I, too, think Jon is campaigning here. It will not be far before we learn about his exploratory committee.
In this interview, Jon argues black people have not being able to build equity and wealth through generations of government policy that excluded them.
He cites
homestead act federal housing administration gi bill
and other socialized entitlements made to help white families build equity over generations.
he says black people were explicitly excluded from having an ancestry with equity.
This piqued my interest. In case anyone wants to read more about this argument, I've put a few thoughts together.
Here is what I little I know about the homestead act, based on casual reading:
Signed by Abraham Lincoln, the act led to 270 million acres of western land being transferred to individuals. Naturally, almost all of whom were white.
But was this intended to not include blacks, as he suggests?
I am reading "approximately 3,500 black claimants succeeded in obtaining their patents (titles) from the General Land Office, granting them ownership of approximately 650,000 acres of prairie land. Counting all family members, as many as 15,000 people lived on these homesteads most substantially in Nicodemus (Kans.); Dearfield (Col.); Sully County (S. Dak.); DeWitty (Neb.); Empire (Wy.); and Blackdom (N.M.)." The Homestead Act opened land ownership to male citizens, widows, single women, and immigrants pledging to become citizens. The 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed that African Americans were eligible as well."
I didn't do the math, but it sounds fairly proportional per capita in terms of acres. At least in the ballpark since 1.5% of the population was free-black in 1860. At the risk of sounding racist, I would also say that's pretty good, considering my understanding that blacks were often not educated and must have had a harder time knowing and filing out the paperwork versus more affluent whites who may be more expected to have the means to navigate it.
So is it Jon's position that because most Americans were white that the entitlement was intentionally written to exclude the minority? I don't really know.
Here is the argument I found online that FHA is racist:
"The Federal Housing Administration was created by Congress in 1934 to guarantee private mortgages, which in turn would cause a drop in interest rates and a decline in the size the down payment required to buy a house. As this organization strived to better the real estate economy, it damaged the value of many African American and homes through their use of maps that rated neighborhoods according to their perceived stability. These maps would have manly three different colors on them: Green, Yellow, and Red. Each color represented the stability of the neighborhood as well as its probability for insurance. Green area, also rated as "A", were neighborhoods that were considered safe and excellent prospects for insurance. On the other end of the spectrum we have red, also rated as "D". These neighborhoods were considered unsafe and usually considered ineligible for FHA backing. This system of color coding was also referred to as "redlining" which not only increased the racism within backed loans and the mortgage industry, but excluded African Americans from the most legitimate means of obtaining a mortgage."
Hm.
Is Jon's position that banks should not grade risk, and that because the riskier neighborhoods tended to be poor, and often minority in the 1930's, that it was inherently a menacing scheme from the start? Why is this not considered a tragedy of the reality of circumstance? Did whites in poor neighborhoods not also get hurt?
There is no doubt that there was racism going around, and blacks suffered from it in the 30s, but I am not really understanding how Jon can say blacks, as a group, are being excluded from the program.
About the GI Bill:
NY Times 2005, writes a book report by Author "Ira Katznelson," WHEN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION WAS WHITE An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America:
"[T]he Servicemen's Readjustment Act, known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, a series of programs that poured $95 billion into expanding opportunity for soldiers returning from World War II. Over all, the G.I. Bill was a dramatic success, helping 16 million veterans attend college, receive job training, start businesses and purchase their first homes. Half a century later, President Clinton praised the G.I. Bill as "the best deal ever made by Uncle Sam," and said it "helped to unleash a prosperity never before known."
But Katznelson demonstrates that African-American veterans received significantly less help from the G.I. Bill than their white counterparts. "Written under Southern auspices," he reports, "the law was deliberately designed to accommodate Jim Crow." He cites one 1940's study that concluded it was "as though the G.I. Bill had been earmarked 'For White Veterans Only.' " Southern Congressional leaders made certain that the programs were directed not by Washington but by local white officials, businessmen, bankers and college administrators who would honor past practices. As a result, thousands of black veterans in the South -- and the North as well -- were denied housing and business loans, as well as admission to whites-only colleges and universities. They were also excluded from job-training programs for careers in promising new fields like radio and electrical work, commercial photography and mechanics. Instead, most African-Americans were channeled toward traditional, low-paying "black jobs" and small black colleges.'
So, in all, it appears Jon, and others, believe that if a disproportionate number of blacks benefit from any bill, then the bill and its' writers must be secretly trying to exclude them. In other words, every act of congress is merely "whitey keeping the black man down."
