Most of us can agree that Jim Crow-type statutes (which say where blacks can live and go to school) are reprehensible. But Mondale shows us where liberals have moved the goalposts on what racism means.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act speaks in race-neutral language about prohibiting discrimination in "public accommodations". This is consistent with King's idea that we be "judged by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin." But Mondale and other liberals want to change that.
"Though the overarching aim of the law was to create integrated communities, Congress could not simply direct the whole of America to start integrating. Instead, like all laws, the Fair Housing Act tried to accomplish its goal through a variety of more-detailed provisions." In other words, liberals have now decided that ending race-based discrimination is not enough. Big brother is going to force people together. And where it cannot do so directly (e.g local zoning), it will threaten to withhold federal funds until it gets its way. How different is this from Trump threatening to withhold federal money from "sanctuary cities" ?
In today's age, real estate developers and realtors don't see black or white. Rather, they see green (meaning cash). But no race has the right to subvert local control and force affluent towns to sell at below market prices just so liberals can realize their dream of a Benetton commercial.
4
Thank you, Senator, Vice-President, Ambassador Mondale, for your past and continued public service.
2
Thank you, Mr. Mondale, for addressing this matter. I was shocked and dismayed by Mr. Carson's inexplicable behavior in this important post (not to mention Mr. trump's inexplicable appointment of a neurosurgeon to the position). Perhaps his incompetence will soon remove him, too, from the Cabinet. One can only hope.
1
Claiming the pyramids were grain silos is social engineering. Segregation IS social engineering. The law that was passed is social re-engineering. And Ben Carson is an over educated idiot.
1
Yet another example of America's failure to live up to its own ideals and showing by the reality that continues, it's people are not up to the tasks they themselves set and so obviously have been found wanting.
The question is, does America accept it's own inability to live up to its failures and in doing so, redouble its energy, efforts and determination to succeed this time around and prove to themselves and others that they have managed to become better...be better and at last vanquished the underlying disappointments borne of a flawed character and become the people that they can and should be to the people that for so long they have failed and if they can...become the people that they no longer in all conscience will ever be again.
Better.
2
The article Mondale cites for the proposition that integration provides “children with a better chance to graduate from high school” etc. does not support that proposition. The article is talking about low-income, presumably minority children, not children in general.
2
The internet listing of houses for sale has essentially eliminated steering and redlining. Today if a person wants to buy a house in a particular neighborhood all he has to do is look online at real estate websites like Realtor.com and see what is for sale. People no longer have to depend on the good graces of an agent to show them houses. Customers look at the listings of what is available and tell the agent what they would like to see.
People can apply for a loan online too. They can qualify for financing with a lender in another state and need never show their face to anyone until the day of signing a purchase agreement. Of course one has to have the ability to pay for the house. Maybe some develop an attitude that perhaps they are entitled to a free house and when they don't qualify for financing they think that evil forces are at work to deprive them of their entitlement.
Lots of people just don't want to do any work to familiarize themselves with what is available. Maybe they aren't educated enough to read and understand purchase agreement contracts, disclosures, and other assorted forms. There are mass numbers of forms to sign when buying a house. It's considerably more complex than buying a car.
Of course sellers who sell their house without the use of an agent can discriminate based on any thing they want to.
The author is out of touch. The fair housing laws get a disproportionate amount of attention by the profession and the states.
3
"...But the law has also often suffered from neglect. The public servants tasked with implementing it have often forgotten — or refused to pursue — its ultimate goal of building an integrated society. "...
Is Senator Mondale suggesting that Deep State has its fingers all over the failures to implement the law?
Sure reads like that is what he is saying.
2
It seems that a number of those commenting here in response to Walter Mondale are the type who would have been against laws outlawing child labor or for the introduction of humane building standards for people living in unhealthy tenements in 1900. What a shameful bunch.
1
Why is caring about one's personal safety "shameful"?
