Real Estate Red-Lining: Government Facilitates Racism

“Redlining” is the practice of limiting homeownership in a town or in a neighborhood on the basis of race, or what is perceived as race. It was a real estate practice, found in some locations in the United States in the twentieth century, but now almost extinct. Simply put, real estate agents and homeowners were told to sell houses only to people of certain genetic groups.

“Sundown towns” and “sundown neighborhoods” are a closely related concept. They were areas in which people considered to be “Black” were not to be after dark: i.e., those people weren’t to spend the night, and certainly not to own real estate in those areas. They might be tolerated if they were briefly there during daylight hours for business reasons.

Redlining, and the creation of sundown towns, came into being at the end of the Reconstruction Era in American History. Until the late 1870s, the Republican Party had legislated the presence of military and civilian officials in the former Confederate States in order to protect and preserve the civil rights of the former slaves. It worked: Black people voted in ever-increasing numbers, and African-Americans were elected to Congress and other high offices.

But at the end of the Reconstruction Era, this good trend ceased. The Democratic Party took over city, county, and state governments, and began enacting Jim Crow Laws, and enacting policies which were segregationist and racist.

The principle at work in these events is this: racism is a vile and evil sentiment; it remains merely a sentiment, and therefore toothless, until governments become sufficiently powerful to change sentiment into action.

An undergraduate researcher at the University of Michigan, Audrey Melillo, explains that in a typical “sundown town,” the leaders “encourage people to sign a pledge that they wouldn’t sell their home to anyone who wasn’t white.”

Such pledges were called ‘covenants’ in the real estate business. Such documents were immoral and wrong. But they were also meaningless, until the government agreed to enforce them.

A homeowner might sign such a pledge, but then later decide to sell the house to a Black family anyway. The pledge was simply a piece of paper, and the homeowner could ignore it — until the government stepped in. From local zoning boards to the United States Supreme Court, the government supported, or at least failed to overturn, verdicts based on such pledges.

Only because of a powerful government could racism move from being a nasty sentiment to a truly dangerous reality. What if the United States had more fully embraced the concept of a ‘weak’ or ‘limited’ government? What if the government refused, or lacked the ability, to facilitate racism?

Anna Megdell, also at the U of M, explains how took these pledges, which were initially powerless expressions of sentiment, and turned them into concrete and damaging realities: “Over the years, these policies were enforced formally through ordinances and legal covenants.”

Professor Stephen Berrey, likewise at the U of M, has researched sundown towns and the practice of redlining. He notes that “these rules were embedded in” local “zoning ordinances.”

The foul and indecent practices of redlining and sundown towns continued, in some parts of the country, into the mid-twentieth century; in some places, past mid-century.

The principle at work is this: Racism is a shameful and immoral idea. It remains merely an idea until the government obtains enough power to tempt the racist to leverage that power in favor of racism. Where governments are weak and limited, they cannot enforce concepts like segregation.

It may seem counterintuitive to plead for a “weak” government, but it is precisely a weak or “limited” government which prevents practices like redlining from taking effect. The term “limited” is more palatable, and therefore more common, in such discussions.

When a government is limited, it cannot intervene in free market decisions. The majority of homeowners and the majority of real estate agents — perhaps even all of them — are interested primarily in money. When they are selling houses, they want to sell to the highest bidder. Instantly, race is no longer a consideration.

Imagine a person who has a house to sell. Two offers are made to this owner. One offer is for $500,000 and the other offer is for $600,000. Which offer will the seller accept? The higher one, naturally. The seller will not stop to ask about the race (or gender, or religion, or ethnicity, etc.) of the potential buyer. In a “free market” economy, practices like redlining and sunset towns disappear quickly.

It is only when the government has enough power to force the seller to ignore the obvious economic reality that racist policies can take effect.

Economic transactions in an unregulated free market are the most effective instruments for anti-racism. Societies which allow people to freely buy and sell have no interest in a customer’s skin color; they are only interested in a customer’s money.

When local real estate markets are freed from government intervention — when governments no longer enforce rules and pledges about a customer’s race — then redlining and sunset towns quickly disappear.

