No Appeal for American Rescue Plan Debt Payments

 While farmers.gov today just describes the preliminary injunctions, Politico reports that the administration let the deadline for appealing the (earliest?) injunction run out.  Apparently USDA will continue to participate in hearings on whether or not there should be a final injunction.  

Without absolutely no knowledge of such proceedings, I'd guess the judge(s) would be unlikely to change his mind. 

Apparently the concern was there was a weak case which, if lost on appeal, would set a bad precedent for future court proceedings.

I repeat, no knowledge, but it did seem to me that the rationale for the program was weak--in its essentials it was paying off loans for people based on a history of not giving loans to people.  The people with outstanding loans which would be forgiven were able to get past any past discriminatory hurdles in getting loans.

[Update--to give the rationale for the program, see this piece.]

[Second update--USDA's argument in court]

Modern Farmer Is Confused

Modern Farmer has a post on the new loan program intended to help in establishing title to heir property.  It has some problems, and I feel nitpicky today so I've bolded the errors I find:

"For instance, if a land owner died without a will, that land would be divided up among the owner’s heirs. Once they passed on, the land would be further divided among their heirs. While property might be in a single family’s control for generations, they don’t have legal title or claim to the land. That means they cannot easily sell the land or consolidate fractured acreages...."  [My comment: usually it's the father dying intestate, with the children inheriting the land in common, not divided. When a child dies, her ownership share is inherited by her children, and so on. One of the owners can appeal to the court to force a sale of the land and divide the proceeds among the heirs. That is a way whites have used to buy land cheaply: forced sales. Even when there's no forced sale, the person farming on the land doesn't have clear title, a prerequisite to mortgaging the land.]

"After the Civil War, the federal Homestead Act gave Black families land, mainly across the South, and many of them became land holders for the first time.... [The Homestead Act and  the Southern Homestead Act weren't effective in getting black farmers land. "Gave" is wrong--the charge was $50 for 40 acres, which was a significant sum in 1866 (perhaps $700 to 12,000 in todays money). I know of no statistics or study showing the relative importance of the different ways in which blacks accumulated land, but my impression is that hard work, scrimping, and good relations with selected white owners were key.]

"That became a bigger problem after President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Services came into effect. At the time, the USDA established a loan program to help farmers..." [ASCS had nothing to do with the loan program, which had originated in the New Deal, and was by 1961 administered by the Farmers Home Administration. The current day Farm Service Agency is the successor to ASCS and to the farmer loan programs of FmHA.]

 I don't trust the rest of the writer's facts, based on her errors in these portions. 

Missing Somethings in Schelling: Reston Verus Prince George

Thomas Schelling was a great economist, who won the Nobel.  One book had this: In 1969 and 1971, Schelling published widely cited articles dealing with racial dynamics and what he termed "a general theory of tipping."^[21] In these papers he showed that a preference that one's neighbors be of the same color, or even a preference for a mixture "up to some limit," could lead to total segregation,

I think generally it was taken as explaining why "block-busting" in the 60's led to a change from lily-white ownership to all-black ownership--whites had a preference for living among whites. But when you look at what he said, at least as summarized in Wikipedia, it's race-blind.  In other words, blacks could have a preference for living among blacks, which could also affect housing patterns.  That point was, I think, missed because we didn't have a real world example. 

One factor in the discussion is the starting point.  In the 1960's you had areas which were inhabited by one race. Another factor is whether you think it's a "preference", or whether it's an emergent property from network effects: you buy where a friend has bought first, "Networks" has become a new buzzword for analysis.  And these days we're more familiar with "chain" immigration, where a neighborhood in the US is peopled mostly by immigrants from one town in Mexico, or wherever. .  

I bought in Reston in the mid-70's, partly because it was founded from the beginning as equal opportunity housing.  I was part of an outflow of people from DC moving out to the suburbs.  As it turned out, despite Reston's open appeal, it didn't attract a lot of blacks--I don't think it's ever gotten much over 10 percent blacks--; most blacks moving from the District went to Prince George County, which is now majority black.  These patterns fit Schelling's analysis, but how much of the underlying cause is preference, and how much is network effects is still unknown. 

