>>Does turning zoning reform into a highly polarized issue of racial conflict make it more or less likely to happen?<<
This this this this this.
I'm a homeowner on the westside of LA and have been converted from NIMBY to YIMBY partly by Matt but more so by serving on my local homeowners association board. And one thing the latter has taught me is what *won't* work -- and that is the racial framing, whether you cite redlining from 1917 or describe it as some abstract form of "systemic racism." These are all good liberals and to basically call them racists is to immediately shut down all debate. (And why not? All minorities are welcome in our neighborhood, as long as they can cough up the >$2 million for a house.)
And these people are *powerful.* The excellent book "Neighborhood Defenders" (https://www.amazon.com/Neighborhood-Defenders-Participatory-Politics-Americas/dp/1108477275) nails this. Oh, and by the way, passing good state laws without these groups' buy-in is a losing proposition. Scott Weiner et al here in California have excellent laws, but whatever laws are passed have to be implemented locally. And no matter what the law says, there are *so* many ways to gum up the works in local implementation, and the state simply doesn't have the apparatus or scope (or probably political will) to police all the actions being taken locally.
So, one way or another, there has to be some buy-in by local homeowners. Vilifying them, and calling them racist, may make you feel better, but won't advance things.
This is a hard one, but the framing I would push is threefold: climate, your kids, and workforce. They believe in fighting climate change and don't take it as personally as being called racist. Convince them that density helps with this noble cause. Then tell them (gently) that *their* kids won't be able to afford to live anywhere, so why not do your part? Lastly, I find them somewhat amenable to the workforce argument, so hit that. In West Los Angeles terms, that means emphasizing that their kids' teachers are making the long, painful trek from Reseda, the police officers they love have to fight daily traffic from Simi Valley, and the firefighters from Van Nuys (and for the most woke, tell them about how their maids have to come from Pacoima).
And, finally, this is truly slow boring. Take small victories when and where you can, and don't expect that the NIMBY forces will collapse all at once, and a bright new day will dawn. This will take time.
+1. I find that stories like, "I want to be able to see my grandchildren, not have them live in Austin," and "It's not right that teachers in my SF Bay city have to live in Stockton or have three roommates because there's nowhere they can afford here," are better YIMBY tactics.
It's slow boring, but the benefit to local advocacy is actual wins. You and a few friends can go to a City Council meeting and get an apartment building approved that would have been denied if you weren't there. It's gratifying.
As a member of a LA YIMBY group, my experience is that racial justice rhetoric isn't necessarily convincing to voters, but can be useful when talking to elites. If I'm trying to get the NAACP on board, or trying to convince the San Francisco city council to move away from exclusionary zoning, then this framework can be effective.
One of the problems with the trend towards framing everything in terms of race is it's caused a lot of people to lose sight of the difference between means and ends. Is the end a society where people are permanently and always classified on the basis of race, skin color or continent of ancestral origin? Or is the end a society where the continent you or your ancesters came from is a irrelevant as which European country people whose of European ancestry are from (which used to be considered pretty significant)? It's hard to tell anymore what the progressive end goal is.
Thanks for asking this, the same question has been on my mind for awhile now. Are we still all attempting to move towards the same goal, and only disagreeing about methods and progress, or has the goal changed for some proportion of progressive? I'm increasingly starting to think it's the latter. Especially when I hear some version of "nothing has changed since Slavery or nothing has changed since Jim Crow rhetoric"
I mean, it's extremely hard to believe that we'll ever get to a place where anyone can credibly say "I don't see race", right? Certainly not in any meaningful timeframe. There's a reason that line became a punchline, and it's not thanks to the antiracists.
I can't believe I'm the only one who has lived experiences where they "didn't see race". I mean, I've had, and continue to have, experiences where "i see race" and where "i don't see it" in the sense of it occupying some of my mental space.
For example, when I'm out with my wife, who's not white, in very white areas I'm usually somewhat conscious of that fact and a bit on guard over whether she might be treated differently in some way. likewise when we travelled out of the country although the roles were reversed. But when we're home raising our kids it's not something that I really think about - I'm not "seeing race", I'm just "seeing my wife"
Back in college I had a roommate from Texas with a spanish last name and probably some partial European ancestry. I knew his parents were from the Philippines, but for some reason it was about a year before I connected that with the idea that he was "Asian", I had an "Asian" roommate, and when he or other people were talking about "Asians" he was included in that group. I had basically just never thought about it, or if I did it was on the same level as kind of being aware of the ethnic background of white friends. I think that's an example of "not seeing race" and it would apply to a lot of the people I knew in college.
I feel like I could go on and on just from my own college experience with examples of friends who identify as minorities and who's race or ethnicity was something I was often conscious of, and others where I simply wasn't. And in the latter case, you can laugh if you want, but I could meaningfully describe those as interactions where I didn't see race.
I think society should strive to have more of the latter and I don't see why we shouldn't work towards that goal
The entirety of the last half of the 20th Century is a process of trying to make American society be just less hung up on race altogether, which, sure, we can describe as "not seeing race," and it was Pretty Successful Actually.
Somehow, in the 21st Century, attempts to point out the places where the 20th Century process fell short (and those certainly exist), and, moreso, the ways that society could be unfair to black people while *nobody actually was specifically trying to discriminate against black people* (which also exist, and which I feel like people have lost sight of as the definition of structural racism) transformed into "everyone should put racial identity in their personal spotlight forever," which is dumb and counterproductive.
