes? It’s difficult in the extreme to imagine that its groceries don’t already stock any ingredients particular to the cuisine of Detroit’s Black population, that any bookstore wouldn’t have the sense to stock books of special interest to Black customers, or that it’s impossible to find either fairly close by where you live. And in any case Africantown would have made this worse for Blacks who actually live in Detroit, by encouraging “Black-themed” businesses to relocate to one small corner of the city — wouldn’t it? One small corner that’s a business district, so that (so far as I can see) the dominant idea was tourism, not getting the essentials closer to the people who already lived in the city.
Why should I have a problem with businesses in mixed-use neighborhoods catering to the people living in them? It’s the artificality that bothers me, the idea that all you have to do to duplicate SF’s Chinatown is copy the externals and substitute a color.
You’ll have to swing a little harder to make a dent with me, because you’re apparently using the same argument I used on this blog to defend Dr. Claud Anderson’s “Africantown” project in Detroit.
Wrong. You’re making the same mistake now that you made then: confusing voluntary and involuntary segregation. That project was a legally-enforced program, where government would treat people differently based on race.
Cobra,
I would use the Washington, DC area as a good example of how blacks self-segregate. White and black professional grade civil servants work in downtown DC. Yet, at the end of the day, the black professional commute black to majority black and getting blacker Prince Georges County even through the schools are bad and the crime rate is high. Those white professional commute to Fairfax, Virginia or Montgomery County, MD. There is nothing preventing those black professional from living in Fairfax except they decide to live in a majority black area.
Using your logic, the whites in Fairfax are racist but the blacks in Prince Georges are just pound of their background.
John writes:
>>>Well, it’s a good thing government regulation is not carried out by human beings. Oh, it is? What? I see, the human beings who decide what races get what benefits, what the proper mix of which races is in different venues, the exact number of minorities that must be gerrymandered into electoral districts before adding one more becomes racist gerrymandering, etc., etc. are a better sort of person than the rest of us.”
Not quite. American government is SUPPOSED to be “of the people, for the people and by the people,” and not the INDIVIDUAL PERSON. At least that’s how Abe Lincoln put it in his G-burg address. That’s the first three words of the US Constitution–“WE THE PEOPLE”–which means I, Cobra am everybit a part of this government as you. This is a vastly different concept than bowing to the whims and fantasies of powerful individual citizens, so YES, I place far more trust in an entity (government) that I can take full participation in.
Michelle writes:
>>>”To me there’s every difference in the world between allowing a neighborhood to develop organically on one hand, and engineering it top-down from scratch as a sort of ethnic theme park on the other.”
“Allowing?” Your quote seems to infer that the Chinese needed PERMISSION from somebody to form Chinatown. And second, what is your definition of “an ethnic neighborhood?” We already know what happens in SOME scenarios:
>>>”The History and Legacy of Blockbusting
American residential segregation essentially did not exist prior to 1900. [FN10] Although blacks experienced discrimination, they lived closely with whites until the period around World War I. [FN11] During that time, however, demand for black workers in the South dried up just as the need for unskilled workers skyrocketed in the North. [FN12] From 1910 through the 1920s, hundreds of thousands of blacks migrated North annually. [FN13]
Northern whites identified these blacks as a serious social and economic threat, and mobilized their physical, political, social, and economic resources to drive blacks into strictly-circumscribed ghettos and to punish blacks who attempted to live elsewhere. [FN14] Whites also used their power to prevent other whites from selling to blacks. [FN15] Many institutions took part in this segregationist regime, including local government, [FN16] state and federal agencies, [FN17] courts, [FN18] businesses, [FN19] and the media.
[FN20] Thus, by 1930, “African Americans were well on their way to experiencing a uniquely high degree of spatial isolation in American cities.” [FN21] By the 1940s, integrated neighborhoods had ceased to exist in every major city in the United States, [FN22] and segregationist values remained widespread through the 1960s. [FN23]
Perhaps the most powerful forces for segregation during this period, however, came from the real estate industry. Real estate agents, who were mostly white men, [FN24] were ideologically committed to keeping races and ethnic groups separate from each other. [FN25] Various pressures reinforced this natural inclination. From 1917 until 1950, the charter of the National Association of Real Estate Boards made it a violation of professional ethics to sell a home to someone whose race or ethnicity might disturb the neighborhood or its property values. [FN26] Even after 1950, this professional code remained an unwritten governing ethic for real estate boards.”
http://www.law.ucla.edu/faculty/bios/crenshaw/racerem/housingarticles.htm “>Blockbusting
>>>” Shortly after they moved in, in 1965, the complexion of Austin changed virtually overnight. As black families began buying into the neighborhood, realtors, in a scheme that became known as
Cobra – You’re back to your old habits of virtually reprinting (dubious) articles in your too-long comments. I’m letting this one stay, but in the future I’d prefer that comments be, well, comments, not copied treatises.
