I've got a couple of big articles this week on how you can use your personal knowledge of what people look for when buying a house or renting an apartment to understand the big issues better than 99% of the pundits who don't act as if their private affairs has any relationship to everybody's public affairs.
First, now up on VDARE.com is my article "Real Estate, Race, and Immigration on Chicago's South Side" about Chicago neigbhorhoods inspired by sociologist William Julius Wilson's recent book There Goes the Neighborhood. Wilson's grad students spent three years studying four neighborhoods, which he referred to by pseudonyms. I explain what their real names are and then offer a theory to account for the complex relationship between real estate and race in big cities.
Then, in a day or two, the electronic version of the new issue of The American Conservative will contain my full-length exposition of my theory of how "affordable family formation" makes some states vote Republican in Presidential elections, while unaffordable family formation makes others vote Democratic.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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16 comments:
I am Lugash.
Why does the study have aliases for the neighborhoods? It's trivial to figure the real name out. Are the authors of the study afraid of being sued by some neighborhood association?
I am Lugash.
Possibly they are afraid the racism card will be played Lugash.
Theodore Dalrymple made the same observations in both of his books (change to crime) in "Life at the Bottom" and "Our Culture, What's Left of It."
His point was that in places that showed no ethnic/racial change, the same type of crime and poverty existed. He recalls in post-War East London of the 1950's and early 1960's playing out in the street at nights, and people leaving doors unlocked. The atomizing social changes (and ugly and Stalinist Le Corbusier buildings put up) led to rapid social decay, in many cases in one generation.
The effect of the study may be tied to larger cultural trends. Older people I've talked to who spent time in segregated era Black neighborhoods noted that while crime and violence *were* higher than white neighborhoods they were not orders of magnitude higher, nothing like that of today, and most areas were middle class.
I think both the study's authors and Rev. Wright may be on to something in that there seems a wide chasm between the cultural values, personal habits, and so on of inhabitants of ghetto neighborhoods and middle class blacks in black exurbs. Hence Wright's hostility to "Black Middle Classness" which I take as a shot at Cosby, Tyler Perry, and others.
Looking at Greatschools.com, It looks like the whites living in the clearings use the coping strategy of sending their kids to private schools. Kennedy High School is only about 1/3 white.
In your article you talk about why Oak Park is not a slum. You mentioned the block program they had there in the 60's but Oak Park also is home to a group of people who are not scared if a black moves into the neighborhood. In the South Side during the great white flight form the 50's to the 80's, if a black were to move into the neighborhood the rest of the houses would suddenly sprout for sale signs. Blacks would then be the only people to buy in these neighborhoods. Real estate agents at the time took advantage of this with what was called "block busting." An agent would put out the rumor that a black was buying a house down the street and would then leave a flyer in all of the mailboxes in the neighborhood with something like "If you are worried, please see me and I will get you a good price for your house" written on them. I think that you are wrong about Chicago's future and why people are moving into Chicago. Chicago is undergoing a major rebuilding in many area of the north and west sides, even in areas not near the lake. It is true that many of the older working class blue coller neighborhoods are becoming more hispanic but many others are gentrifying, even area once considered very dangerous like Humboldt Park. Many Suburban areas of Chicago are becoming more Hispanic and Black and I think that much of the black population of Chicago is moving out to the suburbs. Chicago was once centered around the Loop and growth radiated out from there. Since at least the 60's, Chicago's economy is generally centered around O'Hare field and any place within 15 or so miles from there generally benefits. This includes most of the North Side of Chicago, and adjacent suburbs. The exception to this rule is the area just to the south of O'Hare. Franklin Park, Melrose Park, Northlake and other towns in this area are much like the Brighton Park in your article, and will be like Little Village soon.
Canadian baby boomers secretly support an open immigration policy purely as a device to artificially inflate home resale values. Notice how Canadian real estate has held steady, indeed risen in price, as compared to American real estate. Notice how Canada has the highest G8 population growth rate.