Yes but what's the end goal - a society where whether your ancestry is from South Africa or South Asia is as irrelevant as whether it's from Italy or Ireland? Or one where that permanently matters?
People with ancestry from Italy or Ireland don't think of that as irrelevant. It is mostly not a matter of public policy disputes -- but not always: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56653071
I think the end goal should be to have a just society in which people will still feel attachment to the cultures they identify with.
A generation or two ago white ethnic backgrounds were a much bigger deal. Personally I still think it's quite divisive and silly when I encounter it. I couldn't count how many times people have told me a personal quirk, flaw or strength was "because I'm Italian". Although they can't speak Italian, have never visited Italy, couldn't name the prime minister, etc...
Even answering that question gives rhetorical cover to people who think we can plausibly reach a race-neutral society in a reasonable timeframe, and so I don't think it's helpful, nor does it matter that much.
If you can't or won't be honest about what the goal is, how can you evaluate or be honest about whether the means you've chosen to get there are effective?
There are no effective means that will get us to a society that doesn't see race within the lifespan of anyone posting to this blog. And in fact, even attempting to measure progress towards that goal would set us back, right? After all, if something doesn't matter, why do we care so much about measuring whether we've gotten to a place where we don't care so much?
So I don't think that setting an explicit goal of trying to get to a race-neutral society is likely to be either successful or productive. But it will open the door for a bunch of assholes who falsely claim that they're already race-neutral.
I remember one so-called progressive who clearly didn't understand the realities of social justice, since he fed into those assholes thinking by talking about his dream that we could "one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
This response makes so little sense to me. Measuring progress towards a goal sets you back from that goal? I'm having trouble understanding it even a little
Respectfully- I think you are missing the forest for the trees here. Isn't there a *tiny* part of you that feels kind of weird when you encounter someone whose race is hard to classify and you can't figure out how you are supposed to interpret their opinions? Like, why should your assessment of their race (instead of whatever aspect of their life experience they felt was relevant enough to share) be a factor in how you process their ideas? This, for me anyway, was the nagging piece of the puzzle that never felt right.
People who strive to move toward a race-neutral society are not the enemy. Systemic inequality and unexamined bias are the enemy.
It is absolutely worth getting to a place where most people say, "I see race but I try very hard not to let it impact the way I treat people." Fox News watchers who quote MLK are trying to remind the rest of us that we are actively working in the wrong direction.
Another telling example of this phenomenon is that the only people that I’ve ever heard describe the Affordable Care Act as being a racial justice measure have been its opponents, who describe it as “reparations”. Not sure the origin of that meme or the role it plays in the larger racialization of the ACA debate but it’s certainly notable that the right sees casting race-neutral measures as racial justice measures as a beneficial move for them.
I think the bigger point is that the ACA was almost exclusively talked about in race-neutral terms by its proponents, and conservatives still made it super divisive.
Raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations is race neutral -- also super divisive.
Making unions easier to form and join is race neutral -- also super divisive.
Regulating the financial sector is race neutral -- also super divisive.
Increasing federal spending on literally anything other than the military -- also super divisive.
None of those things were explicitly connected to race, but they have all proved to be major triggers for conservatives.
Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, Kerry -- none of those guys talked much about race, and they all triggered conservatives anyway while consistently losing ground on most issues.
I have yet to see remotely persuasive evidence that the Democratic party does better when we shut up about race. Even Matt's evidence here indicates the opposite of what he suggests: Nobody makes any progress on zoning as a non-race issue, but framing it as a race issue leads to some small progress. How does that add up to less race talk = more progress?
Could Biden outperforming Clinton be a data point? I also feel like “well, Obamacare ended up being divisive anyway” relies on the same null hypothesis problem as “Republicans called Kerry a socialist so why would them calling Sanders a socialist be any worse?” It’s not unreasonable that when the Democrats lean into the controversial framing rather than resisting it, the results are more divisive.
For DC specifically, I am interested in why the DC Mayor and 11 of the 13 DC Councilmembers who aren't dedicated Ward 2 and Ward 3 CMs haven't pushed to upzone Wards 2 and 3 then use all the added tax revenue that generates for social services and other progressive things.
Is it just that affluent Ward 2 and 3 residents have a lot of political power citywide, plus the power of inertia and the status quo?
I think the power of inertia and the status quo basically explains it. I keep wanting just one member to propose this and see how everyone else reacts. It seems like a good idea to me.
There's a pretty strong left-NIMBY streak in a lot of the other councilmembers. Lewis-George, Nadeau, and White would hate the idea of giving developers a "win" like upzoning. Meanwhile, the council chair and at-large members have to contend with winning votes west of the park and are hesitant to upset the rich NIMBYs who would declare a holy war against them. It doesn't leave you with enough votes to get anything meaningful passed.
The Office of Planning came out with a report, written because of CM Nadeau’s legislative amendment I believe, that recommends repealing single family zoning in affluent parts of DC.
I find a lot of this analysis both interesting and compelling. But when I look at the poll cited, my first reaction isn't, "aha, we as supporters of more housing should run with the +11 argument, not the +3 argument," it's "oh shit, *neither* argument is breaking 50 percent, even *without* including an argument against the position." I have no idea which argument would best hold up to message testing in that way, I can tell a story in which either does, but it seems like an area where it would be fruitful to get more research, and in any case, those initial numbers are... not great.