Drive through towns on the northeast side of Atl and find neighborhoods that are 90% asian or 90% hispanic. The stores that service these neighborhoods reflect those cultures. They are NOT poor slums, but neighborhoods developed and lived in by those that want to live withing their own culture. Throughout the US we have wealthy black neighborhoods as well.
In essence, while progressives rant about diversity and how fabulous it is, most actually prefer to live with folks of their own culture. I'm not saying that blacks living in the inner city with violence and drugs do not 'want' to be there. Actually, many use section 8 to leave for better schools and lower crime. While they make up a fraction of the poor people, they use 80% of the section 8 monies. And, frankly, I get it.
The law was written to stop red-lining; the practice where qualified families were denied the ability to buy a home in a predominantly white neighborhood. The liberal intent behind the scenes, as written by Mondale, appears to also demand integration. Well, it didn't work with busing and it won't work with housing. That is my grief with section 8 - costs billions and is basically a freebie that data shows doesn't work.
Bottom line - it's illegal to prohibit the purchase of a house based on race. That is being fully enforced. It is not illegal to live where you choose. It would be illegal to force one to buy in neighborhood or force them to move from a neighborhood based on race.
5
Re: "...Fifty years ago on April 11, Congress enacted the Fair Housing Act, the last of the three great civil rights laws of the 1960s. {W.F.Mondale}
How ironic...given that our current 'president' and his father were cited / sued / forced to pay $10's to 100's, 'O, 1,000's of dollars, to the feds...after they allegedly, pleaded 'no contest', (reminiscent of Spiro T, Agnew), to red_lining, aka, rent-refusal based on... 'skin color'!
It’s ironic that progressives are unhappy with fair housing act and its consequences for the present day. They created it. Over the decades it has created segregated enclaves of poor people with all the attendant social ills. If you read the harvard study Mondale refers to, it concludes that moving out of govt subsidized housing projects to more economically viable neighborhoods results in better outcomes for children. Mondale and The social planners at least ought to acknowledge their own mistakes before they ask us to follow their advice once again.
2
Excellent article. A recent book describes the federal government's role in supporting segregationist policies, The Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein.
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-...
We need to restore the Voting Rights Act and vote out the white supremacists, the fools who think their mediocrity is superior.
Here's to Vice President Mondale! He would have been a great president.
2
Didn’t he lose all the states except his own, Minnesota? Americans weren’t wrong about him.
1
I would like to see this country make sure that every family and individual lives in decent housing. I volunteer with Habitat for Humanity to work toward that goal.
Recently, I visited an applicant who lives with her mother, her sister and her daughter in her mother's house. The house is in poor condition. Electrical outlets are overloaded, the floor is sagging, the roof leaks and some walls are iffy. Even the water is not drinkable.
My partner in the interview asked if Mom wanted to move. The answer is no. This is her home and she prefers to stay there, even though the house will eventually fall down. She owns the house and she will stay on her land.
Thank goodness, her daughter was approved for a Habitat home. I pray for her success as a homeowner. Everyone deserves decent housing.
1
I knew two siblings both born in the Deep South before WW2, neither with an education, both inheriting a few adjacent acres. One built a minimalist home, never painted it or fixed the roof. Spent free time fishing and socializing. The roof sagged. The house began falling apart and became totally uninhabitable about the time she died.
The other cleared his land cutting the timber on a portable sawmill and building a solid home. Raised rabbits and produce to sell and worked weekends maintaining his home. A large beautiful and intact home.
Both got what they bargained for. Both got what they deserved. Actually both were happy. Does anyone deserve anything except the freedom to make their own choices and live with the results?
6
Most people still believe that individual personal preferences regarding the kind of neighborhood one lives in and the kind of people one lives around are no ones else’s business, least of all the federal government. Not every law that outlaws wrong action is wise or itself right. Electing force over persuasion, even in doing good, has adverse consequences.
