Just some graphs, though there is more at the site. I learned of the site listening to Daniel David Kaiser trying to explode myths about Black economic gains, or lack thereof, since the early 70s in contrast to the sharp increases before that. His point is that the lack of gains since then might be more properly understood as generalised or class problems, not related to Blacks particularly. The Marxists might have the better argument than the race advocates at this point. The class argument is less popular because it can take the issue out of the realm of discussing the evil motives of others. Anger sells, as we heard in our sermon this morning. That people pursuing their own self-interest might not care much about you is not as sexy as the possibility that they actively hate you and are trying to keep you down.
Yet while redlining disproportionally affected Blacks somewhat, it remains so that most of the people in those districts - by a large measure - were white. The same is true of the carve-outs for the original Social security benefits (which were soon changed anyway) and the ability to access the GI Bill. It is difficult to credit the idea that politicians who wanted to be re-elected would be screwing over so many white people just to make sure they could keep the black man down.
This is related to my posts about Distributed Power.
4 comments:
That era was also the start of stagflation. Naive economic theories didn't help much then, and won't now.
It was a few years later, but still could account for some portion of the knee in many of those graphs:
Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974
It fixed injustices, but also changed incentives and created 2nd order effects on housing costs and workforce composition.
Douglas2
I think you mean David Kaiser rather than Daniel Kaiser. I only know because he just sat down with Glenn Loury to discuss these same topics. Which I would have assumed is why you've been thinking about it, but I'm sure you've mentioned in the past your not much for YouTube videos. Maye you listened to the podcast? Anyway, just a minor correction and an avenue for people to hear more if they're interested.
Thank you. Yes, the podcast is part of my regular rotation.
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