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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29423 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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Now let's talk about the supposed conspiracy to force people into the suburbs. The largest American cities of 1920 were all built before the car. Many of them have a ring of streetcar suburbs. Most of them have lost population. There is a plentiful supply of dense urban cores in America with lower population than they had a century ago, and yet all the demand is for building more suburbs.

There is a reason many of those urban cores lost their population and it isn't just because the people there decided they wanted to move out one day because of changes in technology or lifestyle. Without the increased crime rates, race riots, and domestic terrorism of the 60's and 70's, America's cities would probably look much more similar to those in Europe.

I'm moving there for the same reason people hate suburbs: community. People talk about how suburbs are alienating and have no third spaces. I'm moving for the community, which is my wife's extended family. The third space was her grandparent's house. Now it is her parent's house, and someday (hopefully far in the future) it will be our house.

My understanding is that a family home is explicitly not a third place, because a third place is by definition a neutral public meeting ground with a semi-rotating cast of characters who have no obligation to be there. It might be possible to make one's house a third place by hosting enough open and regular events and parties, but that would be quite unusual, and would be made unnecessary if more typical meeting spaces e.g. coffee shops, bars, bowling alleys, dance clubs, etc. were common enough to meet people's need for socializing.

There is a reason many of those urban cores lost their population and it isn't just because the people there decided they wanted to move out one day because of changes in technology or lifestyle. Without the increased crime rates, race riots, and domestic terrorism of the 60's and 70's, America's cities would probably look much more similar to those in Europe.

Suburban Atlanta and DFW and Houston have seen rapid growth even in areas with race issues and high crime rates. People are willing to put up with racial tensions and crime to live in low-density suburbs but not high density urban areas.

Without the increased crime rates, race riots, and domestic terrorism of the 60's and 70's, America's cities would probably look much more similar to those in Europe.

The more I've learned about that era, the angrier I've become at the "Civil Rights" advocates and other leftists that implemented policies that destroyed American cities almost completely. This wasn't some force of nature, it was a set of deliberate choices by people that just hate bourgeois white culture and were happy to destroy it. There was always going to be some degree of shift and decline in Great Lakes cities that lost manufacturing, but the abject ruin that Detroit became wasn't a foregone conclusion.

If your go-to example (per your comment below) of "policies that destroyed American cities" is Shelley v Kramer, which simply prevented blatant, intentional racial discrimination, then you probably don't have much cause to be angry.

This wasn't some force of nature, it was a set of deliberate choices by people that just hate bourgeois white culture and were happy to destroy it

If anything was destroyed, it was bourgeois black culture, as middle class blacks moved out of Harlem, the Central Avenue area of Los Angeles, etc..

If your go-to example (per your comment below) of "policies that destroyed American cities" is Shelley v Kramer, which simply prevented blatant, intentional racial discrimination, then you probably don't have much cause to be angry.

Why?

Have you ever been to the area where the Shelley House is located in North St. Louis? Sadly enough, what you see there today is better than what it was after the civil rights revolution. Whatever your opinions about racial discrimination are, the people supporting using it in restrictive covenants predicted their area would turn to ghettoized trash and that is exactly what happened. The Shelley House on Labadue Avenue in St. Louis, Missouri, is an excellent example of exactly what the above user was claiming and was angry about. The only argument is whether or not the intentional policy decisions of the SCOTUS contributed to what happened and what we see today.

Do you happen to know when that area of St. Louis became a hollowed out ghetto?

Why?

Because it is wrong, and because people can always come up with some rationalization for mistreating their outgroup, and because black parents have the same right to move to an area where their children will have a better life as everyone else, even assuming that the area they are trying to leave is bad because other black people live there.

except the "rationalization" for mistreating the outgroup in this circumstance predicted what would happen and then what they predicted proceeded to happen at enormous social cost, including in the exact "outgroup" you're claiming to be concerned with here

it is wrong

"rights" aren't some natural phenomena and neither is your vague "rights" morality, they're intentional decisions and those decisions have costs

The Shelley decision demonstrates that quite well which makes your response odd. Your post is essentially "it's wrong," which is fine, but it's not particularly interesting.

"rights" aren't some natural phenomena and neither is your vague "rights" morality,

Neither is your consequentialist morality. Not that you bother to actually weigh all of the consequences

Your post is essentially "it's wrong," which is fine, but it's not particularly interesting.

And yours is essentially "it has costs," which is not particularly interesting. All policies come with costs.

including in the exact "outgroup" you're claiming to be concerned with here

I not expressing concern for any particular outgroup. The principle would be the same, regardless of the outgroup. Hence my generalization about people in general, not these specific people.

As I noted, racial discrimination in housing prevented black parents from moving to areas where their children would have a better life. If a white parent could afford to move to some suburb with good schools, he or she was free to do so. But a black parent was out of luck. As you implicitly acknowledge, that is in fact a bad thing (or, if you prefer, it has costs). If you did not believe that it is a bad thing, you would argue that it does not matter, but you don't. Instead, you merely argue that the alternative had high costs.

Your post minimized/denied there were costs to the Shelley decision. I pointed out the doom-and-gloom predictions of the party who originally filed suit were proved correct. Despite your claims it wasn't a good example to validate the anger the OP was claiming, it's a great example.

your consequentialist morality.