The splits among Democratic supporters are better, which I think is important since my sense is a lot of the necessary activity will be aimed at cities where they predominate, but even there you don't see two-thirds support, and again, I assume support would drop if you ask the question as something closer to, "Supporters of this say it will drive economic growth, opponents say it will increase traffic and make parking more difficult."
In fact, I'd be curious to see what happens to the Democratic number for economic growth if the poll tested it against the argument Yglesias pointed to as an interleft critique -- "opponents say increased development just enriches wealthy developers." Seems ripe for splitting the Democratic coalition with either the racial or the economic argument.
I am annoyed by a rhetorical device that I see everywhere lately. The author will explain how some aspect of contemporary American life was shaped by overt racism the racist policies that flowed from it. They will then point to a group difference from a recent study and assert that it the direct result of said racism, ipso facto nothing has changed and anyone dissenting or suggesting any nuance is a racist.
I'm not sure if I am a progressive or not (how do I tell?) but I am both fascinated by all the ways modern society is shaped by past racism and put off by the lazy argumentation and dogmatic preemption of any further discussion of the topic. But if the purpose is really just to cajole people into acquiescing to good policy ideas, then I'm ok with that; if framing zoning regulations as racist brings the otherwise-NIMBY, but-what-about-my-property-value and the but-its-an-historic-neighborhood crowd into modernity, then the rhetoric serves a purpose... assuming it isn't overwhelmed by the "anti-anti" conservative backlash.
Since this tactic is so frequently used by people who make racist arguments and proposals themselves, I turn away from any policy or argument that is supported in this way.
I guess the problem with that is it might not always be the case that the anti-racist framing is used for good.
In other words sometimes we look at something and say "the ends justify the (flawed) means", in this case lazy argumentation and dogmatic preemption of debate. But those same means can be coopted for flawed end goals - imo abolish the police for example.
>There is a book called “Urban Planning and the African-American Community: In the Shadows” which I have not read because it’s for sale on Amazon for $83.
We know how many subscriptions you have, you can afford the book!
If you have a small business, you can deduct anything as long as you don't enjoy it. If you smile 30% of the time you read the book, you can only deduct 70% of the book price.
+1. The throwaway line about your own money anxieties diminishes the impact of everything else. That’s the lens you look through? You don’t have enough? you’re barely scraping by, so you can’t afford a piece of writing germane to your positions? or in other words, you can’t do math, so why should we take your economic prescriptions without can enormous discount?
It's worth making explicit a question that's implicit in this and other posts in the "elite nonprofit funders" corpus, which is: What is the (political) use of history?
To spell it out more, I think there's been a largely positive trend of more people taking interest in reading about some of our nation's pretty ugly racial history. I read many of these books and think that, for the most part, they are well-researched, interesting, and worth recommending to other people in my social circle. But there seem to be two errors that occur on the path of "learning about redlining" to "aggressively advocating for racially equitable housing policies."
One is along the lines of what's being argued in this post, which is that the majority of people don't find historically grounded arguments all that persuasive. It's true that many (perhaps a majority) of people in elite non-profit spaces are politically activated by this education, but that's not really politically scalable and the tactic only really works on people who are inclined to agree with your worldview in the first place.
The other mistake is what I'd call the "1619 project" error, which is that the fusion of history and politics has led many otherwise intelligent people to get out over their skis and interpret history in an overly deterministic manner. (In the case of the 1619 project, this is the argument that America became a racist nation from the moment the first slave ship landed.) As historians quip, "the past doesn't know its future," but much of the non-profit class you describe has really bought into the fact that no solution is effective unless it comes along with an exorcism to account for past historical wrongs. And they've come to that conclusion--I would argue--because they don't fully appreciate the limits of what history is able to tell us about our present.
My sense is that, because many people have made the second error, their response to an argument like the one made in this post (pointing out the first error) would be that an "economic growth" framing would be insufficient to address the past historical injustice that needs to be dealt with before meaningful change can occur. I don't think that's right (or at least it's extremely impractical), but I think it's worth being attentive to the second distinction because many elite actors have convinced themselves that the "historicist" approach to politics is superior to the "popularist" approach.
History is history and politics is politics. History is about understanding the past and people in it, all of it, in the round. Politics is about judgment and persuasion, and these are antithetical to historical understanding.
Clearly Matt missed his chance to name this blog "Yglesiastopia."
I agree with most everything you've analyzed. I'd be very interested to see the first bar chart, with support for de-zoning in terms of how it's framed, with a breakout just for "NYT subscribers"-- I expect you'd see a very different distribution. Extremely progressive friends I have (who own multiple houses in heavily zoned, high cost cities) viscerally react to an "economic growth" framing as immoral. Economic growth = capitalism = white supremacy. Your challenge is almost as tough as "how do you convince Catholics that abortion is good because it lets families devote themselves to the moral upbringing of the children they already have?" Good luck. I think people who write arguments framed like this in the NYT like the idea that they are reaching a targeted audience, and Tucker Carlson also seems to think the only people who can hear him are on his side. In this age of media hyper-saturation, you're always speaking to everyone. It can be impossible to frame your argument in a way that resonates viscerally with anyone without setting off someone else. You're left with "milquetoast" middle ground "rationalism" that puts everyone to sleep. Except those of us here in Yglesisastopia trying to make neloiberalism great again ;)
The pain of taking 250k when you could have taken 800k. I wonder at what income level do you simply not care how much stuff costs. $83 for a book is outrageously expensive. However, I and I presume Matt Y have $83. But I am not spending $83 on a book, regardless of quality. Next post inflation as it applies to digital books.