Reasons to Be Cheerful — Part 5

Swedish researcher Hans Rosling made a career of pointing out that things in the world are often going better than people assume. His son and daughter-in-law carry on his work in the Gapminder Foundation, which seeks to dispel negative preconceptions about the state of the world.

The three of them co-authored a book titled Factfulness, which includes these observations:

• Safe drinking water is a key variable in public health. The “share of people with water from [a] protected source” around the world rose from 58% in 1980 to 88% in 2015.
• Educating girls as well as boys is a key factor in promoting prosperity as well as intellectual innovation. The “share of girls of primary school age enrolled” in school increased from 65% in 1970 to 90% in 2015.
• Immunization is a major variable in childhood wellbeing. The “share of 1-year-olds who got at least one vaccination” grew from 22% in 1980 to 88% in 2016.
• Adequate nutrition is foundational for other aspects of health. The “share of people undernourished” fell globally from 28% in 1970 to 11% in 2015.
• The environment affects all humans. In the 1970s scientists discovered that chlorofluorocarbons damage the atmosphere’s ozone layer. The ozone layer protects us from harmful UV light. In 1970, humans used 1,663,000 tons of “ozone-depleting substances.” In 2016, we used only 22,000 tons. The amount of ozone in the upper atmosphere is increasing.
• Warfare is obviously devastating to human life. In 1986, there were 64,000 nuclear warheads among the world’s military forces. The Soviet Union had the largest number of any nation. By 2017, there were only 15,000 warheads on the planet.
• In the twentieth century, approximately 200 million people were killed in combat, for an average of 2 million per year. In the year 1942 alone, an estimated 20,100,000 people died in war. So far, in the twenty-first century, the rate is much lower. A mere three million people are estimated to have died in combat in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. If this rate continues, the twenty-first century could be one of the safest and most peaceful centuries.
• Smallpox is a horrifying and often fatal disease. In the 1700s, smallpox killed 10% of the population in Sweden and France, and 14% of the population in Russia. In the 1700s and 1800s, it killed hundreds of millions of people. In 1850, 148 different countries reported cases of smallpox. In 1979, that number fell to zero as the disease was eradicated.
• Unique landscapes provide habitats for rare or endangered species. In 1900, only 0.03% of the land on the planet was part of preservation or conservation efforts. By 2016, 14.7% “of Earth’s land surface [was] protected as national parks and other reserves.”
• In 1869, the women in the State of Wyoming became among the very first women on the planet to enjoy the same legal voting rights as men. By 2017, women were voting in 193 countries.
• Although the decision to label a nation-state as democratic is somewhat ambiguous or subjective, in the year 1816, approximately 1% of the world’s population lived in a democracy. By 2015, it was 56%.

Rosling is making two points in his book: first, there is lots of good news to be received; second, that our communication tends to favor bad news. This happens both on a macro level, as the news media tends to publicize bad news ahead of good news, and on a micro level, as individual psychology tends to be more skeptical of good news than of bad.

It remains to be investigated whether this inclination to be distrustful of good news is innate or learned. In either case, it benefits the individual and society to be more deliberate in seeking, digesting, and relaying good news.

Kennedy and Laos: Evaluating JFK’s Foreign Policy

An aging Republican president finishes his second and final term in office, leaves the White House, and moves into his countryside home to enjoy his retirement years. A much younger Democratic president is inaugurated and begins his term in office, having campaigned as a fresh personality in the nation’s political landscape. He, his party, and the news media have stoked expectations for a new and youthful trend in policies.

With Eisenhower comfortably settled in Pennsylvania and Kennedy settling into the White House, however, the change from the one president to the next was not as significant as it was advertised to be, as historian John Stormer writes:

The party in power in Washington changed on January 20, 1961. The basic direction of American foreign policy remained the same.

To be sure, there were some substantial differences between the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations: Ike was hesitant to commit American troops into the Vietnam conflict, preferring to send observers, advisors, supplies, and cash. By contrast, Kennedy sent thousands of combat troops into Vietnam.

Both Eisenhower and Kennedy spoke sternly against the Soviet Socialists and the international communist conspiracy which the USSR operated. Kennedy’s efforts to implement his rhetoric were, especially early in his presidency, clumsy. John Stormer indicates how one might evaluate JFK’s foreign policy:

John F. Kennedy himself set the standard by which his administration must be judged. On November 8, 1961, he wrote the foreword for To Turn the Tide, a published collection of the speeches and statements he made in his first ten months as President.