Racism and Sex

 The Times had a graphic 3 years ago showing the results of analyzing the earnings of black and white men and women.  The top graphic compared the results for lifetime earnings of men who grew up in the top 20 percent considering parental wealth and neighborhoods.  It showed that such black men were about half as likely to maintain their status.

"Black boys raised in America, even in the wealthiest families and living in some of the most well-to-do neighborhoods, still earn less in adulthood than white boys with similar backgrounds, according to a sweeping new study that traced the lives of millions of children."

What's strangely interesting is that black women maintain their status, doing as well as white women.  That simple fact undermines explanations on both the left and right:

• the right can't argue that blacks are less intelligent when black women do as well as white women
• the left can't argue that simple racism, prejudice against blacks, is the cause.

I hasten to add a couple points:

• black men have always been seen as more threatening than black women, so it makes sense that prejudice against them is stronger.  That's just one factor to consider.
• While the study matched the black and white samples on money and neighborhood, that doesn't mean they weren't comparing apples and oranges. Some things to consider--how many generations of wealth did the whites have behind them, as opposed to the blacks.  They might have compared nouveaux riche to established wealth. They also might have compared the children of black professionals who thrived in the old segregated society but who had to compete in the integrated society following the civil rights movement. 

More on Sin

 I just posted on the similarity I saw between the revivalist/evangelical spirit of the Great Awakenings and the "wokeism" of the current day. 

I ran across this statement in an interview with a black evangelical minister:

Green: One of the things that has really struck me in recent national conversations about race is that a lot of people—especially secular white people—seem to be struggling with something that I can’t help but identify as sin: this recognition that we live in a broken world, and that all of us, by nature, hurt others and do things that are wrong. This seems to be what all of the people who joined anti-racism book clubs are struggling with—the realization of their own sinfulness when it comes to race.

Now I'm struggling a bit: I can buy that people naturally do wrong, sin. I can buy that the "woke" movement is adopting the strategy of the great awakening: convicting people of their sinful nature and asking for reformation.  But I'm not convinced it's an effective strategy for changing society or an accurate description of how things go wrong.  Need more thinking on it. 

 

Great Awakening and Wokeism

 "Great Awakenings" in American history are periods of religious revivals. Wikipedia says: "The Awakenings all resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of personal guilt, their sin, and the need of salvation by Christ."

There are some parallels between such awakenings and the current enthusiasm for woke.  

This was stimulated by Ross Douthat in the NYTimes who wrote:

What's really inflaming today's fights, though, is that the structural-racist diagnosis isn't being offered on its own. Instead it's yoked to two sweeping theories about how to fight the problem it describes.

First, there is a novel theory of moral education, according to which the best way to deal with systemic inequality is to confront its white beneficiaries with their privileges and encourage them to wrestle with their sins.

That's a similar strategy to the revivalist appeals prominent in the Great Awakenings--you convince the sinner of his depravity and the essential need for repentance as a prerequisite to God's grace.  A further step is to examine your actions every day to determine if you are following a righteous path--for predestinarians that's the way to feel some confidence that you're one of the "elect", that you're saved from hell.

FSA Employee Is Credited

Politico has a long piece on FSA loans to black farmers.  It's not full of praise, to say the least.  Not sure whether I'll come back to it, but it does end with this nice bit

What helped Cleaver was a woman in the FSA office who took the time to explain the processes.

“She was like an angel. I had been going through the loan officers and the HBCU [historically Black colleges and universities] that was here and they couldn't get anything done,” he said. “[She] held my hand and she told me everything step by step. She was patient, she was polite.”

I'm sorry Politico doesn't provide email addresses for its reporters so I could compliment Ximena Bustillo for including this.  I think in years of following reporting on FSA and race it's the first time I've seen a compliment published.

Not Race, Sex, Class; I'm a Power Guy (Much Revised)

 I see a lot of posts on various sites about critical race theory (CRT).  I'd like to see someone first define it, then do a translation of the theory into "critical gender theory"; "critical class theory"; "critical caste theory"; "critical religion theory"; "critical color theory"; etc. etc.  My point here being I suspect when you try to apply CRT to many societies/cultures you'd find a lot of parallels: think India for caste, Northern Ireland and Israel for religion; many cultures for color, etc. etc.

