1.
Many years ago, when I first moved to Baltimore, I was walking back to the house we had just bought on Wickford Road. It is a block filled with Tudor-style houses, all built around 1930. I doubt if they were called town houses when they were built, much less townhomes, but that's what we'd call them today. Each of the large structures consists of two peaked-roofed end units wtih two smaller dwellings in between. The section of Baltimore where we live, with the exception of my family, is an exclusively white neighborhood, an upper-middle class section of the city, adjacent to the far wealthier neighborhoods of Guilford and Roland Park, to the west and north of us, adjacent to the less wealthy sections of Hampden and Medfield, to the south and west. All these neighborhoods are, you guessed it, white. (The city as a whole is over 60% African American.) Approaching our house from the other side of the street, I noticed a car had stopped in front of me, as I was about to cross over. A young man rolled down the driver's side window and asked me the following question, "My wife and I are thinking of buying a house in this neighborhood. Could you tell me if any blacks live around here?" "See that house across the street?" I said, pointing to an end unit easily visible through the windshield. "A black person lives there." Before waiting for a response, I added, "By the way, I live in that house as well." He drove off without saying another word.
2.
"Blacks should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidence of civil disturbance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the nearby White neighborhoods, and to protect property values of the White neighborhoods."
Who said that? Some crackpot fanatic? David Duke? A member of the Alt-Right?
No, it was the Mayor of Baltimore, with the full support of the city council and the vast majority of Baltimore's white residents. '
The time was the early part of the past century. In 1910, a Yale-educated lawyer had the temerity to "pollute" a wealthy Baltimore neighborhood by moving into it. The Mount Vernon area of Baltimore was the most exclusive Baltimore neighborhood at the time; at various times, the Cone sisters, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James and the Duchess of Windsor all lived there. The inhabitants were outraged at the possibility of integration; they demanded action. They got it. A law was passed that if a block was 50% or more white, no black could live there, similarly, if a block was 50% or more African American, it would be illegal for a white to live there. The mayor got his wish. Baltimore, already segregated, became even more segregated.
Worse: The New-Deal era Federal Housing Administration was set up to foster home ownership--to whites. The law from 1934-1968 forbade the provision of mortgages to blacks. Blacks could only purchase a house through the so-called "contract system." The methods devised by these white loan sharks were truly despicable. The cost of a house financed through the contract system was outrageously high. The loans were not amortized, so if one payment was missed, the house would be repossessed and "flipped" to another black family. Many African-American families worked several jobs in the desperate effort to meet payments. They were forced to sublet. They could not afford repairs. The black neighborhoods soon devolved into ghettos. During this entire period, African-Americans were unable to amass wealth from property values, the root of the vast discrepancy between black and white wealth to this day.
In short, federal, state, and local policies are responsible for deliberately creating every poor black neighborhood in Baltimore.
"They're lazy." "They don't want to work." "They're violent." "They have lots of children and live off welfare," etc. These views and others like them, are nothing more than variations of the heinous words the mayor of Baltimore said so long ago.
3.
In 1967, Lyndon Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to determine the cause of the recent urban riots. It asserted that, "Our nation is moving toward two societies one black, one white--separate and unequal." New legislation was passed to counter this trend. After 1968, bureaucrats by law could no longer red-line districts. (Previously, they had actually colored in red, black neighborhoods on their maps, so their racism could be performed in a more efficient manner.) The Fair Housing Act of 1968, however, designed to break down patterns of racial and local segregation, had done much good but has done little to counter segregation. Nearly all subsidized housing occurred in poor neighborhoods, where poor schools, dreadful transportation, and lack of jobs continued to be rampant. A recent Harvard study demonstrated that when poor people move into better neighborhoods, their children are much more likely to attend college, and better colleges.