5
No, The Civil Rights Laws were not ignored, they were deliberately and maliciously ignored, subverted, and dismantled, to cause as much harm to those in need of the laws protection. Why do you think Trump's "Good People" wave around the confederate flag all day? It's not because they love grits and sweet tea.
3
We have one of the early offenders of Title VIII sitting in the White House. That is no oversight.
The majority of Americans who find that horrifying allowed it to happen by lassitude and nonchalance.
This time, we need everyone to vote. We have the margin of victory in our hands.
2
Mondale writes:
Yet the Trump administration has sought to delay enforcement of the 2015 HUD integration rules by as much as seven years. Ben Carson, the HUD secretary, has referred to these rules — essential to the act he is supposed to safeguard — as “mandated social engineering.”
This is the story of the first 50 years of the Fair Housing Act: gradual progress and frequent setbacks. If the law’s drafters could have been accused of anything, it was excessive optimism about how easily a segregated society could be unified. But even as the epochal events surrounding its passage fade from collective memory, the Fair Housing Act persists. It remains a bulwark for advocates of justice and equality, as they advance, inch by inch, toward a fairer, more integrated nation.
Were it not for "social engineering," Ben Carson would not have been allowed to learn to read, much less become a prominent neurosurgeon. He would never have been considered for a cabinet position even in one run by a corrupt and incompetent judge of people other than their professed loyalty to that corruption and incompetence. And of course, he would never have been able to try to scam us taxpayers with a $31,000 dining suite for his office.
2
"The bureaucracy has often allowed people who prefer the segregated status quo to obstruct and delay" - the latter half of that sentence illustrates the real problem which is that most white Americans don't want to integrate their neighborhoods. Just like with school segregation, the government needs to step in to make sure that laws and policies are being followed.
In other words, you want citizens to be coerced.
2
In the name of civil rights, Judge Leonard Sand destroyed both the neighborhood housing and neighborhood schools in Yonkers, NY. What Mondale misses is that the federal government cannot regulate peoples' attitudes toward education, housing and crime. Nor can the federal government really regulate peoples' behavior in their homes and neighborhoods (other than, maybe, through the criminal process) and their schools. When we "define deviancy down" in a neighborhood or a school, people who want a better life or education will flee. Which is what happened in so many inner city communities, from The Bronx to Newark, to Philadelphia to Cleveland to Chicago to Los Angeles.
5
Times have changed since 1968. The (primarily) biracial US of 50 years ago has become today's multi-racial society, with large and growing percentages of latinos and asians.
50 years ago, interracial marriages were 1 or 2% of all marriages, today it is 10 to 12%. Whites won't even be a majority in a few decades, and more and more people will consider themselves mixed race (or perhaps no race).
Given these changes, I'm not sure residential segregation remains an important issue. Asians, for example, seem to have integrated seamlessly into many wealthier neighborhoods and communities around the country -- because they have the scratch to do so.
The real segregation is between the wealthy and the poor, and wealth and income inequality continue to rise. That seems to me to be the key issue of our time.
I don't expect poor old Walter Mondale to talk about that, though. He's part of the generation of Democratic leaders who dropped the ball on economic inequality. I voted for him, in '84, but ...
4
Philip. Well said. Address income inequality and everything else falls in line.
Sir, Your article brought me to tears, wishfully thinking of a bygone era where the majority enacted legislation to uplift a long downtrodden minority. True democracy at work. May I join the many readers in congratulating you on still retaining that moral timber to speak clearly in these troubled times, wish you good health and wish us all a return to sanity.
5
I have sought out integrated neighborhoods everywhere I've lived (6 states.) They are abundant here in the DC metro area, if you go looking. But segregation persists in the smaller rooms of our culture, for good or ill.
Churches seem either black or white, sometimes restaurants and bars. My favorite place is the library, where we are all just neighbors who like to read. Also, it's where we vote together.
18
Churches seem either black or white...
------------------------------------------
Try a Catholic Church in a working-class neighborhood. Plenty of blacks and whites worshipping alongside black, white and Hispanic immigrants too. Hth.