Any presidency must be judged primarily on its actions, and only secondarily on its words. Too often the reverse is the case. Under close examination, there will always be some discrepancy between the words of a president and his concrete policies. No president is perfect. But the gap between word and deed should be kept to a minimum.

Kennedy himself expressed essentially this same principle:

Strong words alone, of course, do not make meaningful policy; they must, in foreign affairs, in particular, be backed by both a will and by weapons that are equally strong. Thus a collection of Presidential statements cannot convey their true perspective unless it is realized or recalled precisely what they signified in committing the power and majesty of the American people and government.

More than one president has made strong statements but failed to back them up with equally strong actions, or as John Stormer explains:

To evaluate President Kennedy’s Administration using the the standard he suggested requires a careful analysis of his words and actions in crisis after crisis.

The two-and-a-half years of the Kennedy presidency were indeed filled with multiple crises. Some of the crises would have happened anyway. Others may have been aimed at Kennedy by malevolent leaders like Khrushchev, Mao, and Castro. A few of the crises may have been created by Kennedy’s miscalculations.

The Soviet Socialists created a large number of foreign policy challenges between January 1960 and November 1963, from Cuba to China, from the USSR to southeast Asia, from Berlin to the Congo. How did Kennedy respond to these provocations? John Stormer explains:

In a widely publicized talk with Congressional leaders on March 26, 1961, President Kennedy promised that Laos, then under attack from Red China and North Viet Nam, would not be permitted to fall.

Yet by late 1962, Laos was solidly under the control of a communist dictatorship, and thousands of soldiers from North Vietnam and from communist China were encamped there. Beyond that, the Kennedy administration was sending foreign aid payments to Laos.

Although Sino-Soviet relationships were fraying in 1962, they had not yet ruptured. The Soviet Socialists and communist mainland China can be understood as acting in concert regarding the situation in Laos.

What happened to Laos between March 1961 and late 1962? Did Kennedy make a promise that he was unable to keep? If so, his promise was rashly made, or made without a thorough understanding of the situation. Presumably his promise was sincere. One hopes that he had a genuine desire to protect the lives and freedoms of the people of Laos.

Two interpretative options are open to the reader: either Kennedy didn’t fully know what he was doing, or he made a promise which he didn’t intend to keep. Neither option is appealing. Presidents should be slow to make such pledges.

American policy was in many ways the same during both the Eisenhower presidency and the Kennedy presidency. Kennedy, however, was weaker in the implementation of that policy.

What They Didn’t Discuss in the Presidential Campaign: The Global Situation in 1960

During the 1952 election season, the Cold War was front and center among the topics examined by the candidates, their parties, the news media, and the votes. Concepts like rollback, containment, and the Truman Doctrine held people’s attention, and the Korean War made these matters deadly.

Harry Truman, who was president in 1952, wasn’t running for reelection. The contest was between Eisenhower and Stevenson. General Dwight David Eisenhower, nicknamed “Ike,” had chosen Richard Nixon as his running mate. Adlai Stevenson chose John Sparkman as his candidate for vice president.

In terms of foreign policy, the voters wanted the Korean War to end quickly, but they also didn’t want defeat in that war. They also wanted a sense of strength in the NATO defensive coalition, and the ability to stop the inroads which Soviet Socialism was making in central and south America.

When it came to domestic policy, Sparkman was strongly pro-segregation, and Stevenson was indecisive, arguing that desegregation must be done slowly. Eisenhower and Nixon, on the other hand, were clearly in favor of desegregation and integration.

Eisenhower won handily, earning a large majority of votes cast by women, and enjoying popularity in all regions within the nation, including a large number of African-American voters, understood clearly that Ike was the one who would open the way to desegregation.

The 1956 election was largely a replay of 1952. Adlai Stevenson was again the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, but this time with a different running mate. In the meantime, Eisenhower had created peace in Korea and convinced the public that he was resisting Soviet aggression in Latin America.