As you implicitly acknowledge, that is in fact a bad thing (or, if you prefer, it has costs). If you did not believe that it is a bad thing, you would argue that it does not matter, but you don't. Instead, you merely argue that the alternative had high costs.

none of this is accurate

not a consequentialist, did not implicitly acknowledge that, didn't argue it was and the post was to argue the costs of the particular example you picked which you were implying wasn't much or at all; when asked you moved on to "it's wrong"

it's low-effort non-response and belittling with zero explanation or support

when asked you moved on to "it's wrong" it's low-effort non-response and belittling with zero explanation or support

Leaving aside why you think that the statement, "blatant, intentional racial discrimination is wrong" is "belittling", I said three things in response to your query:

  1. Because it is wrong
  2. because people can always come up with some rationalization for mistreating their outgroup
  3. because black parents have the same right to move to an area where their children will have a better life as everyone else, even assuming that the area they are trying to leave is bad because other black people live there.

You never engaged with #3 at all. Your only response to #2 was to claim that in this particular instance, on this particular street, the rationalization supposedly turned out to be well-founded, but you in no way addressed whether my argument is valid in general. As for #1, I was stating the current broad societal consensus that "blatant, intentional racial discrimination" is wrong. That doesn’t mean that you or anyone has to agree with it, nor that it is correct. But you haven't attempted to refute it, nor even claimed that you disagree with it. All you have done is avoid the issue by claiming that it is a "non-response."

Hence, it seems to me that you are the one who is engaging in little effort.

More comments

This is an incorrect reading of the cited discussion. I was responding primarily to the destruction of American cities that occurred during the '60s and '70s, someone else mentioned that suburbanization began before that era, and I noted that this may well have something to do with Shelley. I don't think any single policy accounts for the damage that was done in the name of equality, but that the aggregated weight of civil rights policies, leftist approaches to crime and business, and the Great Society policies accumulated to basically ruin urban cores.

I will certainly agree that the civil rights policies have been terrible for black culture as well though.

Nevertheless, your implication that the "destruction of American cities" was the result of intentional efforts to destroy white bourgeois culture" is ahistorical. If you mean that efforts to end obviously unjust social practices had some negative unintended consequences, then why not say that, instead of "my outgroup evil"?

Nevertheless, your implication that the "destruction of American cities" was the result of intentional efforts to destroy white bourgeois culture" is ahistorical.

No, it was, it's just that some suburbanization would have happened anyway. The destruction of American cities was the result of ethnic cleansing engaged in to drive white people out of the cities, which was then called "white flight".

Not if the term, "ethnic cleansing" has any meaning.

You say tomayto, I say tomahto? What's the difference between "obviously unjust social practices" and "white bourgeois culture", from the perspective of the people driving the changes in question?

I was of course referring to blatant racial discrimination. Practices which were seen as obviously unjust by most people at the time, which is why both major political parties found it politically advantageous to pledge in their platforms to enact civil rights legislation as early as 1948. (I assume that a link to the 1948 Democratic Party platform is unnecessary).

Edit: Apparently, I was mistaken in my assumption that a link showing that the Democratic Party also had a civil rights plank in 1948 was unnecessary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Democratic_National_Convention

assume that a link to the 1948 Democratic Party platform is unnecessary).

The democrats were the segregationist party, and more generally post-1975 political divisions don’t map well onto earlier ones, so if anything democrats would be more likely to oppose civil rights law.

Yes, but my point was that the 1948 Democratic Platform quite famously included a civil rights plank, leading to the walkout of Southern Democrats, who put forth their own candidate in the general election, ultimately leading to this famous photo.

Edit: Note also that you are proving my point: If even the majority of the more segregationist party supported civil rights, then civil rights must have been a mainstream position, not a radical one.

The people who disproportionately influenced the end of blatant racial discrimination disproportionately despised "white bourgeoise culture", and saw destroying it as a good thing. The song I linked is famous because it captured the essence of the social critique being leveled against the mainstream of its time. Listen to the song, note the problems the song is asserting exist, and then tell me those "problems" weren't addressed.

Hating bad things doesn't make one good. Virulent racists hate rape and murder a whole lot; that doesn't make their solutions net-positive. The "end of blatant racial discrimination", as your phrasing appears to concede, succeeded in altering surface detail without addressing the core of the problem. Lots and lots of black people lived in misery and died violently as a result.

I don't know that the likes of Pete Seeger and the Beat poets are representative of those who were "driving" the changes in question.

The people who disproportionately influenced the end of blatant racial discrimination disproportionately despised "white bourgeoise culture", and saw destroying it as a good thing.

Maybe yes, maybe no. But:

  1. The African American leaders (MLK and the like) who were actually effective were a whole lot friendlier to white bourgeiose culture then those who were less effective. So the correlation seems to be the opposite of what you claim.
  2. More importantly, the fact that I oppose X and oppose Y does not demonstrate that I pursue the end of Y as a means of destroying X. That should be obvious.

Hating bad things doesn't make one good

No one is talking about who is good or bad. We are talking about the accuracy of an empirical claim.

The "end of blatant racial discrimination", as your phrasing appears to concede, succeeded in altering surface detail without addressing the core of the problem

  1. Ending blatant racial discrimination is a perfectly legitimate and important end in itself.
  2. And the core of the problem is?

Any specific sources that expand on this? I'm curious to hear more from this angle.

To be fair, suburbanization began in earnest shortly after WWII (and as far as I can tell, in America but not in Europe); the ethnic cleansing of the cities only accelerated it.

I don't object to people moving to outer rings because they have families and want the space, I only object to neighborhoods being deliberately ruined.

I do think Shelley v. Kraemer times up suspiciously well with the shift to the suburbs though.

I think the effect of covenants has been blown out of proportion, particularly by lefties. I did title work in Western PA for a decade and never saw a racial covenant; they were never a big thing in this area, but it had little effect on suburbanization. Hell, if those redlining maps that people keep bringing up are correct, Pittsburgh was significantly less segregated in the 1930s then it is now; back then no neighborhood was more than 50% black if memory serves.

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