For the purpose of this experiment we seem to be going back just to the 60’s, not a hundred years ago, and many banks and mortgage companies have been in existence for far longer than that.
- The IRS doesn’t collect discrimination complaints. Please tell me what they could reveal that would show that someone has been discriminated against?
- Local governments might be possible if complaints have been filed and those files have been kept.
- Please explain what the Census Bureau could reveal about localized discrimination?
Jeez, do I have to spell everything out? Any of these records might show where people lived, in addition to what they paid for, or tried to pay for. We also have maps that showed what localities were singled out and denied subsidies, loans, serices, etc. If we correlate these records with other records, as well as with eyewitness reports, then a picture of what really happened could come to light. It’s certainly not just about complaints, it’s about nearly everything that happened (in certain parts of the country) with regards to how black people interacted with the economy and society.
Hell, people might keep letters from their grandad in which he complained about how the bank or Housing Assistance denied him help for no good reason.
Why do you seem so intent on showing that there could be no possible way we could piece together what might have actually happened?
Who has records of what someone tried to pay for a house?
We do? Where? You keep referring to records as if you know they exist-what is your source of information?
Mortgage/loan applications, denial letters, etc. These are things that actually exist.
I thought you said you read Coates’ article. One of these maps was the prominent picture in the middle. Here’s some more info, and some maps.
Yes, those maps were incredibly easy to find.
Look-I started this experiment to see if it was possible on some small scale to work out a limited reparations program for a specific set of African-Americans…and you come back with the same vague sources of information like “The Census Bureau”, The IRS, and mortgage and banking companies without showing us reliably and exactly what those agencies can tell us. For this to work we need to focus in on the specifics that actually are possible.
Here is a great article that goes a bit deeper (and wider) on housing discrimination. The biggest cities all practiced it due to government policies like FHA redlining (which lasted from 1934 until 1968). The biggest cities – New York, LA, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, all had the same or similar policies, along with many other places.
This is not some great mystery – we have the maps drawn by the government. We have the words they used to deny loans and other services to people who lived in certain areas (which “just so happened” to be black areas).
Can’t you please be serious? We have maps, drawn by the government, that specifically were used to deny service to the black areas. Finding out who lived in those areas is not a herculean task.
If only we could, you know, study the issue.
Just for the purpose of this experiment(not the entire history of the program) you’ve shown an 8 year history of our government discriminating against African Americans. Taking that as a given, for the purpose of this experiment:
- Which African-Americans should qualify for reparations because of this one government agency?
- Should each qualified applicant be paid according to how much they suffered(mucho investigation time and money involved here), or should there be a blanket amount split evenly amongst them all(cheaper and faster)?
2.a. If a blanket amount, how much do you think would be fair?
Those who were denied loans, or whose property values were kept artificially low, or who lost property, or who were forced to leave their homes, or who otherwise suffered due to this policy.
Probably a blanket amount, similar to the Japanese-American internee reparations.
I don’t know exactly. One possible way might be to use the difference in average home value (based on square footage or something) between property in redlined areas and homes overall, multiplied by the home ownership rate, at least partially corrected for inflation. We could also use something similar to that used to calculate the Japanese-American internee compensation.
Thank you for the thoughtful questions. I’m glad to see we can have a reasonable discussion on this topic.
I actually have no objections to reparations. What I have objections to are overly broad plans that promise too much(thank you for that, Mr. Coates) and have no possible chance of seeing the light of a Congress day. Tighten the plan, get specific about what problem is being addressed, get specific about who will benefit, be realistic about how much can and should be compensated(too little, and its a slap in the face-too much and it will get buried in committee), and if possible focus on government run programs first to avoid cries of “Why should the taxpayers be penalized for what a private company did??”
You got specific, iiandyiiii, and it looks good.
Thank you. And I thank Mr. Coates, who brought much of this to my attention.
If he hadn’t written passionately, and used good research that focused attention on practices like housing discrimination, I would not have become interested (at least not at this point).
That kind of writing from Coates, even though he doesn’t have specific solutions, is a positive and useful thing. It isn’t the ultimate solution, but maybe it’s at least part of the beginning.
I have worked professionally in records management, and I am at least somewhat qualified to speak on this.
The notion that banks and mortgage companies will routinely have denied loan applications from the 1960s is laughable. The notion that banks and mortgage companies will routinely have successful loan applications from the 1960s is almost as laughable.
(I say routinely only because I’m sure there is some bank somewhere storing every scrap of paper they ever handled in a massive warehouse. There are exceptions to every rule. I speak of the majority of institutions here.)
FDIC rules, e.g., generally require banks to maintain records for five years after the loan or account is closed. That means that even for a 30-year mortgage taken out in 1970 and carried to term, the bank was free to dispose of all records in 2005. Given the vast waves of consolidation and cost-cutting in the banking world in recent years, I think most banks ditched them pretty soon after that date.