Well the Hardcover is $230 lol. Matt Y needs a go fund me. A post on crazy book prices would be awesome Matt wrote about it a lot when he was at Slate.
"Next post inflation as it applies to digital books. "
I would love for Matt to do a deep dive on digital books and why they are so stupidly priced. The pandemic got me to start using my local libraries digital book offering, but I hate that it costs them so much more to use a digital book. It might be to their benefit though. I felt so bad about it, I went and found a way to donate regularly.
I think if you didn't grow up especially well off, you cling to certain valuations of things no matter how much you have now. For example, I have to fight myself sometimes not to waste a lot of time to save a couple dollars, like futzing with coupons at the grocery store.
I had a similar experience with Intro to Federal Income Tax, I think. (There was a new edition and I couldn't buy used.) Add that to the IRC and the IRS Regs extracts...I'm just glad I actually ended up a tax lawyer (municipal tax, yes, but at least the principles of income tax are largely the same).
It is also the case that this argument mostly doesn't work against actual NIMBYs,.even the kind you would expect it to most.
Here in Bloomington, the city is currently trying to do some upzoning of the richest downtown single family neighborhoods. They are populated by the kinds of highly educated white people who are supposedly motivated by appeals to racial justice. And they hate upzoning.
But when you point out the facts Matt mentions, for example in the form of that NYT oped, they are not persuaded. Instead they think you're calling them racist and get mad. This is true even of people who analogize upzoning for duplexes on corners to urban renewal!
Maybe it's persuasive to the broader group of people who are listening but not arguing, but we shall see what happens.
Yes I think it's often if not typically the case in politics that you can't persuade your opponents, in which case the right strategy is to try to deprive them of casual allies.
One problem I see, which kind of parallels the "ethic of conviction" thing, is that a lot of people have made "speak truth to power" their guiding principle in life - i.e. not just something one should be *willing* to do when necessary, but a good thing in and of itself. When that's your starting principle, it isn't difficult to connect the dots and arrive at some really counterproductive ideas. In a democracy it's electoral majorities who have power (with caveats, of course - gerrymandering, etc) so "speaking truth to power" can very easily turn into an Ibsenesque "the majority is always wrong."
The framing that racial equity is about pleasing donors and peers is really helpful to understanding the phenomenon. In addition to framing everything in racial justice terms, I think there's also pressure to make statements that are as uncompromising as possible. I find it so discouraging b/c, in addition to torpedoing real change, it moves the focus from tangible solutions to real problems to just having discussion groups
Why not emphasize the generational impact of these kinds of rules? Young people are having a hard time paying high rents and buying expensive houses. The rapid rise in property values is a redistribution of wealth from young people to older people. Emphasizing this seems like an approach that older folks with children (or grandchildren) could be sympathetic to.
Also, let's be honest, but the fact that crime is rising and people are talking about "defund/abolish the police" raises the level of fear among in many neighborhoods. This makes folks more hesitant to take a chance on changing their neighborhoods. If someone (or a party) advocates both zoning reform and reducing funds for law enforcement, that's doing to shut down the conversation for many people. Changing zoning rules is always hard but especially at this point in time.
And about that paper by Hsieh and Moretti...it's almost impossible for me to believe that residential zoning restrictions have reduced our national income by over one-third. I suspect there are more problems with that paper than just the math, but I appreciate the overall point.
I'm not sure that playing up the generational divide on housing is helpful - plenty of older people love their own kids but think that "today's youth" more broadly are whiny entitled jerks.
Plenty don't. This won't work with everyone, to be sure. But if the problem is framed as an affordability crisis, and you can point to groups that some people can more identify with (themselves at a younger age even), then that seems like a reasonable approach.
I lived in a Boston-adjacent city and know that a lot of older folks with houses complain that their children can't afford that neighborhood or anything close, so the children move to burbs much farther out....farther from family. There should be some support there for increasing density in those places if more reasons were given. (I would say that this would often work better than the racial justice argument, but we all know that Boston is totally non-racist, right?)
>>Does turning zoning reform into a highly polarized issue of racial conflict make it more or less likely to happen?<<
This this this this this.
I'm a homeowner on the westside of LA and have been converted from NIMBY to YIMBY partly by Matt but more so by serving on my local homeowners association board. And one thing the latter has taught me is what *won't* work -- and that is the racial framing, whether you cite redlining from 1917 or describe it as some abstract form of "systemic racism." These are all good liberals and to basically call them racists is to immediately shut down all debate. (And why not? All minorities are welcome in our neighborhood, as long as they can cough up the >$2 million for a house.)
And these people are *powerful.* The excellent book "Neighborhood Defenders" (https://www.amazon.com/Neighborhood-Defenders-Participatory-Politics-Americas/dp/1108477275) nails this. Oh, and by the way, passing good state laws without these groups' buy-in is a losing proposition. Scott Weiner et al here in California have excellent laws, but whatever laws are passed have to be implemented locally. And no matter what the law says, there are *so* many ways to gum up the works in local implementation, and the state simply doesn't have the apparatus or scope (or probably political will) to police all the actions being taken locally.