By the time the 1960 presidential election rolled around, the political landscape was different. The two candidates, Nixon and Kennedy, were younger than the candidates in the previous two election cycles. The era of artificial orbital satellites had begun. The campaign had a different tone, as historian John Stormer notes:

Unlike the election campaign of 1952 when Communist infiltration of government and appeasement of world communism were key issues, these crucial topics were largely ignored in the 1960 presidential campaign.

At the end of the 1956 presidential campaign, only days before the vote, the Hungarian Revolution began and was quickly ended by brutal Soviet military force. The uprising’s timing was such that the American electorate didn’t have time to fully digest the details and implications of the event before voting. It could have been more thoughtfully examined in the course of the 1960 campaign, but it wasn’t.

Likewise, the 1960 election offered an occasion for a nuanced discussion of the Cuban situation. In 1958-1959, Fidel Castro had led the Communist Revolution to a victory, taken control of Cuba, become the dictator there, and began his reign which would eventually eventually be responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Cubans. Yet, in the campaigning, there was little or no serious analysis of Cuba, Castro, the revolution, or the fact that the U.S. State Department had, through malice or incompetence, enabled Castro’s dictatorship, as John Stormer reports:

Tragic handling of the Hungarian revolt was given passing mention by the Democrats, but only in areas with high concentrations of immigrants from Eastern Europe. Castro's rise to power was discussed in a partisan way. The sordid story of the State Department's direct responsibility for hiding the bearded dictator's communist affiliations, as disclosed by a Senate committee, was not mentioned.

A careful parsing of world events was absent because both political parties were intent on marketing their candidates rather than presenting a serious policy platform. The fact that the international communist conspiracy was threatening world peace, and threatening the freedoms of people in many nations, didn’t make for good advertising.

Nixon, as Ike’s VP, didn’t want to talk about any less-than-ideal outcomes which had emerged from the Eisenhower administration. Within the Republican Party, those intent on presenting a pleasant candidate urged those familiar with the global situation to be quiet, as John Stormer writes:

Richard Nixon was not likely to dredge up the record of failure and appeasement of the Administration of which he was part. Under pressures for "party unity" anticommunist Republicans remained silent.

In 1960, there was still a small embattled pro-freedom group within the Democratic Party. It echoed Truman’s sterner words — although Truman’s actions sometimes failed to live up to the sternness of his words — and hoped to speak for human rights and against communism. But the Democratic Party had lost its credibility to speak on the issue of world communism, because it had rallied around Alger Hiss, a known Soviet espionage agent who’d influenced policy decisions during the Roosevelt administration.

A party which supported Hiss, who’d let Stalin have his way at the Yalta Conference, couldn’t be taken seriously if it spoke out against the brutality of Soviet Socialist aggression. Neither party was willing to directly state the matter during the campaign, as John Stormer explains:

The few knowledgeable anti-communists in the Democratic Party were paralyzed by politics also. They knew that any loud voice raised against the dismal record of Modern Republicanism would have provoked only partisan replies, such as, “Well, we don’t have an Alger Hiss in our party.”

In a series of congressional hearings, William Wieland was exposed as having been instrumental in reducing American support for the people of Cuba and thereby helping Castro take power. William Wieland was a diplomat in the U.S. State Department. He, along with William Snow and Roy Rubottom, implemented a policy in which U.S. support for the Cuba people was reduced.

What did this have to do with the 1960 presidential campaign?

John Stormer refers to Wieland and his co-conspirators as “the William Wielands,” a somewhat awkward pluralizing of the name, but this blatant failure to oppose the international communist conspiracy should have been a topic in the 1960 campaign — yet it wasn’t:

Candidate John F. Kennedy didn't turn the spotlight on the tragic actions of the William Wielands in government. Instead, when Kennedy became President, William Wieland was promoted to the State Department committee charged with revising security procedures. As was noted in the opening chapter, President Kennedy denounced the woman reporter who described Wieland as a "security risk" during a televised press conference and questioned his appointment. Kennedy stated that Wieland's record, cleared by the State Department, qualified him for the highly sensitive post.

Historians have written in detail about the 1960 election: how it was a turning-point in the use of media in modern campaigning, how JFK’s youthful image shaped the public perception of the presidency, and how close the ballot counts were. But another aspect of the election was its failure to meaningfully acknowledge or address the threat which the Soviet Socialists and their global network posed.