If that is the gauge used to determine racism in this country, then, by the very reality that we live in, in that there have been statistical differences in every demographic, everything must, by definition, be racist. Everything.
I, too, think Jon is campaigning here. It will not be far before we learn about his exploratory committee.
In this interview, Jon argues black people have not being able to build equity and wealth through generations of government policy that excluded them.
He cites
homestead act federal housing administration gi bill
and other socialized entitlements made to help white families build equity over generations.
he says black people were explicitly excluded from having an ancestry with equity.
This piqued my interest. In case anyone wants to read more about this argument, I've put a few thoughts together.
Here is what I little I know about the homestead act, based on casual reading:
Signed by Abraham Lincoln, the act led to 270 million acres of western land being transferred to individuals. Naturally, almost all of whom were white.
But was this intended to not include blacks, as he suggests?
I am reading "approximately 3,500 black claimants succeeded in obtaining their patents (titles) from the General Land Office, granting them ownership of approximately 650,000 acres of prairie land. Counting all family members, as many as 15,000 people lived on these homesteads most substantially in Nicodemus (Kans.); Dearfield (Col.); Sully County (S. Dak.); DeWitty (Neb.); Empire (Wy.); and Blackdom (N.M.)." The Homestead Act opened land ownership to male citizens, widows, single women, and immigrants pledging to become citizens. The 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed that African Americans were eligible as well."
I didn't do the math, but it sounds fairly proportional per capita. At the risk of sounding racist, I would also say that's pretty good, considering my understanding that blacks were often not educated and must have had a harder time knowing and filing out the paperwork versus more affluent whites who may be more expected to have the means to navigate it.
So is it Jon's position that because most Americans were white that the entitlement was intentionally written to exclude the minority? I don't really know.
Here is the argument I found online that FHA is racist:
"The Federal Housing Administration was created by Congress in 1934 to guarantee private mortgages, which in turn would cause a drop in interest rates and a decline in the size the down payment required to buy a house. As this organization strived to better the real estate economy, it damaged the value of many African American and homes through their use of maps that rated neighborhoods according to their perceived stability. These maps would have manly three different colors on them: Green, Yellow, and Red. Each color represented the stability of the neighborhood as well as its probability for insurance. Green area, also rated as "A", were neighborhoods that were considered safe and excellent prospects for insurance. On the other end of the spectrum we have red, also rated as "D". These neighborhoods were considered unsafe and usually considered ineligible for FHA backing. This system of color coding was also referred to as "redlining" which not only increased the racism within backed loans and the mortgage industry, but excluded African Americans from the most legitimate means of obtaining a mortgage."
Hm.
Is Jon's position that banks should not grade risk, and that because the riskier neighborhoods tended to be poor, and often minority in the 1930's, that it was inherently a menacing scheme from the start? Why is this not considered a tragedy of the reality of circumstance? Did whites in poor neighborhoods not also get hurt?
There is no doubt that there was racism going around, and blacks suffered from it in the 30s, but I am not really understanding how Jon can say blacks, as a group, are being excluded from the program.
About the GI Bill:
NY Times 2005, writes a book report by Author "Ira Katznelson," WHEN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION WAS WHITE An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America:
"[T]he Servicemen's Readjustment Act, known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, a series of programs that poured $95 billion into expanding opportunity for soldiers returning from World War II. Over all, the G.I. Bill was a dramatic success, helping 16 million veterans attend college, receive job training, start businesses and purchase their first homes. Half a century later, President Clinton praised the G.I. Bill as "the best deal ever made by Uncle Sam," and said it "helped to unleash a prosperity never before known."
But Katznelson demonstrates that African-American veterans received significantly less help from the G.I. Bill than their white counterparts. "Written under Southern auspices," he reports, "the law was deliberately designed to accommodate Jim Crow." He cites one 1940's study that concluded it was "as though the G.I. Bill had been earmarked 'For White Veterans Only.' " Southern Congressional leaders made certain that the programs were directed not by Washington but by local white officials, businessmen, bankers and college administrators who would honor past practices. As a result, thousands of black veterans in the South -- and the North as well -- were denied housing and business loans, as well as admission to whites-only colleges and universities. They were also excluded from job-training programs for careers in promising new fields like radio and electrical work, commercial photography and mechanics. Instead, most African-Americans were channeled toward traditional, low-paying "black jobs" and small black colleges.'
So, in all, it appears Jon, and others, believe that if a disproportionate number of blacks benefit from any bill, then the bill and its' writers must be secretly trying to exclude them. In other words, every act of congress is merely "whitey keeping the black man down."
