Hey liberals, want to fight racism? Start in your own backyard

Both articles below deal with the same problem on different sides of the country, one in California, specifically Berkeley, and the other in DC. Anyone who is a regular reader of this blog has probably figured out that I strongly favor building more housing in expensive cities on the east and west coasts. The most obvious reasons are economic. Building more housing will allow for more people to live in those cities and enjoy the job opportunities and lower cost of living that would come from it. The implications for the economy are not just local, but national. By one estimate, the cost of building restrictions in coastal cities has cost the national economy $1.4 trillion, equal to the GDP of the entire state of New York.

While building restrictions in coastal (and very liberal) cities shows a major blind spot for the left* when it comes to inequality, there is another blind spot that it exposes, too. That blind spot is on the issue of racism. The left loves to talk about race. It has become an obsession of sorts that often falls far short in practice.

As the Washington Post article points out, it is the mayor of DC and others who are trying to rectify past discrimination by reducing building restrictions, including limits on building height, which is long overdue. The mayor has invoked the fact that tens of thousands of black residents have been driven out of DC by high housing costs. The source of the resistance to new building has not been Republicans, billionaires or greedy corporations, but local liberals and left-wing activists.

The most depressing line comes from a rabbi who advocates for allowing more building. According to builders and advocates he has spoken to, people who put up yard signs for left-wing causes are highly likely to show up at community meetings to oppose new building. It is a sad reality that much of left-wing talk about racial justice is just that. It is nothing more than just a way to feel good. Doing good would actually require work and a willingness to let others enjoy the prosperity that left-wing homeowners have.

Rather than allow more building, many of those on the left prefer to do everything else. Raise taxes? Yes. Raise the minimum wage? Yes. Rent control? Yes. Rename schools? Yes. Throw money at everything? Yes. Yes, to everything small, inadequate and/or symbolic and no to the one thing that would make the biggest difference by far.

Allowing for more building is not by itself a race-based policy, which is what makes it even better. It will benefit everyone who will be able to live in prosperous cities. Because non-white people are disproportionately represented among those who are priced out, they will disproportionately benefit from new housing construction. It’s a win-win in that it achieves racial justice without dividing people up by their skin color, a terrible habit that many on the left have come to embrace.

This brings us to the New York Times article, which is an opinion piece by Farhad Manjoo. It is about how the city of Berkeley just adopted a resolution acknowledging the racist history of single-family zoning rules and has pledged to end them by next year. The former is great to hear, but we will have to wait and see about the latter.

Single-family zoning rules were adopted in Berkeley and throughout California and the nation often with the goal of keeping people out (read, non-whites). In the case of Berkeley, it was blacks and Asians. Acknowledging the racist history of single-family zoning, while symbolic, is still critical. With advancing racial justice allegedly being such an important cause to the left, they would do well to look at the problems in their own backyard. Acknowledging the racist history of single-family zoning is the first step towards reducing or, preferably, eliminating it.

It is great to see some momentum in California against the NIMBYs. Here’s hoping for more of it. Only by allowing for more people to live in those places can the problem of affordability be addressed. It really is that simple. Boston, DC and New York would be wise to follow.

So far, though, while Berkeley has taken a step forward, other places have taken a step back. While people there invoked past racism to do something good, in San Francisco it has been the opposite. There, the school board, citing a reckoning with racism, decided to rename all of its schools, including schools named for Abraham Lincoln and Dianne Feinstein for their alleged racial transgressions (no, seriously, they really did that). Meanwhile, the schools are still closed. There’s having the wrong priorities and then there’s that. Fortunately, the pushback from the mayor and others has led to a pause in the renaming and a focus on reopening the schools. Still, the fact that those people on the school board are in any position of power is beyond disgraceful.** I don’t think they are trying to validate every single left-wing caricature, but if they are, I’m not sure what they’d do differently.

The problem with white guilt

I have been asked before whether I feel white guilt. In a word, no. Leaving aside whether that feeling is fair or rational, I could be forgiving of those who feel that way if it actually led to good things. Maybe the feeling of white guilt could convince NIMBY homeowners to allow for more housing to be built. That would obviously be a good outcome.

In practice, it seldom works out that way. White guilt almost never leads to anything good. At best, it leads to symbolic things like renaming buildings or schools. Otherwise, it leads to a culture of censorship and authoritarianism. What happens is white people feeling guilty, in trying to address what they think is racism, become thought police, which can lead to mobs going after people (digitally or physically), people getting fired over things that are innocuous or dumb at worst or lives and reputations getting destroyed for no reason. This article about what happened recently at Smith College is a great example of many of those things.  

White guilt has helped lead a once great group like the ACLU to abandon its core mission. An organization that once prided itself on defending the most unpopular (for good reason) speech has now all but abandoned that and has become an embarrassment. They have gone from taking the unpopular position of defending the free speech rights of Nazis to now opposing rights of the accused. One of their officials has even advocated for banning a book they did not like. Roger Baldwin is rolling over in his grave.

To be sure, there are undoubtedly other causes of these phenomena. My point is not that white guilt alone caused all of those things, but that it is at best a symbolic thing and otherwise actively harmful. For those who really believe, as I do, that racism is a problem and that there are disparities among different groups that should be addressed, I encourage them to really think long and hard about why they exist and what could actually be done to address them. Feeling white guilt is no substitute for that.

It is easy to blame Trump and his cohorts for promoting and advancing racism. They are certainly guilty of it, but just blaming them is not going to cut it. The reality is that it is left-wingers who have caused cities to become hopelessly expensive for so many while also being extremely segregated. Those single-family zoning laws were created by left-wingers, not Trump. Liberal cities like Boston and New York were segregated and unaffordable long before he showed up and remain so today.

Truly addressing racism requires a great deal of work and sacrifice on the part of many of those on the left who have so far shown they care far more about symbolism than substance. Allowing for more building in expensive cities would mean left-wing NIMBYs might have to give up their precious scenic views and to not “preserve the character” of their neighborhood. It would mean their property values would not be as artificially high. It would mean being willing to live with a whole lot more people, including many who don’t look like them and whose kids would go to school with theirs. That would require giving up a lot more than just putting up a yard sign or feeling white guilt.

I certainly wish the best to all those fighting against the NIMBYs and so should anyone who cares about addressing racism. Maybe enough people have recognized how untenable and hypocritical the situation is in so many cities run by left-wingers that the tide is turning. It would be great on so many levels if they are successful. Still, it is a long road ahead and will require many on the left to come to terms with their own failings, past and present, and to put their money where their mouths are. Then we will be able to see who truly cares about dealing with racism and doing the necessary work and who just wants to feel good. For now, the most important thing those who hope to see progress can do is raise awareness. Only when those on the left are made aware of their shortcomings will there be any hope of actually addressing them.

*I use the left, left-wing and liberal are used interchangeably because they are different ways of describing the same people, similar to the right, right-wing and conservative.

**In case anyone reading this is skeptical of just how bad the San Francisco school board leadership is, read this interview of the school board chair with Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker. You have to read it to believe it, someone actually said and believes these things. Chotiner is an outstanding interviewer. He has an almost magical ability to get people to expose themselves as complete idiots just by asking the most basic questions.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dc-racism-affordable-housing/2021/03/01/a37506b4-6d86-11eb-9ead-673168d5b874_story.html