5 ms·

Why does that matter? Why do we have to inject race into everything?

ghaff 7y ago
In this case, it's hard to separate race from white migration to the suburbs. You can argue how much was driven by deliberate policy and how much was the result of organic segregation. Nonetheless, it was real and contributed to the fact that even many of today's "elite" US cities were losing population 20 years ago.
- davidw 7y ago
  > it's hard to separate race from white migration to the suburbs. Here's an entire book dedicated to discussing the government policies that drove separation: https://amzn.to/2Zz4Zeh https://amzn.to/2Zz4Zeh (or get it from your local library!) It's tough reading because a lot of things that happened were pretty ugly.
zrail 7y ago
OP is not “injecting race”. They are pointing out a significant, intentional part of US federal and state policy at the time that the article doesn’t even mention.
scarejunba 7y ago
How is it "injecting" if it happens to just be a thing that's relevant? It's like "injecting" mathematics into computer science.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
noonespecial 7y ago
Levitt & Sons would not sell homes to African Americans... the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) conditioned essential financing for this and similar projects on the restriction of home sales to those of "the Caucasian race", as stipulated in housing rent and sales agreements and deed covenants. If you had dark colored skin you couldn't live there. That's as starkly about race as it can possibly get.
- StanislavPetrov 7y ago
  Yes, 67 years ago in 1952. Anyone can live there now if they have the money. Unfortunately, the problem in Levittown, like the problem with the rest of Long Island (and many other areas of the country) are that housing prices are massively inflated and taxes are insanely out of proportion of the services you get back for paying them. For the honor of living in an average small house in this economically depressed area you can look forward to shelling out ~$500,000 and paying $8,000+ a year in property taxes. That's the real obstacle for working people to come move to places like Levittown. A few decades ago young, working people looking to start a family could buy a house in a place like Levittown for 2-3x their annual income. Now its more like 8-10x of their annual income. It isn't economically sustainable, like much of the rest of our economic system, and it has absolutely nothing to do with racism. https://www.zillow.com/levittown-ny/ https://www.zillow.com/levittown-ny/
  - roywiggins 7y ago
    White people got loan guarantees from the government in 1967 to move there. The whole thing was directly subsidized. People moving in today are not subsidized. This amounted to a big transfer of wealth to white Americans, that black Americans couldn't participate in. They were stuck paying rent for 67 years while their white "peers" were able to build equity, as they had access to cheap credit. https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history...
    - StanislavPetrov 7y ago
      Which is all relevant to when this happened 60 years ago and not to working people today who were born generations after that happened. Talking about, "white America" like its some sort of monolith is idiotically reductionist. The generational disparity in wealth is magnitudes of order greater than the racial disparity. Start crying about the old people if you want a group to blame.
      - 7y ago
roywiggins 7y ago
There's a reason white Americans (speaking generally) have generational wealth from home ownership, and black Americans don't. It's policies like the ones that created whites-only Levittowns. It's not that long ago! It's within a couple generations of everyone. > the Federal Housing Administration, which was established in 1934, furthered the segregation efforts by refusing to insure mortgages in and near African-American neighborhoods — a policy known as "redlining." At the same time, the FHA was subsidizing builders who were mass-producing entire subdivisions for whites — with the requirement that none of the homes be sold to African-Americans. https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history...
Broken_Hippo 7y ago
The very history of these neighborhoods involved race. They were built for white people wanting to live in a nice, white place. These places didn't serve "two or three generations very well" as the article states. The first generation would have been a white one. At lest part of the second generation served would have been white through inheritance. And the third generation was (is!) still recovering from the racist policies that made Levittowns possible in the first place.

In this case, it's hard to separate race from white migration to the suburbs. You can argue how much was driven by deliberate policy and how much was the result of organic segregation. Nonetheless, it was real and contributed to the fact that even many of today's "elite" US cities were losing population 20 years ago.

davidw 7y ago
> it's hard to separate race from white migration to the suburbs. Here's an entire book dedicated to discussing the government policies that drove separation: https://amzn.to/2Zz4Zeh https://amzn.to/2Zz4Zeh (or get it from your local library!) It's tough reading because a lot of things that happened were pretty ugly.

zrail 7y ago

OP is not “injecting race”. They are pointing out a significant, intentional part of US federal and state policy at the time that the article doesn’t even mention.

scarejunba 7y ago

How is it "injecting" if it happens to just be a thing that's relevant? It's like "injecting" mathematics into computer science.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

noonespecial 7y ago

Levitt & Sons would not sell homes to African Americans... the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) conditioned essential financing for this and similar projects on the restriction of home sales to those of "the Caucasian race", as stipulated in housing rent and sales agreements and deed covenants. If you had dark colored skin you couldn't live there. That's as starkly about race as it can possibly get.

StanislavPetrov 7y ago
Yes, 67 years ago in 1952. Anyone can live there now if they have the money. Unfortunately, the problem in Levittown, like the problem with the rest of Long Island (and many other areas of the country) are that housing prices are massively inflated and taxes are insanely out of proportion of the services you get back for paying them. For the honor of living in an average small house in this economically depressed area you can look forward to shelling out ~$500,000 and paying $8,000+ a year in property taxes. That's the real obstacle for working people to come move to places like Levittown. A few decades ago young, working people looking to start a family could buy a house in a place like Levittown for 2-3x their annual income. Now its more like 8-10x of their annual income. It isn't economically sustainable, like much of the rest of our economic system, and it has absolutely nothing to do with racism. https://www.zillow.com/levittown-ny/ https://www.zillow.com/levittown-ny/
- roywiggins 7y ago
  White people got loan guarantees from the government in 1967 to move there. The whole thing was directly subsidized. People moving in today are not subsidized. This amounted to a big transfer of wealth to white Americans, that black Americans couldn't participate in. They were stuck paying rent for 67 years while their white "peers" were able to build equity, as they had access to cheap credit. https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history...
  - StanislavPetrov 7y ago
    Which is all relevant to when this happened 60 years ago and not to working people today who were born generations after that happened. Talking about, "white America" like its some sort of monolith is idiotically reductionist. The generational disparity in wealth is magnitudes of order greater than the racial disparity. Start crying about the old people if you want a group to blame.
    - 7y ago

roywiggins 7y ago

There's a reason white Americans (speaking generally) have generational wealth from home ownership, and black Americans don't. It's policies like the ones that created whites-only Levittowns. It's not that long ago! It's within a couple generations of everyone. > the Federal Housing Administration, which was established in 1934, furthered the segregation efforts by refusing to insure mortgages in and near African-American neighborhoods — a policy known as "redlining." At the same time, the FHA was subsidizing builders who were mass-producing entire subdivisions for whites — with the requirement that none of the homes be sold to African-Americans. https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history...

Broken_Hippo 7y ago

The very history of these neighborhoods involved race. They were built for white people wanting to live in a nice, white place. These places didn't serve "two or three generations very well" as the article states. The first generation would have been a white one. At lest part of the second generation served would have been white through inheritance. And the third generation was (is!) still recovering from the racist policies that made Levittowns possible in the first place.