If that is the gauge used to determine racism in this country, then, by the very reality that we live in, in that there have been statistical differences in every demographic, everything must, by definition, be racist. Everything.
I, too, think Jon is campaigning here. It will not be far before we learn about his exploratory committee.
In this interview, Jon argues black people have not being able to build equity and wealth through generations of government policy that excluded them.
He cites
homestead act federal housing administration gi bill
and other socialized entitlements made to help white families build equity over generations.
he says black people were explicitly excluded from having an ancestry with equity.
This piqued my interest. In case anyone wants to read more about this argument, I've put a few thoughts together.
Here is what I little I know about the homestead act, based on casual reading:
Signed by Abraham Lincoln, the act led to 270 million acres of western land being transferred to individuals. Naturally, almost all of whom were white.
But was this intended to not include blacks, as he suggests?
I am reading "approximately 3,500 black claimants succeeded in obtaining their patents (titles) from the General Land Office, granting them ownership of approximately 650,000 acres of prairie land. Counting all family members, as many as 15,000 people lived on these homesteads most substantially in Nicodemus (Kans.); Dearfield (Col.); Sully County (S. Dak.); DeWitty (Neb.); Empire (Wy.); and Blackdom (N.M.)." The Homestead Act opened land ownership to male citizens, widows, single women, and immigrants pledging to become citizens. The 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed that African Americans were eligible as well."
I didn't do the math, but it sounds fairly proportional per capita. At the risk of sounding racist, I would also say that's pretty good, considering my understanding that blacks were often not educated and must have had a harder time knowing and filing out the paperwork versus more affluent whites who may be more expected to have the means to navigate it.
So is it Jon's position that because most Americans were white that the entitlement was intentionally written to exclude the minority? I don't really know.
Here is the argument I found online that FHA is racist:
"The Federal Housing Administration was created by Congress in 1934 to guarantee private mortgages, which in turn would cause a drop in interest rates and a decline in the size the down payment required to buy a house. As this organization strived to better the real estate economy, it damaged the value of many African American and homes through their use of maps that rated neighborhoods according to their perceived stability. These maps would have manly three different colors on them: Green, Yellow, and Red. Each color represented the stability of the neighborhood as well as its probability for insurance. Green area, also rated as "A", were neighborhoods that were considered safe and excellent prospects for insurance. On the other end of the spectrum we have red, also rated as "D". These neighborhoods were considered unsafe and usually considered ineligible for FHA backing. This system of color coding was also referred to as "redlining" which not only increased the racism within backed loans and the mortgage industry, but excluded African Americans from the most legitimate means of obtaining a mortgage."
Hm.
Is Jon's position that banks should not grade risk, and that because the riskier neighborhoods tended to be poor, and often minority in the 1930's, that it was inherently a menacing scheme from the start? Why is this not considered a tragedy of the reality of circumstance? Did whites in poor neighborhoods not also get hurt? This blurb seems to ignore that.
About the GI Bill:
NY Times 2005, writes a book report by Author "Ira Katznelson," WHEN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION WAS WHITE An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America:
"[T]he Servicemen's Readjustment Act, known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, a series of programs that poured $95 billion into expanding opportunity for soldiers returning from World War II. Over all, the G.I. Bill was a dramatic success, helping 16 million veterans attend college, receive job training, start businesses and purchase their first homes. Half a century later, President Clinton praised the G.I. Bill as "the best deal ever made by Uncle Sam," and said it "helped to unleash a prosperity never before known."
But Katznelson demonstrates that African-American veterans received significantly less help from the G.I. Bill than their white counterparts. "Written under Southern auspices," he reports, "the law was deliberately designed to accommodate Jim Crow." He cites one 1940's study that concluded it was "as though the G.I. Bill had been earmarked 'For White Veterans Only.' " Southern Congressional leaders made certain that the programs were directed not by Washington but by local white officials, businessmen, bankers and college administrators who would honor past practices. As a result, thousands of black veterans in the South -- and the North as well -- were denied housing and business loans, as well as admission to whites-only colleges and universities. They were also excluded from job-training programs for careers in promising new fields like radio and electrical work, commercial photography and mechanics. Instead, most African-Americans were channeled toward traditional, low-paying "black jobs" and small black colleges.'
So, in all, it appears Jon, and others, believe that if a disproportionate number of blacks benefit from any bill, then the bill and its' writers must be secretly trying to exclude them. In other words, every act of congress is merely "whitey keeping the black man down."
If that is the gauge used to determine racism in this country, then, by the very reality that we live in, in that there have been statistical differences in every demographic, everything must, by definition, be racist. Everything.