The Case for Reparations: Part Three

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

"Locked out of the greatest mass-based opportunity for wealth accumulation in American history, African Americans who desired and were able to afford home ownership found themselves consigned to central-city communities where their investments were affected by "self-fulfilling prophecies" of the FHA appraisers cut off from sources of new investment[,] their homes and communities deteriorated and lost value in comparison to those homes and communities that FHA appraisers deemed desirable." ("The Case for Reparations", pg. 8 of 47, quoting fromBlack Wealth/White Wealth, the 1995 book by Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro).

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Slavery is gone and the discrimination of  50 years ago is now 50 years ago, so what is the purpose of dredging up ancient history as a basis for reparations?  In reading the article, the purpose seemed to me to be to lay the foundational basis not just for the reparations that may have been warranted 50 years ago but also to put into context  the discrimination that continues to exist today.  And, for a person who has worked in a community ostensibly affected by the so-called "self-fulfilling prophecies" of the FHA, when the article goes into the perceived causes of the deterioration of the community, -- the perceived causes of the deterioration of my community, -- I do tend to pay attention.

Peace.

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"The lives of black Americans are better than they were half a century ago.  The humiliation of WHITES ONLY signs are gone.  Rates of black poverty have decreased.  Black teen pregnancy rates are at record lows -- and the gap between black and white teen pregnancy rates has shrunk significantly.  But such progress rests on a shaky foundation, and fault lines are everywhere.  The income gap between black and white households is roughly the same today as it was in 1970.  Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at New York University, studied children born from 1955 through 1970 and found that 4 percent of whites and 62 percent of blacks across America had been raised in poor neighborhoods.  A generation later, the same study showed, virtually nothing had changed.  And whereas whites born into affluent neighborhoods tended to remain in affluent neighborhoods, blacks tended to fall out of them."

"The implications are chilling.  As a rule, poor black people do not work their way out of the ghetto -- and those who do often face the horror of watching their children and grandchildren tumble back."