The Atlantic - Latest Comments in How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Angst — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:00:33 -0000

"As a black man I've never understood why so many so-called liberals think it's a problem whenever the proportion of black people ... "

Google "judicial disparate impact"

It is not a liberal bias. It is the law.

Many of the recent SCOTUS decisions involving race/hiring/election-laws reference it.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

mischief — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:10:12 -0000

I'm perfectly happy with the notion of making DC a tax-free zone.

Well, federal taxes at any rate I'm sure you'd levy some local ones.

But it would doubtlessly help the economic situation too.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Lincoln Kennedy — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:43:51 -0000

Ta-Nehisi,

With all due respect, you are either not getting it, or you are unwilling to recant your position. You should read the author(Aaron Renn)'s blog, The Urbanophile, to better understand where he is coming from. A couple of points that will clear things up (though Peter Moskos' final few sentences really expressed the point):

1) This guy is assuming a level of urban enthusiast understanding. So when he is saying "Tier One cities" like NYC, Chicago, etc., he is including places like DC, LA, San Francisco, etc. That is not a legitimate criticism.

2) Renn is writing from the perspective of a Midwesterner to an audience of Midwesterners (and he'd be the first to admit, white Midwesterners). So a lot is assumed there. The biggest thing one needs to have in mind when one reads his article is that everyone from a Midwestern city that isn't Chicago is asking themselves, "How did Atlanta (or Portland, Houston, Seattle, Denver, etc., basically any city that had less population than their midwestern city before the Second World War) become bigger (and therefore, better) than us?"

3) Starting from there, Renn's point is that, for Midwesterners who want models to develop their second tier cities, Atlanta and Houston are much better models than Portland and Seattle and Denver because both Midwestern and Southern cities have large black populations, histories of disconnection between their black and white populations, which these Western cities don't, because they don't have large black populations (and his reason for using county statistics is to emphasize the point of small historical black populations, not obscure it). Basically, the historical legacy of race relations that define America hasn't really played out in these places. An interesting question for these folks who live in Portland, Seattle, Denver, and Tucson or any of these places Renn mentions to ask themselves is whether their towns experienced race riots after MLK was assassinated (I have no idea- but I do know that there were empty lots and burned out buildings on U Street in DC from 1968 - 2000). Because if they didn't, then they missed out on some important American history (their disconnection from any real action or contribution to the Civil War would also put these places outside the mainstream as well).

4) The whole point of Renn's post was to argue for these Midwestern cities like Cleveland, Indianapolis, Cincinnati (where I'm from) to view their African-American populations as an asset, as something that makes them unique, as, oh, perhaps, fellow citizens; he cites Houston and Atlanta as cities that have done this successfully, and encourages Midwesterners to view these as the proper models, not the California expat refuges of Denver, Portland and Seattle.

5) Channel your experiences growing up in Baltimore and the zeitgeist of the Charm City at that time, and you've probably got the mentality of the Midwestern cities (apart from Chicago) that Renn is talking about.

Ta-Nehisi, you're awesome. Your delving into the history of the South and the Civil War was impressive. But I think that in your response to Aaron Renn you may be displaying the indifference of an east coaster to the realities and concerns of a Midwesterner. Just remember, we Ohioans may not seem so important, but we do get to choose who becomes President. And we provided the leadership responsible for a Union victory (Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Chase, Stanton, to name a few). We are still proud.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:00:25 -0000

Yeah, being an urban dude myself, I tend to agree--though I worry about saying it's better on a moral level. And I get what you're saying about Portland, and I almost get with this dude is saying--i.e. progressive policy in a lot of places is a lot easier absent the black/white fault line. I just think he overdid it. He should have accounted for all the nuance in his case, all the cities that don't fit his model (Washington D.C. being the most obvious) and went from there. I just wish he hadn't been so sweeping.

Also, I think the link is broke. Here it is:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/23/AR2009102303457.html

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Peter Moskos — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:34:56 -0000

I see your points. Especially the idea of using groups of people for intellectual debates (like when I rub my chin and puff my pipe and say, "yes, your style amuses us and make our lives more complete.")

But what if my argument was rephrased in an urban/suburban context (and not using those as code words for race)? I believe, on some moral level, that's it's better to live in a city than in the suburbs. When people leave struggling cities (and I'm not thinking NYC so much as cities like Baltimore), they also leave problems behind. And no longer are their efforts and tax dollars helping solve those problems.

That's fine. I understand people make a choice, often for very good reasons, to live in the suburbs. But I don't want those suburbanites telling me how much better they have it because they ran away. Don't stop listening to me when I complain about schools, crime, library hours, and Section 8 housing. Don't vote to fund road building over public transportation. Some people can choose to and others can afford to run away from issues and problems that should be seen as national but are too often perceived as local. That's their right. But it's not progressive.