2
It’s refreshing to read about an important domestic public policy issue. If we hope for a better society we would be wise to focus more on developing good policy and less on individuals, whether they are corrupt like you know who or decent, if imperfect, like Mr Mondale.
6
That was a good and noble piece of
legislation you passed, Mr. Mondale.
Thank you.
I offer you a word of encouragement, as
you watch our current administration's
efforts to destroy the Fair Housing Act
you helped inact.
"And let us not be weary in well doing:
for in due season we shall reap, if we
faint not". (Galatians 6:9)
8
There must be something in the water in Minnesota. The state keeps supplying the national scene with a seemingly endless supply of out-of-touch liberal politicians- Humphrey, McCarthy, Mondale, Wellstone, Franken, Klobuchar, and others.
6
And proud of it. And I wouldn't label our representatives as out-of-touch. How about trying to make it a more level playing field for everyone.
2
Then, I say, let's put whatever it is in the water of the other 49!
2
Fritz, talk about keeping a low profile.
1
The law in a nutshell:
The Fair Housing Act requires public housing to be built in affluent, high-opportunity communities, not in poverty-stricken racial ghettos.
The good news is that this will actually be better for everyone.
7
Will this be "good news" for the people whose homes are broken into?
2
I know someone in suburban DC who had a public housing project dropped right in his back yard. He's never been able to sell his single family home since then. That was 25 years ago.
So not better for everyone.
4
As I read this I can't help but think of David Foster Wallaces’ “This is Water" which he gave at a commencement years back. Here are the first few lines:
"There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, 'Morning, boys, how's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, 'What the hell is water?' " For white folk, our privilege is like water for the fish. We can't see it, because we're in it. Senator Mondale is right. It was policy that created racism, not the other way around. It will be policy that reverses it. But before, we can know what that looks like, we'll have to acknowledge "the water" that we're swimming in.
11
But before, we can know what that looks like, we'll have to acknowledge "the water" that we're swimming in.
--------------------------
Speak for yourself about the quality of the "white" water you are swimming in...
I know of young hard-working white people who are discriminated against because they are white, and not black/disadvantaged (which too many liberals see as synonymous.) Your attitude that all "whites" are swimming in advantages/benefits/privileges reinforces this.
What white and black people are paying for your legacy privileges? Think class, not skin color...
2
Educational segregation tends to reflect residential segregation.
https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integrat...
For many years, the Civil Rights Project has been publishing lists of the states where African American and Latino students have been most severely segregated. We have consistently found New York and Illinois to be at or very near the top of the list, often with Michigan and New Jersey close behind.
The states that have moved into the top of this list include Maryland, where there has been substantial residential resegregation in large parts of suburbia, and California…
Because of the dramatic changes in southern segregation produced by the enforcement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, none of the 17 states that completely segregated schoolsby law(e.g., the type of mandatory segregation that was the focus of the Brown decision) have headed this list sincel970—in spite of the fact that twelve of them have higher shares of black students than the most segregated states today
https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/news/press-releases/2014-press-r...
“In the 30 years I have been researching schools, New York State has consistently been one of the most segregated states in the nation--no Southern state comes close to New York,”
13
When anyone speaks of the Fair Housing Laws, people immediately think about racial discrimination. However, the law is much broader and in Arizona, for instance, the vast majority of cases and complaints under the Fair Housing laws are cases of discrimination based upon disability both physical and mental. This necessarily deals with landlords evicting our disabled veterans who are suffering either from mental (PTSD) or physical injuries from the ravages of our many wars. Landlords and realtors are pretty savvy when it comes to knowing that can't outright say they will be evicting based upon their race, but will totally ignore the rights of our disabled, including our disabled veterans. Everyone knows that overt racial discrimination is against the law, but not disability discrimination.
7
Even though no one admits it, the disabled and seniors are very frequent victims of children and teens that live in low income housing, so this group needs housing designated specifically for seniors and the disabled.