Recently, the Obama administration took the Fair Housing goal of "affirmatively furthering" integration more seriously. Julian Castro, the current head of HUD, has proposed that sums provided for housing vouchers would vary by zip code, and that any landlord who was a recipient of federal funds could not refuse housing vouchers. Thus, voucher recipients of poor communities would get more support if they moved to an area where rent was higher. There would also be "mobility counselors" to encourage moves to the suburbs. HUD would supply states with neighborhood maps designed to increase integration. Castro viewed these measures as essential, since the Fair Housing Act goal of integration was not being implemented.
This was the first significant attempt to integrate neighborhoods in a long time.
4.
Edward J. Pinto, a housing specialist of the conservative American Enterprise Institute has this to say about the new measure: "This is just the latest attempt by HUD to social engineer the American people...The goal is to get the suburbs to look like the cities. It's presumptuous of HUD to think that someone in Washington D.C. should decide all this."
Conservatives always want smaller government. I, however, contend that government should be as small as necessary. If the majority had been fair to minorities during the course of American history; if they hadn't actively "socially engineered" segregation and black poverty, no intervention by the government would be necessary. Government intervention, often clumsy, should always be the last resort. If you want small government, America, be fair. The treatment of fellow Americans who are black has been abominable; two of its legacies, segregation and poverty, is so widely accepted that it is thought by many to be the natural order of things. It is obvious to any fair-minded person that they are not.
If the country had acted according to the Golden Rule, no rules and regulations would be necessary. The only solution to the race problem in America is integration. Many cities across America, Baltimore among them, are more segregated than ever. Something needs to be done.
5.
Two coveys of ants,
each color in its own Pompeii--
The volcano wakes
6.
The President-elect has nominated Ben Carson as head of H.U.D., replacing Julian Castro.
Dr. Carson, as everyone knows, is a retired neurosurgeon. When I worked with the Johns Hopkins Community Services, I referred many patients to him. One of my patients had a benign brain tumor, which Dr. Carson successfully removed. His parents named their next child Carson.
One day, while my son was an elementary-school student, he came home from school elated. He had just heard Dr. Carson give a talk at his school. "He was great!" my son beamed. "I didn't know black people could become doctors." (My son was the only black student in his class.) He admired Dr. Carson very much.
His enthusiasm has long since waned. along with mine. Oh, Dr. Carson, you should have left well enough alone!
He believes being gay is a choice. He does not believe in evolution. He believes that "political correctness" has stopped conservative politicians for "saying it like it is." Is there no such thing as truth?
In a July 23rd 2015 editorial in the Washington Times, he wrote the following:
"To be fair, white flight was not exclusively the consequence of forced integration policies. Other private and public housing policies such as redlining, restrictive covenants, discriminatory steering by real estate agents and restricted access to private capital--all attempts at social engineering--(my italics)--exacerbated the suburban segregation in the 1970s and '80s."
"...These rules, (Obama's new regulations), come on the Supreme Court decision narrowly upholding the use of "disparate impact" analysis in determining whether municipal housing policies have a racially discriminatory effect, whether intended or not."
"These government-engineered attempts to legislate racial equality create consequences that often make matters worse...entrusting the government to get it right can prove downright dangerous."
Dr. Carson, the neighborhood structure of the United States, did not arise by accident. Whether a given municipality has a discriminatory intention doesn't matter. The very existence of exclusively white neighborhoods is the product of discrimination, whether those living there acknowledge this or not.
Dr. Carson, your equating years of severe and deliberate racial segregation by white society and by the federal government with President Obama's measured means to help correct it is abominable. In your mind, both are examples of social engineering--as if they were morally equivalent!
Black students were denied access to integrated schools and universities for generations. Integration did not come about voluntarily. Was Brown vs. Board of Education just another heinous example of social engineering?
The two great problems in the United States, racism and economic inequality, are intolerable. If politicians and those who elect them don't like government intervention, they should be making significant progress in creating a society in which such intervention is not needed. The lava of racism continues to flow. Something needs to be done!
7.
If not now, when?