Myself, I think I'm a power guy, by which I believe Lord Acton's observation that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely is key.  I'm not denying the power of the factors I've listed above, nor that of other factors I'm forgetting or don't know, but in life I think the key is who has the power and who doesn't.  "White privilege" is a way of saying whites have power even when they don't realize it, perhaps especially when we don't realize it.  But the same applies (sometimes, in some situations, but not all) to men, to the rich, to members of a majority religion, to members of a majority, period.  

That's what I believe, at least today.

[Among other factors, colorism, ageism, handedness, height, disability/ability, looks...]

[[Add colorism--see https://www.vulture.com/2021/06/john-m-chu-and-in-the-heights-cast-address-casting-colorism.html]]

[[[Add--lookism--see ]]]

[[[[Add "heightism" ]]]]

[[[[[Add "ableism" ]]]]]

Are We Segregated?

 Bob Somerby has griped about descriptions of various aspects of our society as "segregated".   He's not as old as I am, but we share a memory of the civil rights movement which fought "segregation".  So how can the movement be considered victorious, and the US still have segregation?

The answer is obvious--the word "segregation" now has multiple meanings.  Back in the day it meant legal segregation, usually the result of statutes or legal contracts, but always enforced by both the police and sheriffs and by informal community pressures.  That segregation was ended by the victories of the civil rights movement.

Today "segregation" means essentially disparate outcomes: residential areas, schools, or institutions which by some measure are predominately one ethnic/racial group or which don't have appropriate representation of other ethnic/racial groups; the group usually being white or black.

By changing means current day liberals are, in my humble opinion, changing the measuring stick, minimizing the gains of the past and accentuating the problems of the present. 

Critical Patriarchal Theory

 Of course, it's "critical race theory" but what if we applied the same sort of thinking to the "patriarchy", defining the term as the belief that men and women are different and must be treated differently in some or all components of society, and that history shows and ratifies such treatment. 

To me it seems that critical patriarchal theory describes reality, at least some of it.

Debt Relief Stalled

 A federal judge issued a temporary injunction against the debt relief for disadvantaged farmers in the last stimulus act.

Buried in the Charts--Black Men

 The NYTimes had an article on the recent employment report.  Towards the end they had a series of 4 charts comparing the employment levels for men and women for whites, blacks, Asian-Americans, and Latinos.  It was all in support of the article's points about the differential impact of the pandemic. But the charts also had the data for the numbers in the employment market. For three categories there were more men in the force than women, roughly 10-12 percent more when I eyeballed it.  But for blacks there were fewer men than women.  Again roughly speaking, there were about 3 million fewer black men than there should have been if the ratio were similar to those for the other groups.

What History Should Include

 Bob Somerby comments on a news commentary show where one participant noted he hadn't been taught the Tulsa massacre and just recently learned about the Birmingham church bombing which killed four young black girls in Sunday school. 

I think it seems to Bob (who's maybe 7 years younger than I) and to me that obviously modern kids should be taught both.  

But that's a knee jerk opinion--both Bob and I lived through the reporting of the bombing so it's something of a landmark in the progression of the civil rights movement. We didn't live through Tulsa; not that it matters because the massacre did not, I believe, make any national impression--media is very different now. Given the limited time a teacher has, I'm not sure which events need to be covered--letter from a Birmingham jail, Woolworth counter sit-in, Albany Georgia, Pettus bridge, Shwerner, Chaney, and Goodman?  The laws which were passed, the Rochester riot, the Kerner commission, RFK on MLK's assassination? 

I suppose for most teachers the details have dropped out so their decision making is easier than it would be for me or Bob.

Rebellion Versus Riot

 Elizabeth Hinton (who was on BBC news yesterday) argues for "rebellions" instead of "riots" to describe the events in the inner cities in the mid to late 1960's. Having lived during that period, although I haven't read her book, I think she's wrong.

To me "rebellion" means a degree of central planning and organization, elements which I think were shared through many of the slave "revolts" discussed here. A "riot" usually has an instigating event, a central focus which draws in participants, but there's no central figure like Nat Turner or John Brown. 