So, one way or another, there has to be some buy-in by local homeowners. Vilifying them, and calling them racist, may make you feel better, but won't advance things.
This is a hard one, but the framing I would push is threefold: climate, your kids, and workforce. They believe in fighting climate change and don't take it as personally as being called racist. Convince them that density helps with this noble cause. Then tell them (gently) that *their* kids won't be able to afford to live anywhere, so why not do your part? Lastly, I find them somewhat amenable to the workforce argument, so hit that. In West Los Angeles terms, that means emphasizing that their kids' teachers are making the long, painful trek from Reseda, the police officers they love have to fight daily traffic from Simi Valley, and the firefighters from Van Nuys (and for the most woke, tell them about how their maids have to come from Pacoima).
And, finally, this is truly slow boring. Take small victories when and where you can, and don't expect that the NIMBY forces will collapse all at once, and a bright new day will dawn. This will take time.
+1. I find that stories like, "I want to be able to see my grandchildren, not have them live in Austin," and "It's not right that teachers in my SF Bay city have to live in Stockton or have three roommates because there's nowhere they can afford here," are better YIMBY tactics.
It's slow boring, but the benefit to local advocacy is actual wins. You and a few friends can go to a City Council meeting and get an apartment building approved that would have been denied if you weren't there. It's gratifying.
As a member of a LA YIMBY group, my experience is that racial justice rhetoric isn't necessarily convincing to voters, but can be useful when talking to elites. If I'm trying to get the NAACP on board, or trying to convince the San Francisco city council to move away from exclusionary zoning, then this framework can be effective.
I can see that, but words travel widely. Everyone else can hear this too.
One of the problems with the trend towards framing everything in terms of race is it's caused a lot of people to lose sight of the difference between means and ends. Is the end a society where people are permanently and always classified on the basis of race, skin color or continent of ancestral origin? Or is the end a society where the continent you or your ancesters came from is a irrelevant as which European country people whose of European ancestry are from (which used to be considered pretty significant)? It's hard to tell anymore what the progressive end goal is.
Thanks for asking this, the same question has been on my mind for awhile now. Are we still all attempting to move towards the same goal, and only disagreeing about methods and progress, or has the goal changed for some proportion of progressive? I'm increasingly starting to think it's the latter. Especially when I hear some version of "nothing has changed since Slavery or nothing has changed since Jim Crow rhetoric"
I mean, it's extremely hard to believe that we'll ever get to a place where anyone can credibly say "I don't see race", right? Certainly not in any meaningful timeframe. There's a reason that line became a punchline, and it's not thanks to the antiracists.
I can't believe I'm the only one who has lived experiences where they "didn't see race". I mean, I've had, and continue to have, experiences where "i see race" and where "i don't see it" in the sense of it occupying some of my mental space.
For example, when I'm out with my wife, who's not white, in very white areas I'm usually somewhat conscious of that fact and a bit on guard over whether she might be treated differently in some way. likewise when we travelled out of the country although the roles were reversed. But when we're home raising our kids it's not something that I really think about - I'm not "seeing race", I'm just "seeing my wife"
Back in college I had a roommate from Texas with a spanish last name and probably some partial European ancestry. I knew his parents were from the Philippines, but for some reason it was about a year before I connected that with the idea that he was "Asian", I had an "Asian" roommate, and when he or other people were talking about "Asians" he was included in that group. I had basically just never thought about it, or if I did it was on the same level as kind of being aware of the ethnic background of white friends. I think that's an example of "not seeing race" and it would apply to a lot of the people I knew in college.
I feel like I could go on and on just from my own college experience with examples of friends who identify as minorities and who's race or ethnicity was something I was often conscious of, and others where I simply wasn't. And in the latter case, you can laugh if you want, but I could meaningfully describe those as interactions where I didn't see race.
I think society should strive to have more of the latter and I don't see why we shouldn't work towards that goal
The entirety of the last half of the 20th Century is a process of trying to make American society be just less hung up on race altogether, which, sure, we can describe as "not seeing race," and it was Pretty Successful Actually.
Somehow, in the 21st Century, attempts to point out the places where the 20th Century process fell short (and those certainly exist), and, moreso, the ways that society could be unfair to black people while *nobody actually was specifically trying to discriminate against black people* (which also exist, and which I feel like people have lost sight of as the definition of structural racism) transformed into "everyone should put racial identity in their personal spotlight forever," which is dumb and counterproductive.
When the guiding purpose of your life has been/becomes fighting racism, it can be viscerally painful to admit success (even partially).
Yes but what's the end goal - a society where whether your ancestry is from South Africa or South Asia is as irrelevant as whether it's from Italy or Ireland? Or one where that permanently matters?
People with ancestry from Italy or Ireland don't think of that as irrelevant. It is mostly not a matter of public policy disputes -- but not always: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56653071
I think the end goal should be to have a just society in which people will still feel attachment to the cultures they identify with.
A generation or two ago white ethnic backgrounds were a much bigger deal. Personally I still think it's quite divisive and silly when I encounter it. I couldn't count how many times people have told me a personal quirk, flaw or strength was "because I'm Italian". Although they can't speak Italian, have never visited Italy, couldn't name the prime minister, etc...
Even answering that question gives rhetorical cover to people who think we can plausibly reach a race-neutral society in a reasonable timeframe, and so I don't think it's helpful, nor does it matter that much.