[Also, completely unrelated, check out my piece in the Washington Post today. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/23/AR2009102303457.html]

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:34:42 -0000

Peter,

This is pretty wrong--if only on the math. It's literally impossible for every city in this country to have a black population like Chicago or Washington on New York. At some point you run out of blacks. But more than that, I'd be careful about dismissing people as "smug progressives"--especially when your basically arguing for black people as ornamentation, and then using them as a club to settle a score with some other class of white people.

I can't think of anything more "smugly progressive" than this notion that black people are objects for white intellectual debate. From that perspective, it really doesn't have anything to do with black agency. You guys don't really believe in it. It never occurs to you that a lot of black may prefer Atlanta to Portland.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Peter Moskos — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:44:20 -0000

To me the article is not about black people (agency or otherwise). It's about white people. Specifically it's calling out white people who celebrate their own "Progressive" values by living in a smug all-white cocoon.

Portland bothers me too because it's so damn white. I feel funny when I'm in a city by and large without black people. So I don't live there. And no, "non-whites" do make up for a lack of blacks. America, and black Americans, have a unique history, an exceptionalism, an American Core Culture, that to a great extent defines race relation in this country, perhaps even this country.

And it's not that I hate white people (some of my best friends are white). It's the smugness of Progressive in all-white cities that bothers me. These white folks are strangely soft and without edge. Lacking white/black diversity, whites become more boring and life becomes one big "Stuff White People Like," but with more homeless people.

At least non-Progressive whites who segregate themselves are being honest. Though it's ironic because working-class and conservative (even racist) whites generally live and work in much more racially and economically diverse environments than do many white Progressives.

If whites want to live in Portland and blacks don't, that's fine by me. Let Portland be white. Just don't be self-congratulatory (or paternalistic) about your Progressive values if you've chosen to live in an all-white America.

I'm sure there are good reasons for wanting to live in Portland. Hell, it's a nice city. But by being there, you've chosen to run away from--either actively or passively--racial (and class) diversity in America. And since schools, police, courts, public housing are paid for in large part by local taxes, a lot of your civic money will stay in your white city. That's your right. Just don't pat yourself on the back for it. It's not a good model for the rest of the country.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

aluhks — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:48:42 -0000

Many of us are not missing the point re: "lift and drop" of Portland's policies elsewhere. We are, however, separately insulted by the idea that "truly diverse" means only a large African American population. Aaron's assertion that this is so, as well as his casual slippage between talking about small African American populations and small minority populations (especially in regards to cities that actually have large minority populations) elides the fact the racial/ethnic dynamics are more complex than black/white.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

aluhks — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:41:00 -0000

Please stop treating black as coextensive with minority and/or diversity. It's fallacious and insulting. Austin, for example, is actually a minority white city but because your metric does not treat the Hispanic/Latino population as "diverse" this gets lost in the mix. That skews your analysis. It would also be a shock to much of Austin' Hispanic/Latino population to be told that they don't count as a minority, especially given that the city and its white population have historically treated them as one.

Similarly, your analysis of Seattle (and Austin as well actually) does not take into account the larger than average Asian population.

In some parts of the country, it is simply not accurate to say that African Americans alone are or traditionally have been "the sine qua non" of diversity. Along much of the Pacific coast, Asian populations are a better measure, if you insist on using a single ethnic group to measure diversity (a mistake in and of itself). Throughout much of the Southwest, including Texas, the sine qua non group, if you must choose one, would be Hispanics/Latinos.

Whatever other merits your points about the non-portability of the Portland model to other cities may have, this aspect of you article really undermines your persuasiveness.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:34:48 -0000

Understood. It's actually why I didn't say anything at first. I could have worded it a lot more clearly.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

DaveinHackensack — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:21:45 -0000

Njorl,

I think places outside of the south with few blacks generally are welcoming to non-whites. Indeed, post-Katrina, you had places like Salt Lake City and Minneapolis taking in refugees. There was an article in the WSJ at the time about a liberal, lesbian couple in Minneapolis who took in an African American woman, her mother, and several of her children post Katrina, and how the community chipped in to help get them set-up. Then there was a follow-up article later about how it all ended in disaster and recriminations.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Southerner — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:24:45 -0000

@TNC: You're right, my mistake. I apologize for misquoting you, and thanks for pointing it out. I should've looked more closely.

In my defense, all I can say is I spent many years in that area and have a deep affection for it, especially Durham. I worked in downtown Durham and spent many happy hours at the old Durham Athletic Park before Hollywood discovered the Durham Bulls and put Kevin Costner in a Bulls' uniform.

