the economic plight of black Americans actually worsened under Obama
That does not seem to be the case. The Census Bureau reports that real median household income for black Americans rose between 2008-2016. And, the poverty rate dropped. And the unemployment rate for blacks was 12.7% in Jan of 2009 and 7.5% in Jan of 2017.
Surely the most important variable is opportunity. It appears that most couples meet through various social circles
some absolutely never would.
I am guessing that this group is in reality quite small, when push comes to shove. Plenty of people say, "I would never date X," but change their mind when they meet a particular person
Gdanning
2yr ago
simply asserting the other user "didn't have a leg to stand on" with respect to a specific policy decision
I didn't say he "didn't have a leg to stand on." I said "you probably don't have much cause to be angry."
makes up part of the rationale for the feds banning state governments enforcing such private contracts
I don’t understand your reference to the rationale. The rationale is that there is a seller who wants to sell to a black buyer, and would have done so " but for the active intervention of the state courts, supported by the full panoply of state power", and that therefore the enforcement of the contract was state action which brought it under the prohibition of the Equal Protection Clause.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Liberals don’t care about sports
I know plenty of liberals who are sports fans. AOC and Bernie Sanders are both baseball fans, for example.
Gdanning
2yr ago
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:
- Because it is wrong
- because people can always come up with some rationalization for mistreating their outgroup
- 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.
Gdanning
2yr ago
"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.
Gdanning
2yr ago
taught to write and seems to be universal standard practice in English,
I recall having discussions about this in the distant past. It actually is not standard practice (though IMHO it should be). See here ("The final period or comma goes inside the quotation marks, even if it is not a part of the quoted material, unless the quotation is followed by a citation."), and here which says that US and British practice is different, and traces the difference to the American use of double quotation marks and the appearance of text when typeset.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Since only about 65% of households own their homes, the median income of homeowners is presumably higher than the median income overall.
And it looks like median income in Pittsburgh (to choose an average city) is 54K, while the median home price is 275,000, or about 5x higher. About the same as 70k versus 340k.
I apologize, but to be clear it was a reference to dude's constant postings about "the Jooz." Edit: And, his reference to "dying for Isreal." So not much of a non sequitur.
Gdanning
2yr ago
I suggest you look at Streeteasy, which is the go-to site for NY real estate. I see a 1050 sq ft unit for 425K, five separate 1000 sq ft units in the $340 range; several others with no sq ft listed but with floor plans.
still seems insane for what you get,
Well, we all know that NYC apts tend to be small. But that is the nature of the city. There are plenty of much more expensive places in more upscale areas that are no larger. It really says nothing about whether a particular area is middle class. As i noted, the median household income there is right at the US median.
also has an $850 per month HOA fee.
Remember, most of the places you see are coops, and that means that the HOA fee includes property tax, insurance and, usually, heat and water. In some places it includes the electric bill, but I think that is rare. Plus, the HOA fee covers garbage and other standard city services fees.
Gdanning
2yr ago
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.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Surely the most common alternative is:
According to this, "Median household income in 2021 was $69,880. . . ."
That is what Turabian recommends, anyhow.
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.
Gdanning
2yr ago
According to this, "Median household income in 2021 was $69,880[.]" The 2021 median income for the US as a whole was $70,784.
Per www.streeteasy.com there are currently 48 2-bed+ apts for sale in Jackson Heights. Fifteen are listed at under $400K. There are only two for more than $800K,
Gdanning
2yr ago
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:
- 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.
- 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
- Ending blatant racial discrimination is a perfectly legitimate and important end in itself.
- And the core of the problem is?
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
Gdanning
2yr ago
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"?
Gdanning
2yr ago
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..
Gdanning
2yr ago
There are plenty of areas in NYC that are dense* and safe middle class neighborhoods. Jackson Heights, Forest Hills, etc.
*Relative to most of the rest of the US.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Well, that depends on what percentage of the housing is composed of townhouses, right? The mere fact that OP lives in a townhouse does not mean that his community is not suburban. See my links to townhouses for sale in Simi Valley, which is clearly suburban
Gdanning
2yr ago
It's not a suburb, the hint is in the name of your home itself: townhouse
In modern usage, "townhouse" is a particular type of home. They are quite common in suburban condominium developments in the US.
Gdanning
2yr ago
according to AI twitter San Francisco is the most important city in the world).
Again, just because someone believes something stupid, does not make it true.
To see the outsized importance of San Francisco to American perceptions of the West,
No one disputes that. But it irrelevant to your absurd claim that SF is in Silicon Valley, and that it is a product of Silicon Valley. In fact, it tends to refute that fact -- SF's role in the world long predates the development of Silicon Valley. The population of SF in 1950 was 775,000; its population is now is only about 13% more, at 873,000. In that same time period, San Jose's population rose from 95,000 to 1,000,000.
San Francisco is the oldest and most important major city on the West Coast
It is not the oldest major city on the West Coast, or even in California. San Diego is older. And it obviously is not the most important city, because Los Angeles is.
Beverly Hills and Santa Monica are obviously part of Los Angeles
Beverly Hills and Santa Monica are both surrounded by the City of Los Angeles (well, technically West Hollywood is a separate city) and have populations vastly smaller than Los Angeles (1/100th of the size of Los Angeles in the case of BH, and 1/30 in the case of SM). In contrast, SJ is larger than SF, is 40+ miles away, and is the center of its own metro area
When some game developer or software engineer or whatever attends a conference at the Moscone Center, ... that is their impression of Silicon Valley
So, if someone believes something stupid, that makes it true?
I think if you consult the linked source, you will find that a 7.5% unemployment rate for African Americans is in fact quite low in historical terms. The data starts in 1972, and from then until Jan of 2017 the African American unemployment rate had almost never been below 7.5%, and then only very briefly.
More importantly, the issue is not whether Obama is a good guy, or did a "good job." It is whether OP's specific empirical claim is correct, and it does not seem to be.
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