If you can't or won't be honest about what the goal is, how can you evaluate or be honest about whether the means you've chosen to get there are effective?
There are no effective means that will get us to a society that doesn't see race within the lifespan of anyone posting to this blog. And in fact, even attempting to measure progress towards that goal would set us back, right? After all, if something doesn't matter, why do we care so much about measuring whether we've gotten to a place where we don't care so much?
So I don't think that setting an explicit goal of trying to get to a race-neutral society is likely to be either successful or productive. But it will open the door for a bunch of assholes who falsely claim that they're already race-neutral.
I remember one so-called progressive who clearly didn't understand the realities of social justice, since he fed into those assholes thinking by talking about his dream that we could "one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
Well, and the poor will always be with us, yet for some reason we don’t foreground class as this immutable characteristic in the same way.
This response makes so little sense to me. Measuring progress towards a goal sets you back from that goal? I'm having trouble understanding it even a little
Respectfully- I think you are missing the forest for the trees here. Isn't there a *tiny* part of you that feels kind of weird when you encounter someone whose race is hard to classify and you can't figure out how you are supposed to interpret their opinions? Like, why should your assessment of their race (instead of whatever aspect of their life experience they felt was relevant enough to share) be a factor in how you process their ideas? This, for me anyway, was the nagging piece of the puzzle that never felt right.
People who strive to move toward a race-neutral society are not the enemy. Systemic inequality and unexamined bias are the enemy.
It is absolutely worth getting to a place where most people say, "I see race but I try very hard not to let it impact the way I treat people." Fox News watchers who quote MLK are trying to remind the rest of us that we are actively working in the wrong direction.
As long as we don't insist on perfection, I don't think it's an impossible goal.
Another telling example of this phenomenon is that the only people that I’ve ever heard describe the Affordable Care Act as being a racial justice measure have been its opponents, who describe it as “reparations”. Not sure the origin of that meme or the role it plays in the larger racialization of the ACA debate but it’s certainly notable that the right sees casting race-neutral measures as racial justice measures as a beneficial move for them.
This was originally a Rush Limbaugh thing.
That’s right! Ironic that intra-left dynamics have the effect of making proponents of economic justice make the same move as Rush, of all people!
I think the bigger point is that the ACA was almost exclusively talked about in race-neutral terms by its proponents, and conservatives still made it super divisive.
Raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations is race neutral -- also super divisive.
Making unions easier to form and join is race neutral -- also super divisive.
Regulating the financial sector is race neutral -- also super divisive.
Increasing federal spending on literally anything other than the military -- also super divisive.
None of those things were explicitly connected to race, but they have all proved to be major triggers for conservatives.
Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, Kerry -- none of those guys talked much about race, and they all triggered conservatives anyway while consistently losing ground on most issues.
I have yet to see remotely persuasive evidence that the Democratic party does better when we shut up about race. Even Matt's evidence here indicates the opposite of what he suggests: Nobody makes any progress on zoning as a non-race issue, but framing it as a race issue leads to some small progress. How does that add up to less race talk = more progress?
Could Biden outperforming Clinton be a data point? I also feel like “well, Obamacare ended up being divisive anyway” relies on the same null hypothesis problem as “Republicans called Kerry a socialist so why would them calling Sanders a socialist be any worse?” It’s not unreasonable that when the Democrats lean into the controversial framing rather than resisting it, the results are more divisive.
*not unreasonable TO THINK that...
For DC specifically, I am interested in why the DC Mayor and 11 of the 13 DC Councilmembers who aren't dedicated Ward 2 and Ward 3 CMs haven't pushed to upzone Wards 2 and 3 then use all the added tax revenue that generates for social services and other progressive things.
Is it just that affluent Ward 2 and 3 residents have a lot of political power citywide, plus the power of inertia and the status quo?
I think the power of inertia and the status quo basically explains it. I keep wanting just one member to propose this and see how everyone else reacts. It seems like a good idea to me.
Yglesias for At-Large Councilmember 2022
Literally an automatic vote for me. Matt do it for the people!!
Continuing the venerable tradition of take artists running for political office: https://www.insidehook.com/article/books/when-writers-run-for-elected-office
Can't believe that article leaves out Hunter S. Thompson and Kinky Friedman.
There's a pretty strong left-NIMBY streak in a lot of the other councilmembers. Lewis-George, Nadeau, and White would hate the idea of giving developers a "win" like upzoning. Meanwhile, the council chair and at-large members have to contend with winning votes west of the park and are hesitant to upset the rich NIMBYs who would declare a holy war against them. It doesn't leave you with enough votes to get anything meaningful passed.
Isn’t CM Nadeau as close to a YIMBY as we get on the DC Council right now?
https://mobile.twitter.com/BrianneKNadeau/status/1223354232549580801
The Office of Planning came out with a report, written because of CM Nadeau’s legislative amendment I believe, that recommends repealing single family zoning in affluent parts of DC.
I find a lot of this analysis both interesting and compelling. But when I look at the poll cited, my first reaction isn't, "aha, we as supporters of more housing should run with the +11 argument, not the +3 argument," it's "oh shit, *neither* argument is breaking 50 percent, even *without* including an argument against the position." I have no idea which argument would best hold up to message testing in that way, I can tell a story in which either does, but it seems like an area where it would be fruitful to get more research, and in any case, those initial numbers are... not great.
