Race, Housing, and Public Policy

Whoa, the title of this post is way too ambitious. All I want to do here is mention the latest book I haven't read, "Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America," by Beryl Satter. I've read a couple of reviews of the book (see here ) and have added it to my Amazon cart (that's how I keep track of things I wish I had time to read), and here's my main reaction so far: why do books about race, housing & lending discrimination, redlining, and so on never identify or deal with the unscrupulous landlords, speculators, and contract sellers? Who were these people, and what are their stories? There's always some "passive voice" at work here--the New York Times quotes from the book, which refers to: "...fabulous enrichment for speculative contract sellers and their investors, debt peonage or impoverishment for many black contract buyers....."


So, who got rich from this terrible behavior? I fear the answer is "our family, our friends, and our neighbors." That is, it was presumably whites who lived.....where? on the north side, the northwest side, the southwest side.....or in Evanston, Glenview,......in other words, it's not some abstract intangible entity who did these things. It was people--people like me. Who were they? What were their motivations? We have oral histories, and books by historians and sociologists, mostly focused on whites who left (Louis Rosen's book) or blacks who came (Satter's book, Making the Second Ghetto by Arnold Hirsch) ....but what about the speculators themselves? Maybe not such a nice group of people--but what do we know about them? Aren't we curious? Don't we worry that some of our city's suburbs were built up by unsavory people and tainted money coming from the post-war white flight from our central city? Not to be too dramatic, but it's as if we were discussing the Holocaust and not asking the question of who actually did the bad things.

This is not to say that we shouldn't also hear the stories told by Satter and others and that we shouldn't attempt to learn from our terrible public policy mistakes (refusing to offer mortgage insurance in black neighborhoods, for example). I am a policy person at heart, myself, so I am all about trying to improve our policies. But in this instance, I find that the "numbers" and "facts" I tend to rely on are simply not enough for me to understand what went on here.

OK, I"m done! Back to my day job......

OK, what's with those annoying Windows Updates?

I admit it--I've had it with those Windows updates (try here, but note they force you to use IE as your browser, those dogs!). The updates seem to be shoved through the pipe several days a week, and even though I have altered my computer's update settings to avoid "automatic updates," I am constantly having to close down annoying little dialog boxes telling me that my updates are ready to install, "just click here." Enough already!

Why is this so annoying? Well, for one thing, because you never ever EVER have an idea of how long the updates will take to install, whether a restart of your computer will be required, or what other aspects of your computer's operations will be affected by a particular set of updates. So, you take your computer life into your hands when you click "OK, install, please!" Could take 2 minutes, could take 20 minutes, and might blow away all your printer definitions, for example--not something to be done when you're facing a deadline.

Sure, some IT folks like to think of these updates as some type of routine maintenance we just need to "budget for", you know, maybe akin to brushing teeth, or washing the dishes after dinner. The problem with those analogies, though, is that those other activities are predictable in terms of time needed, and they are limited in terms of consequences when things go wrong. I mean, what if you try a new brand of toothpaste? What's the worst thing that could happen? You won't like the taste. There, done. [Sure, you could have an allergic reaction, but have you ever heard of that happening? Me either.] Now, think about installing these updates as "routine maintenance" for your computer--and what is the worst thing that could happen? No, you don't want to even imagine it. Could be BSOD, blown away files, corrupted printer definitions, inability to find archived email messages--you get the picture.

And what about that advice often given, suggesting the "oh, just set it to download and install automatically at 3 in the morning on Thursdays" strategy? Well, that approach does in general address the "will it take 2 minutes or 20" question, but it still leaves you vulnerable to the "OMG, I don't have any printer definitions" prospect. Furthermore, I learned the hard way (from leaving my machine in hibernation mode overnight, as is my custom) that the forced shutdown and restart that accompanies these automatic installations can cause some serious problems--my new PalmOS software (version 6.2.2) has a bit of a bug, so that if you force a system shutdown before properly closing the application, files get corrupted, and you cannot perform a hotsync operation until you've replaced the corrupted database files with some backups. Ridiculous.

Does this mean I'm ready for a Mac? I don't think so! My sons push me on this all the time, but they will clearly lose this argument. I mean, how likely am I to give in that pressure, when I am probably the only economist remaining on the planet still happily using WordPerfect (sold by Corel) instead of Word? They will have to pry my hands off the reveal codes feature if they ever want me to abandon WordPerfect for Word......

Agreeing with the Vatican

OK, it doesn't happen often.....in fact, maybe the last time I agreed with the Vatican was in 1965, when the Second Vatican Council was formally closed and I was all of 5 years old. In any event, the Vatican announced last week that Bishop Williamson's apology regarding his repeated Holocaust denials wasn't any good. According to the Chicago Tribune (February 27, 2009):

"An apology from a bishop who denied the Holocaust wasn't good enough, the Vatican said Friday, adding that he must repudiate his views if he wants to be a Roman Catholic clergyman."

See http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-eu-vatican-holocaust-denial,0,4070673.story for the full story.