As for your “I will side with public, government devils that I can participate with fully today, out in the open, and not clandestine, profit motivated, private devils in hidden seats of corporate power,” this name calling doesn’t do justice to even your argument. So, the blacks, Chinese, whites, etc., etc. who — remember how this thread started? — make the choice to live among others of their group, self-segregate if you like, are “profit motivated private devils”?
No matter how much dust you throw by reproducing articles you like, there is still a glaring inconsitency between your belief that majorities of people are private devils but the governments they elect — or rather, the bureaucrats and judges appointed by the people they elect — should be given a free hand to socially engineer the rest of us.
John:
So I take it you don’t believe blockbusting had any effect on the concept of “white flight?”
–Cobra
Cobra,
Let’s make this easy for you.
Self-segregation, or “defacto segregation”, is morally wrong. Individuals who move to a neighborhood for racial reasons are engaged in a morally suspect behavior. However, that doesn’t mean that government should have the authority to regulate every aspect of a person’s life, including their morally suspect decisions. Government should neither “incent” such suspect decisions – and I’ll grant you a role for current government policy in insuring (WARNING: original definition of affirmative action) that the incentives created by all government policy don’t contribute further to de facto segregation (as most demographers and urban planners will tell you, much of the “white flight” results from a wide-range of social policies that created incentives for the middle-class to move to the suburbs [meaning that there was no real, conscious individual racism, but rather people acting based on incentives]). The number of causes of residential segregration are numerous, but much of it has to do with the social policies (and trends) of the last 60 years. So, would “enterprise or empowerment zones,” tax incentives to live in urban renewal areas, etc. all be types of (non-racial, non-Constitutioally suspect) “affirmative action”? Indeed, one can imagine even academic admissions based on geographic preference, although I think we need to be careful to logically think through the incentives and their purpose and not just use it as a “substitute” for race.
Yes. Indeed, reducing the relative income tax burden of a city (like Detroit) would help (conservative “affirmative action”), if not bring more people in of all stripes it would at least keep some from fleeing.
As to individuals moving for racial reasons, I’m all for vigorous enforcement of discrimination laws against those engaged in the commerce of moving people (real estate agents, mortgage brokers, etc.), but it would be impossible and questionably interfering with liberty to delve into the consumers’ motives. If those doing business in the field are regulated, and government microscopes the incentives its own social meddlings create, I’d hold the highly optimistic view that you’d find very little individual “de-facto” discrimination or motivation out there. For, I believe, the human spirit is not “mostly evil,” but rather, mostly, or at least, relatively, noble.
By the way, Cobra, Omega Train isn’t all that bad, and I say that from the perspective of someone with some business experience with Indie bands. Good luck (it’s a business where its better to be lucky than good, and could use some “affirmative action” of own in breaking apart the corporate monopolies).
Chetly,
Thanks for the compliments on the O-Train. Right now, it’s more a labor of love than a monetary boon, but you’re absolutely right about the luck factor.
Thank God for Derek Silver and CD Baby, though.
I commend you on your direct answer about self-segregation and defacto segregation being morally wrong. That’s not a popular position among many of the political allies of your cause. I would wager that we’re not too far apart on this issue, which is apparently several miles away from Thomas Sowell’s.
–Cobra
I don’t think Sowell’s position is as distant from mine as you think, although he may not give enough emphasis on the moral condemnation of de facto segregation.
I also know that our mutual “positions” aren’t as far off as our opposition or even you and I have sometimes betrayed them. The mainstream part of our movement agrees with you that racism is wrong. Even the mainstream part of our opposition agrees that the long-term vision and goal of a “colorblind” society is the correct goal. We simply disagree on the means to those ends.
By the way, I’ve linked to one of my clients (Willamena), if you’re interested in checking out some their music. I believe they are close to a record-label deal, but I know that such things can be fickle. I’d appreciate your musical thoughts if you have any – don’t think that their politics has any relationship to mine.