The splits among Democratic supporters are better, which I think is important since my sense is a lot of the necessary activity will be aimed at cities where they predominate, but even there you don't see two-thirds support, and again, I assume support would drop if you ask the question as something closer to, "Supporters of this say it will drive economic growth, opponents say it will increase traffic and make parking more difficult."
In fact, I'd be curious to see what happens to the Democratic number for economic growth if the poll tested it against the argument Yglesias pointed to as an interleft critique -- "opponents say increased development just enriches wealthy developers." Seems ripe for splitting the Democratic coalition with either the racial or the economic argument.
I can't believe Matt Gaetz hasn't been blocked from commenting on this site.
:-)
This article makes me feel better.
I am annoyed by a rhetorical device that I see everywhere lately. The author will explain how some aspect of contemporary American life was shaped by overt racism the racist policies that flowed from it. They will then point to a group difference from a recent study and assert that it the direct result of said racism, ipso facto nothing has changed and anyone dissenting or suggesting any nuance is a racist.
I'm not sure if I am a progressive or not (how do I tell?) but I am both fascinated by all the ways modern society is shaped by past racism and put off by the lazy argumentation and dogmatic preemption of any further discussion of the topic. But if the purpose is really just to cajole people into acquiescing to good policy ideas, then I'm ok with that; if framing zoning regulations as racist brings the otherwise-NIMBY, but-what-about-my-property-value and the but-its-an-historic-neighborhood crowd into modernity, then the rhetoric serves a purpose... assuming it isn't overwhelmed by the "anti-anti" conservative backlash.
Since this tactic is so frequently used by people who make racist arguments and proposals themselves, I turn away from any policy or argument that is supported in this way.
I guess the problem with that is it might not always be the case that the anti-racist framing is used for good.
In other words sometimes we look at something and say "the ends justify the (flawed) means", in this case lazy argumentation and dogmatic preemption of debate. But those same means can be coopted for flawed end goals - imo abolish the police for example.
This was the most offensive part of the article.
>There is a book called “Urban Planning and the African-American Community: In the Shadows” which I have not read because it’s for sale on Amazon for $83.
We know how many subscriptions you have, you can afford the book!
Deduct the book as a business expense!
Alternatively: if your library doesn't have it, request an interlibrary loan. You can find pretty much anything that way.
If you have a small business, you can deduct anything as long as you don't enjoy it. If you smile 30% of the time you read the book, you can only deduct 70% of the book price.
This is known.
+1. The throwaway line about your own money anxieties diminishes the impact of everything else. That’s the lens you look through? You don’t have enough? you’re barely scraping by, so you can’t afford a piece of writing germane to your positions? or in other words, you can’t do math, so why should we take your economic prescriptions without can enormous discount?
It's worth making explicit a question that's implicit in this and other posts in the "elite nonprofit funders" corpus, which is: What is the (political) use of history?
To spell it out more, I think there's been a largely positive trend of more people taking interest in reading about some of our nation's pretty ugly racial history. I read many of these books and think that, for the most part, they are well-researched, interesting, and worth recommending to other people in my social circle. But there seem to be two errors that occur on the path of "learning about redlining" to "aggressively advocating for racially equitable housing policies."
One is along the lines of what's being argued in this post, which is that the majority of people don't find historically grounded arguments all that persuasive. It's true that many (perhaps a majority) of people in elite non-profit spaces are politically activated by this education, but that's not really politically scalable and the tactic only really works on people who are inclined to agree with your worldview in the first place.
The other mistake is what I'd call the "1619 project" error, which is that the fusion of history and politics has led many otherwise intelligent people to get out over their skis and interpret history in an overly deterministic manner. (In the case of the 1619 project, this is the argument that America became a racist nation from the moment the first slave ship landed.) As historians quip, "the past doesn't know its future," but much of the non-profit class you describe has really bought into the fact that no solution is effective unless it comes along with an exorcism to account for past historical wrongs. And they've come to that conclusion--I would argue--because they don't fully appreciate the limits of what history is able to tell us about our present.
My sense is that, because many people have made the second error, their response to an argument like the one made in this post (pointing out the first error) would be that an "economic growth" framing would be insufficient to address the past historical injustice that needs to be dealt with before meaningful change can occur. I don't think that's right (or at least it's extremely impractical), but I think it's worth being attentive to the second distinction because many elite actors have convinced themselves that the "historicist" approach to politics is superior to the "popularist" approach.
History is history and politics is politics. History is about understanding the past and people in it, all of it, in the round. Politics is about judgment and persuasion, and these are antithetical to historical understanding.
Clearly Matt missed his chance to name this blog "Yglesiastopia."
I agree with most everything you've analyzed. I'd be very interested to see the first bar chart, with support for de-zoning in terms of how it's framed, with a breakout just for "NYT subscribers"-- I expect you'd see a very different distribution. Extremely progressive friends I have (who own multiple houses in heavily zoned, high cost cities) viscerally react to an "economic growth" framing as immoral. Economic growth = capitalism = white supremacy. Your challenge is almost as tough as "how do you convince Catholics that abortion is good because it lets families devote themselves to the moral upbringing of the children they already have?" Good luck. I think people who write arguments framed like this in the NYT like the idea that they are reaching a targeted audience, and Tucker Carlson also seems to think the only people who can hear him are on his side. In this age of media hyper-saturation, you're always speaking to everyone. It can be impossible to frame your argument in a way that resonates viscerally with anyone without setting off someone else. You're left with "milquetoast" middle ground "rationalism" that puts everyone to sleep. Except those of us here in Yglesisastopia trying to make neloiberalism great again ;)
I haven’t read the book because it is $83. So relatable reminds me of college lol.