Nobody gets rich in Canada through work or transacting business anymore; you squat on a piece of suburban land, count your pennies for 30 years, sell, and collect a pension or fake a disability.
Take a look at a map of Canada. Bizarre country, isn't it? Biggest, least populated country in world history and you can't buy a house for less than a quarter million, or a piece of land for less than 50 gs.
The government deliberately holds 90% of land as crown land to deliberately drive up the price of land for baby boomers.
Buy a piece of land in the wilderness and build a cabin? Bad idea: IF you can find a piece of land Canada is the only developed country in the world with a higher rural crime rate than city crime rate, another deliberate policy decision designed to force Canadians to live in cities.
The original assault on Chicago's (and other northern cities) neighborhoods was planned and executed by white liberal elites in collusion with "civil rights" organizations. Their goal was the destruction of the political power of Catholic ethnics (mostly unionized laborers) by destroying their neighborhoods with urban renewal and with low-wage blacks brought up from the South. Major funding for this assault came from the foundations set up by wealthy capitalists to work for their economic interests in the guise of philanthropy.
Non-crazy white people consider the best environment for children-raising to be one where taxes are kept low and blacks are kept out - and more power to them.
Theodore Dalrymple is a pseudonym.
Dutch boy, never assign to conspiracy what pure stupidity can do. Le Corbusier and his "machines for living?" Only an intellectual would not know that was profoundly stupid. But Le Corbusier believed it.
Blacks were originally brought to Chicago by rich WASP capitalists before WWI for cheap labor. These rich people made a huge effort to bring blacks to the city despite the intense opposition of most other whites.
"Canadian baby boomers secretly support an open immigration policy purely as a device to artificially inflate home resale values."
I think mysterious anonymous person is right here (although I'm not sure that's the right use of "open immigration policy" - Canada has a very selective (relatively speaking!) immigration policy, but it lets in about 1% of its population each year, a huge amount - which would be equivalent to 3 million legal immigrants per year to the U.S.).
Young Canadians are paying through the nose in part because hundreds of thousands of immigrants are arriving every year, putting pressure on real estate. Low interest rates are the biggest factor, though.
Young people in Vancouver (second largest English speaking city in Canada) typically no longer buy a house in Vancouver proper. They, their spouse, their parents, a loan from several grandparents, or some other assortment of people or creative financing arrangement, comes together to buy a house in Vancouver. You can no longer buy a decent house in Vancouver West for less than about $1 million. Time to move to France ...
Theodore Dalrymple is a pseudonym.
He is actually called Anthony Daniels.
Not the same bloke that played C3PO though.
My wife and I looked at a beautiful condo in Uptown. It's still a dicey neigborhood...gangs, significant mentally ill population living in single room occupancy hotels. I'd give it another 5 years before I'd consider moving there...
Steve: thought these might catch your interest:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-point-toast.html
http://crookedtimber.org/2008/01/30/atlas-shrugged-kicks-the-ass-of-fight-club/#comments
Can anyone explain how Oak Park manages to get away with their "diversity management programs." Judging from the paper that Steve linked in his post, they have developed a rather extensive array of local institutions to keep blocks from reaching that white flight tipping point.
But, isn't that kind of racial steering patently illegal? How do they manage to get away with it?
Spenglarian said: "Can anyone explain how Oak Park manages to get away with their "diversity management programs."
Oak Park is a very liberal place. Any race related program that they have is seen through liberal colored lenses and then to the MSM does not seem overtly racist. The program Steve mentioned was implemented in the 50's and 60's before the great age of political correctness. that, along with the media bias above means that the town leaders are not held accountable as they would be in other places. More recently they had a program in place where landlords could get money for renting to white people in the more black areas of town and for renting to black people in more white areas of town. This is not challenged because of the extreme liberal town Oak Park is. Oak Park is known as a haven for left wing groups, gays, and was a place where many biracial couples lived before this was a common thing. Ironically Oak Park is right next to Cicero which was known as one of the most intolerant and segregated cities in the country. Cicero today is largely hispanic though.
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