I tend to react -- maybe overreact is more accurate -- when I see the hyphen.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

mareada — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:51:05 -0000

I love Portland, but no one in their right mind(or without a trust fund) moves to a city where the rents are 3/4 of San Francisco but the salaries are 1/2(if you can find job).

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

njorl — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:08:08 -0000

I can see some logic to Renn's points. I do think that the biking culture in Minneapolis is somewhat rooted in the scandinavian heritage, but that's a very debatable point. In any case, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland and Austin are ALL very welcoming places for non-whites. I would say that Mpls and Seattle probably pride themselves on this fact. This is why the article is so wrong, when it veers off into this:

"I believe that cities that start taking their African American and other minority communities seriously, seeing them as a pillar of civic growth, will reap big dividends and distinguish themselves in the marketplace.

This trail has been blazed not by the “progressive” paragons but by places like Atlanta, Dallas and Houston. Atlanta, long known as one of America's premier African American cities, has boomed to become the capital of the New South. It should come as no surprise that good for African Americans has meant good for whites too. Similarly, Houston took in tens of thousands of mostly poor and overwhelmingly African American refugees from Hurricane Katrina. Houston, a booming metro and emerging world city, rolled out the welcome mat for them – and for Latinos, Asians and other newcomers. They see these people as possessing talent worth having."

Saying that cities like Houston and Atlanta have "rolled out" the welcome mat more than these so-called "white" cities is absurd and borderline patronizing.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 08:05:16 -0000

All this started with TNC mentioning in his original post that Raleigh-Durham was "another city that doesn't make the cut, for some reason." I was trying to clarify that Raleigh and Durham are separate cities with very different personalities, and the discussion went from there.

Not to be an ass, but that isn't really what I wrote. I didn't object initially, because I take your point about being clear, but--for the record--I'm quite clear that Raleigh and Durham are two different cities. Here's what I wrote:

Negroes like Raleigh-Durham (another area that doesn't make the cut, for some reason.)

That "area" is there for a reason. The original article doesn't look at cities, it looks at core counties. I was simply noting that the two, together, comprise an area that a lot of African-Americans live in, and have started migrating to, from up north.

Again, I appreciate the clarification. But I never wrote Raleigh-Durham "was another city."

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Southerner — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 06:59:07 -0000

@eric k:

Thanks for your response, and JD, sorry I went off on you there, but your tone struck me the wrong way.

As for progressive urban planning, I'm sure Durham could do better. I do know that other cities in the Triangle -- especially Chapel Hill -- have been very serious about creating and maintaining green spaces and buffer zones. It's been a long time since I was plugged in to Durham politics, so I don't know what, if anything, they've done with that.

But developers are converting the beautiful old late 19th century redbrick tobacco warehouses in downtown Durham into condos, offices, shops, etc., and I assume that qualifies as "density." A couple of former textile mills have also been converted. I think some of this has been designated for affordable housing.

And getting rid of that horrid downtown loop -- which I mentioned earlier -- has got to qualify as progressive.

The Durham Area Transit Authority (DATA), a bus system, has been improved some, and as I said, there's been talk of light-rail for years. Don't know where they are with that.

All this started with TNC mentioning in his original post that Raleigh-Durham was "another city that doesn't make the cut, for some reason." I was trying to clarify that Raleigh and Durham are separate cities with very different personalities, and the discussion went from there.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

DaveinHackensack — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:47:09 -0000

The Italics tags only work for one paragraph at a time. Blockquotes can be used for more than one paragraph here.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

DaveinHackensack — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:44:29 -0000

What about NYC's transportation policies would you recommend any other city emulate? The crosstown buses that crawl along? The Second Avenue subway that so far has probably taken longer to build than all of the previous subways combined? The Kamikaze taxis? The lack of a single, fast rail link from the major airports to Manhattan?

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Yamaneko — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:41:04 -0000

Maybe the question should go deeper. The Portland light rail was brought about by NIMBY, that is, opposition to a proposal to build the Mount Hood Freeway and I-505. The result of the NIMBY was that Portland decided to connect itself to Gresham via light rail.

The Midwest does not have as finely developed a talent for discerning good NIMBY from bad. Illinois wants to build an "third airport" in Peotone, Illinois that the people of Peotone do not want. Meanwhile Gary-Chicago Airport is expanding a runway and would desperately love to become the "third airport". It has occurred to few people outside Peotone and Gary to save the nation $10 billion and content themselves with Gary.

Meanwhile, Mitch "Pave The Earth" Daniels wants to build a tollway through southern Lake County, Indiana to connect I-65 with I-57 at Peotone. The NIMBYs don't want to become the southern flank of metro Chicago sprawl for a variety of reasons, and the merchants along US 30's twelve miles of shopping in mid-county probably don't want to lose their customers from points south. The tollway would not relieve congestion on the Borman Expressway; truckers already avoid tolls and the Borman by taking Route 2, about 5 miles south of the proposed tollway.