Not for me to say, but it would seem that with >10K subscribers, Matt could afford it now . . .
It's a business expense!
Remember Matt took the guaranteed income so the extra subscribes don't mean as much until after the first year.
The pain of taking 250k when you could have taken 800k. I wonder at what income level do you simply not care how much stuff costs. $83 for a book is outrageously expensive. However, I and I presume Matt Y have $83. But I am not spending $83 on a book, regardless of quality. Next post inflation as it applies to digital books.
I'll spend $83 on an appropriately beautiful coffee table book that is meant as an art object! (At least, if it's an art object I want.)
Well the Hardcover is $230 lol. Matt Y needs a go fund me. A post on crazy book prices would be awesome Matt wrote about it a lot when he was at Slate.
"Next post inflation as it applies to digital books. "
I would love for Matt to do a deep dive on digital books and why they are so stupidly priced. The pandemic got me to start using my local libraries digital book offering, but I hate that it costs them so much more to use a digital book. It might be to their benefit though. I felt so bad about it, I went and found a way to donate regularly.
I think if you didn't grow up especially well off, you cling to certain valuations of things no matter how much you have now. For example, I have to fight myself sometimes not to waste a lot of time to save a couple dollars, like futzing with coupons at the grocery store.
Yea Bill Gates has nice things like an underwater radio for his pool. But he drives a perfectly normal Lexus last I saw.
Just for fun what is the most you a
Paid for a book I remember paying like 130 for my remedies textbook in law school.
I had a similar experience with Intro to Federal Income Tax, I think. (There was a new edition and I couldn't buy used.) Add that to the IRC and the IRS Regs extracts...I'm just glad I actually ended up a tax lawyer (municipal tax, yes, but at least the principles of income tax are largely the same).
Lol I hated law and I am teacher now. so total waste lol
"...an Yglesiastopia of land use."
Lemmestopia right there.
It is also the case that this argument mostly doesn't work against actual NIMBYs,.even the kind you would expect it to most.
Here in Bloomington, the city is currently trying to do some upzoning of the richest downtown single family neighborhoods. They are populated by the kinds of highly educated white people who are supposedly motivated by appeals to racial justice. And they hate upzoning.
But when you point out the facts Matt mentions, for example in the form of that NYT oped, they are not persuaded. Instead they think you're calling them racist and get mad. This is true even of people who analogize upzoning for duplexes on corners to urban renewal!
Maybe it's persuasive to the broader group of people who are listening but not arguing, but we shall see what happens.
Yes I think it's often if not typically the case in politics that you can't persuade your opponents, in which case the right strategy is to try to deprive them of casual allies.
One problem I see, which kind of parallels the "ethic of conviction" thing, is that a lot of people have made "speak truth to power" their guiding principle in life - i.e. not just something one should be *willing* to do when necessary, but a good thing in and of itself. When that's your starting principle, it isn't difficult to connect the dots and arrive at some really counterproductive ideas. In a democracy it's electoral majorities who have power (with caveats, of course - gerrymandering, etc) so "speaking truth to power" can very easily turn into an Ibsenesque "the majority is always wrong."
This is so good. “speaking truth to power” is one tool, and sometimes it’s the right one, but it shouldn’t be the only tool in the toolbox.
The framing that racial equity is about pleasing donors and peers is really helpful to understanding the phenomenon. In addition to framing everything in racial justice terms, I think there's also pressure to make statements that are as uncompromising as possible. I find it so discouraging b/c, in addition to torpedoing real change, it moves the focus from tangible solutions to real problems to just having discussion groups
>> effort to dupe progressive donors into caring about job creation and working-class people’s interests
This tells you so much about the nature of progressive politics!
Why not emphasize the generational impact of these kinds of rules? Young people are having a hard time paying high rents and buying expensive houses. The rapid rise in property values is a redistribution of wealth from young people to older people. Emphasizing this seems like an approach that older folks with children (or grandchildren) could be sympathetic to.
Also, let's be honest, but the fact that crime is rising and people are talking about "defund/abolish the police" raises the level of fear among in many neighborhoods. This makes folks more hesitant to take a chance on changing their neighborhoods. If someone (or a party) advocates both zoning reform and reducing funds for law enforcement, that's doing to shut down the conversation for many people. Changing zoning rules is always hard but especially at this point in time.
And about that paper by Hsieh and Moretti...it's almost impossible for me to believe that residential zoning restrictions have reduced our national income by over one-third. I suspect there are more problems with that paper than just the math, but I appreciate the overall point.
I'm not sure that playing up the generational divide on housing is helpful - plenty of older people love their own kids but think that "today's youth" more broadly are whiny entitled jerks.
Plenty don't. This won't work with everyone, to be sure. But if the problem is framed as an affordability crisis, and you can point to groups that some people can more identify with (themselves at a younger age even), then that seems like a reasonable approach.
I lived in a Boston-adjacent city and know that a lot of older folks with houses complain that their children can't afford that neighborhood or anything close, so the children move to burbs much farther out....farther from family. There should be some support there for increasing density in those places if more reasons were given. (I would say that this would often work better than the racial justice argument, but we all know that Boston is totally non-racist, right?)