Originally Posted by
acecrackshot
So, how would you describe the Voting Rights Act and mountain of other legislation (often coming with significant public resources) designed to redress the issues in Urban communities?
Are you arguing that there HASN'T been over 50 years of significant attempts in both the public and private spheres to fully integrate Black Americans fully into public life? These efforts have bill payers, namely other disadvantaged populations that didn't receive these efforts. What do you say to them?
I would say they were good first steps but the work is incomplete. And they VRA only protected covered jurisdictions that demonstrated discrimination and contained laws that appeared to be facially neutral but were racist in intent and effect. And those protections, little as they were, have been gutted by the Robert’s Court. Most of America is not covered by any provision of the VRA. Further, the Fair Housing Act did absolutely nothing to address the vestiges of racial discrimination in housing availability and zoning, particularly dirty industry zoning, and Redlining. When it comes to housing zoning discrimination, I will agree that it may be the one true bipartisan issue we have — both parties have been equally culpable in its creation and perpetuation. There has never been an adequate supply of safely and properly zoned housing in this country for non-whites. Ever. Ghettos, and I use the term in the same historical context as pre-WWII Germany, don’t happen by accident.
Even today, black families know they have to “whitewash” their house if they want to sell it at market value. Shockingly, we learned this month that “whitewashing” can apply to the Appraisal as well. A Jax, FL family had their home appraised 40% lower than surrounding homes. All because there were pictures of their mixed race family on the mantle and African Art on the walls. After “whitewashing”, a fair appraisal was obtained. Needless to say, the bank corrected the error and is investigating.