So, we'll just chew up a bunch of farmland, turn the current fringe of the Chicago metroplex to an inner-ring suburb, deprive the inner cities of a growth engine in ways that some of the exurbs detest.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

eric k — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:28:09 -0000

Southerner,

JD is right, in this article Progressive doesn't mean in a political sense, it is talking about progressive from an urban planning stanbd point, which generally means things like density, walkable mixed used neighborhoods and mass transit.

Whether Durham fits that model or not I have no idea about.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Yamaneko — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:05:30 -0000

This brings up a way for cities to diversify: be sure to have low unemployment, good wages, low crime and as little recent history of racist actions as possible. Of course, these are very good things for all cities to do, and if Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, DC and Cleveland pull it off, the diversification of the Pacific Northwest will have to wait.

As for the segregation measures -- they are a bit silly. A neighborhood that maintains a proportion of 55% black and 40% white for 30 years who speak with one voice on many issues and attend each others' funerals is "segregated" while a census tract whose northern 30% is 98%+ black, its southern 60% is 98%+ white, physical violence is meted out to whoever strays too far into "enemy territory" and the border is covered in "for sale" signs is "integrated".

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Yamaneko — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:48:54 -0000

Or, it could be that by definition, nobody without a car can move into a suburb without bus service and expect to commute, so people who choose not to have cars are restricted from the suburbs, and people in the suburbs tend to have little use for them.

Add to that just a hint of racism or fear of the other.

I'm not sure that Atlanta provides a good model these days. Have Gwinnett and Forsythe Counties been added to the light-rail transit system yet? Atlanta is also (in)famous for steep racial disparities, segregation and crime.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Rory — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:48:48 -0000

Note: The every paragraph under the link is a quote, the html tags didn't work right.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Rory — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:47:15 -0000

I swear the entire blogosphere has missed the entire point of Aaron's piece. He sum's it up best in his blog post here.

http://www.newgeography.com/content/001110-the-white-city

When I say “progressive”, I don’t mean it in a left-politics sense – Midwest cities like Cleveland are very blue, for example – but rather that places like Portland and Denver are held up as exemplars that other cities should be imitating in terms of urban policies. I actually happen to be a big fan of a lot of what they are doing and think a lot of it worthy of adapting to other places. I’ll even go so far as to say that changing land use and transportation policies in our urban cores is an absolute imperative if we expect that Midwest cities are ever going to regenerate themselves.

But I am troubled that cities who share a lack of African Americans as a core feature in common are considered the model. Far better would be truly diverse cities like NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, and Miami – but those Tier One cities simply can’t be imitated by much smaller places.

Perhaps those cities can’t be blamed for their history and resulting demographics. And I don’t think all American cities should have the exact same demographic mix. But it isn’t realistic to expect that the models that work there will work in other places.

That’s the piece of the puzzle that is missing in places like the Rust Belt and the South. Cities try to “lift and drop” the policies and sales plan of Portland without considering the local context in terms of how things like transit should be targeted to benefit the entire community and promote social justice, as well as how to sell forward looking urban policies in this environment.

Re: How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Southerner — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:29:35 -0000

JD: Have you been to Durham lately? They're ripping out that ridiculous downtown loop that has been such a pain since they put it in during the urban renewal craze of the '60s and '70s. So that may clear up some of the street layout problems you mentioned. And mass transit is your idea of progressive? They have a decent bus system and the city certainly isn't big enough to need a subway. And last I heard, a light-rail transit system is in the works to link all of the cities in the Triangle -- Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary, etc.

You want progressive? Go to Ninth Street and browse the bookstores and restaurants. Attend the American Dance Festival, which is headquartered in Durham. Go to one of the special programs at the Carolina Theater in downtown Durham. Check out the Bull Durham Blues Festival. Pick up a copy of the North Carolina Independent, undoubtedly one of the most lefty of all of the left-wing alternative publications. Go to one of Clyde Edgerton's book signings. Check out the Hayti Cultural Center that Maretha2 mentioned. Enroll your kid in the North Carolina School of Science and Math -- if he or she is good enough to get in.

Simply take a walk across the campuses of N.C. Central U. or Duke University, for Pete's sake. Since when is having two major, well-respected universities in the same city not an indication of progressiveness?

And voting for Obama isn't an indication of progressiveness? Are you freaking kidding me? I don't like to get into flame-wars in these kinds of settings, but you've ticked me off with your shallow, ill-informed dismissal of Durham, my friend. Durham is far from perfect and has some of the same problems that all larger cities have. But any culture vulture out there can find plenty of amusement in Durham, and any realistic progressive can see lots of indications that Durham is a decent city.