Hinton has a point that the events from 1964 through 1968 have a continuity and similarity which makes "riots" seem an inadequate terminology.

How We Talk, and What It Means

 Slate has a long interview with someone studying Black American accents, how they vary from place to place and in time. 

Anyone who's seen My Fair Lady is likely to be interested in the subject.  Apparently it's harder to nail American accents down to a locality than English English, or maybe the parties to the interview weren't Professor Higgins.

I remember telling an employee back in the 1970's that her occasional use of black English might limit her promotion opportunities.  I think it was a true statement at the time, but over the years I've felt guilty about saying it.  

Toward the end of the interview they get into a discussion of trials, like George Floyd, in which interpreting the language of the black victim was at issue.  There's some skepticism over whether the defense attorneys were honest in their misinterpretation of what was recorded. Perhaps I'm insufficiently cynical but I can accept that in the instant a policeman could interpret what he/she heard as being white English words, rather than black English language. It's problematic, but just an instance of how difficult it is to bridge social and cultural issues.

The Scourge of "Usism"

 Some writers use "racism", some use "tribalism", some use "colorism", some use "ageism", some use "ableism"...  Here's the first result when I googled "what 'isms' are there?" 

The bottom line is, I think, we love to define "us" versus "them", or "others".   It's natural to do so, because that's how we think--defining what something is by what it is not. When we do it to people, it's a problem. 

The Poll Tax and Race

 There was a reference in the 1942 book I finished to the impact of the poll tax on white voting. I can't find a simple reference to confirm the statement, but on skimming this old article I found references to the rise in voting participation in Louisiana when Huey Long ended the poll tax. 

In the 1930's Huey Long swept into power with the aid of the neo-populist movement in the South. In 1934 he widened his base of power with the repeal of the Louisiana poll tax. The average rate of participation in senatorial primaries increased frrom 31.2 per cent to 46.5 per cent; the increase in gubernatorial primaries was from 40.2 per cent to 60.1 per cent.

 In 1936 Florida repealed its poll tax, and as noted earlier, there was a voter turnout increase corresponding to the increase in Louisiana. In four years there was an increase of 152,688 votes in the democratic primary elections or approximately 28 per cent. At this time Florida still had a white primary. The Negro registration, however, hovered around the 20,000 mark it had been before repeal until well into the 1940's.31

Lincoln's Shoemaker Was Lynched

  Reading David Reynolds' "Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times".

Some Springfield, IL blacks did well, including Lincoln's barber and shoemaker. But in the 20th century the shoemaker was lynched. William Donnegan, page 410.

What Are Socially Disadvantaged Farmers?

 CRS has an explanation which should cause every reader to shed a tear for the poor FSA personnel who have to deal with the different definitions.

Here's a table showing the numbers:

The Pull of the Familiar, the Push of the Foreign

Both the Post and Times  had Sunday articles discussing the Asian American community in Atlanta. The Post had a map showing its recent growth, which was concentrated in certain areas.

What struck me was the likelihood that the concentration mostly reflected the choice of the immigrants, the desire to live in areas with people with whom you might share something.  (Since "Asian-American" covers some 20 countries or so, you might not be able to speak your neighbor's language, but presumably you might have neighbors more accepting of you than in a 95 percent white, or 95 percent black, community.)  

It's always hard to untangle the factors behind residential concentrations (I almost wrote "segregation" but concentration is the better term.)  All other things being equal, a person might decide where to live based on the likelihood of finding people with similar backgrounds, tastes, opinions, values, or based on the fear of having to deal with strangers. 

Then moving from the viewpoint of the person moving into a residence to the viewpoints of the potential neighbors you bring up other factors.  I'd venture that in most cases in today's America the weight of the emotion involved is heavier on the side of the mover, than on the side of the neighbors.

Back in the day we had "lily-white" areas, so someone moving in of a different race could cause the potential neighbors to have a lot of emotion.  I don't think we have "lily-white" areas much these days, so there's less emotion.  Where you get emotion is NIMBYism, questions of zoning in particular.