For denied applications, rules vary, but a ten-year retention is about as long as I’ve ever seen. Businesses, particularly big businesses with big record volumes, don’t want to pay for storing records that nobody ever uses and that have not had any legal value to date. Once any applicable statute of limitations ran out and the records ceased to have business value, they went to the incinerator or the landfill.
Records of evictions and other limited actions? My state requires the court to keep the records for ten years. After that, they are offered to local historical societies, but almost always are discarded. (Your state, of course, may be different, but it’s unlikely to be permanent retention.)
People who lost property? Depending on how they lost it, there may or may not be a record. There will be a record of foreclosures, e.g., but if personal property was deemed abandoned in the process, it was probably never recorded anywhere in the first place.
Those whose property values were kept artificially low? The record of how much property was appraised for is permanent, but the records supporting the reasons for any particular value are usually not, making it difficult to determine ‘artificially low’ versus ‘correctly low because it was shoddy low-income housing.’
Average home value, however, depends on far more than merely square footage. Quality of construction, e.g., is a big determinant–poorer neighborhoods frequently had (and have) a lot of shoddy and jerry-built structures. Many of them aren’t even standing anymore, and there may not be any surviving evidence of what they looked like or how they were built. How would your formula account for this?
Most of the Japanese-American internees received a flat sum, with no attempt to ‘calculate’ anything. The Evacuation Claims Act of 1948 set up what has been described as an onerous process filled with red tape for redress of property losses; relatively few ever collected much of anything.
That was with good records: just six years after the internments started, and with the well-preserved records of the War Relocation Authority as a centralized listing to detail who exactly had been interned.
In the case of African-Americans, there is no such centralized authority, and too much time has passed even since the 1960s and 70s. Finding out who lived in redlined areas is far more of a herculean task than you acknowledge. Who owned property there can be determined, but who actually lived there is a different proposition. Most poorer neighborhoods, for example, contain lots of rental properties; knowing that Peabody Jackson owned such and such an address tells you nothing about whether he lived there. If he was the landlord, the names of his tenants are not listed in any governmental record series.
You could try piecing together city directories, draft registration records, driver’s license records, school records, and the like, and I suppose you could ask the feds to open the 1960 and 1970 censuses for snapshot listings, but you are not going to be able to obtain a comprehensive listing.
Moreover, even if you somehow obtained a comprehensive list, it still would not answer the fundamental question: who wanted to live there versus who was forced to live there due to discrimination.
I’ve addressed all of this. There are multiple other ways that these things might be confirmed, including other records, eyewitness reports, and government documents.
I’m sure my formula would not be perfect. It doesn’t need to be, and we shouldn’t expect perfection. Which leads to…
I don’t suggest a complicated formula – it would be a flat sum which would be calculated using things like home values to estimate (for example) how much the average redlining resident was poorer due to redlining.
We could look at tax records, property records, utility records, debt records, eyewitness testimony, personal letters and records, school records, etc. There is more than one way to skin this cat.
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You suggest that this would be a difficult undertaking, which I do not deny. So what? It would be tough. I hold that it’s value to society would be worth this difficulty, even though it would result in some people being compensated who probably didn’t deserve it, and some people missing out who probably did.
Just like Japanese-American internee reparations, by the way. They weren’t perfect either.
Slavery was terrible, but was abolished in 1865. De jure segregation was almost as terrible, but is no more. Racism is bad and unfortunately persists, but we don’t need a government study to see or understand that. Any discussion of reparations now will, I’m afraid, only reinforce the views of contemporary racists that blacks are just looking for a government handout.
Actually, any bill other than a spending bill can originate in either house. U.S. Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 7. To become law, it then has to be successfully voted on (not “ratified by”) the other house, and either signed by the President or passed over his veto.
[sarcasm]Well, we should certainly keep the views of contemporary racists in mind when we are trying to better the cause of equality of opportunity.[/sarcasm]
Will non-black descendants of slaves be given any consideration? Say someone whose last couple of generations were all white yet before that mixed and before that all African American so that today they look typically white like Bill Clinton?
After re-reading the proposed bill, I don’t know how damages will be parsed at all. If this was ever enacted (which will never happen) from the below language, it seems to me if you’re African American, you’ll get ‘it,’ what ever ‘it’ is.
PURPOSE- The purpose of this Act is to establish a commission to–
(1) examine the institution of slavery which existed from 1619 through 1865 within the United States and the colonies that became the United States, including the extent to which the Federal and State governments constitutionally and statutorily supported the institution of slavery;
(2) examine de jure and de facto discrimination against freed slaves and their descendants from the end of the Civil War to the present, including economic, political, and social discrimination;
(3) examine the lingering negative effects of the institution of slavery and the discrimination described in paragraph (2) on living African Americans and on society in the United States;
(4) recommend appropriate ways to educate the American public of the Commission’s findings;
(5) recommend appropriate remedies in consideration of the Commission’s findings on the matters described in paragraphs (1) and (2)
Giving grist to the stereotype mill is rarely good policy.