2
The disabled and seniors are frequently preyed upon by younger residents of low income housing, but I don't see that FACT mentioned in liberal media. Disabled and senior lives don't matter, I guess.
2
Aren't residential high-rises just a juxtaposition of "gated communities" upon the urban landscape? The suburban mindset doesn't need a suburb to thrive. Unfortunately, ike an invasive species, it will choke the life out the street life and diversity that gives the city it vibrancy.
While muggings, burglaries, car jackings, shootings all bring a lot of suspense and what you refer to as "vibrancy", many of us just prefer the tranquility of knowing we will probably arrive home alive and without stabbing or bullet wounds And we have a right to that preference.
1
It is always nice to hear from Walter Mondale who has high ideals for our country. I once worked with him as a Senate staffer on improving federal food assistance programs for the poor and low income Americans. On this issue, I have a slight disagreement. the FHA is in mandated social engineering in a society where income actually determines class overcoming all other distinctions between individuals and groups. In the segregated South, whites and blacks actually lived in the same neighborhoods but blacks were forced to go to separate schools outside those neighborhoods. Theoretically Brown v. Board of education ended that practice but white families avoided school integration by setting up their own private academies. In the north, whites and blacks lived in separate neighborhoods often because of discriminatory practices and busing was introduced to integrate schools. By and large this had mixed results. One of the arguments put forth by the NAACP attorneys in Brown v. Board of Education was that black students could not feel equal to white students unless they were actually sitting next to them in school. This is unfortunately fallacious. Eliminating discrimination is a moral imperative. Attempting to force "equality" in a democratic, income related class society is a Utopian objective doomed to failure,
12
I not sure what planet you grew up on Ken. In the south blacks an whites did not live in the same neighborhoods. Blacks went to separate schools with mostly outdated school books and equipment passed down from the white schools. And it wasn't that blacks could only feel equal to whites by sitting next to them; blacks could only guarantee equal treatment and access if they were in the same taxpayer supported schools. Busing was implemented as a remedy to get students to where the opportunity lay as an effort to eliminate segregated schooling at "all deliberate speed". It's sad that there continues to be "white washing" of history to justify one's position.....
16
Your endorsement of segregation demonstrates the problem of racism. The government is not trying to "force equality". All people were created equal. Only a racist thinks that blacks are unequal and should be segregated. Actually sitting next to "them" in school is not harmful.
Skin color is not contagious.
Read Richard Rothstein's recent book The Color of Law, which describes the segregationist policies of the US government in housing. The FHA refused to insure mortgages in redlined neighborhoods. In the middle class suburbs, African-Americans were equally able to afford homes as whites but were prohibited from buying them. Maps of redlined neighborhoods were published by the federal government,
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-...
@C.Harris:"Busing was implemented as a remedy to get students to where the opportunity lay as an effort to eliminate segregated schooling at 'all deliberate speed'. "
And what are you doing about he heavily racially segregated public schools in NYC?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/opinion/school-segregation-nyc.html
Start a busing program for the purposes of racial integration and try doing something about all that white flight from the NYC public schools.
Then come back to tell how all that worked out for the liberals in NYC. Can't wait!
Vice President Mondale can set an example for other elites by commissioning the nearest available property to his residence, arranging the construction of affordable housing and making it available to to those currently excluded from his neighborhood, with preference given to those categories with the greatest history of segregation.
12
We are where we live. Fair housing, ending discrimination, integration and equal opportunity is in the eyes of the beholders in power.
None of the beholders in power have cared --or cared enough to risk votes-- to ake use of the tools and enforce the law. The default position is a mixture of tribalism and separate but equal.
Housing is a proxy for not only equity but education (school performance), opportunity (jobs, p.c. income and criminal behavior) and segregation.
We are where we live. And America needs to do better...
5
The Vice President struck a nerve! Well done. I love the commenters’ defensiveness! Mr. Mondale is 90 years old. Yes he lives in a very gentrified area. But he’s using his position to amplify the injustice of housing laws. Far better to bring attention to this issue than be told to be quiet because he lives in a nice neighborhood.
17
Why, today, are there so few of these types of thoughtful and clear statesmen politicians? I miss this kind of public servant politicians such as Vice President Mondale, but the young people responding to the deaths of their peers give me hope that another generational wave of new public servant advocates who will get and stay engaged in service and politics at every level is headed our way. If you're not familiar with Mondale's work and history, please take the time to read the wiki page for Mondale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Mondale. Judge Miles Lord and Paul Wellstone and others from Minnesota are worth reading or re-reading in today's context too. Few of these folks remain in Minnesota as is the case across the rest of the nation. We suffer because of that.
11
There are many ways to tinker around with segregation.
The only way to start ending it is to just admit that all
humans are human. All humans are the same in the same way that all dogs and cats are dogs and cats. I could just say that all dogs are dogs. I could just say that all cats are cats. Their food id food. There might be dog food and cat food, but no matter what we call it, it's food. No matter what color they are, all humans are humans.
4
Fairly soon, I suspect the Court will recognize legally that discriminating because of the color of one's skin is not the answer. It makes things worse.
You are right: judge individuals by who they are. It's attitudes and behaviors (that can be changed) not mass classifications, set-asides and dancing around the cultural issues that we need most today. The black immigrants will help to lead us, I think. Not so much baggage, and the liberals will have to confront their achievements without condescendingly offering up superior "solutions" that work best on paper, but not in real life.
All cats are cats and all dogs are dogs. But larger physically stronger dogs can and DO attack and kill cats and smaller, physically weaker dogs. This occurs throughout the animal kingdom, and humans are still animals.
I have heard that Minnesota, and especially Minneapolis, has been and is currently enforcing restrictive real estate covenants that include discriminatory policies toward minority groups including Jews, Asians and African Americans to name just a few.
This information was presented by a researcher from the University of Minnesota in a lecture. Mr. Mondale’s home city appears to be the highest ranking in housing discrimination in the United States.
He clearly understands this yet still chooses to live there.
8
Judging by this op ed, he is trying to change things.
Yep, Vice President Mondale appears to be a subversive in the best way possible. He continues to speak out against wrongs even in his own back yard. Although change is hard, it's best started from the inside. He's set the example of what we should all do. Glad to see he's still active & on the same path. His campaign slogan from 1984 is true today: "America needs a change".
In some areas of the country Jim Crow still exists. And it's not limited to the southern states. America has a history of prejudice against minorities, women, and anyone who doesn't conform to the mainstream idea of what an American ought to be: a white male who happens to be rich.
We've ignored more than just housing laws. We've seen laws designed to keep people poor by the way they exclude minorities and working Americans. We've witnessed a real lack of effort or interest (due in no small measure to the identity politics practiced by the GOP) in ensuring that every American has access to decent and affordable housing, a good education, medical care when and where it's needed, and can vote without fear of being harassed or losing their job as well as getting a decent day's pay for a decent day's work.
In the last 40 years what America has witnessed is an unprecedented weakening of our paltry social safety net as the uber rich have raked in the money and the profits. There is no sharing in America any longer. The only time laws are enforced is when a working American or a poor American violates them. Rich Americans/corporations are forgiven. Others are impoverished as a result of spending cuts. Housing is a symptom of what's going wrong in America as a whole.
Skin color and economic class are driving 99% of Americans into the ground, literally.
9
Only at the New York Times is someone who lost 49 states considered worthy of opining on public policy issues.
8
I guess that's why I am here, no discrimination based on income/secular achievements. On the other hand, I'm overqualified for FoxMyths&UnverifiedRumors
1
What does this have to do with anything? Mondale was also a respected Senator, Vice President, and Ambassador to Japan. I would think he'd have quite a lot of wisdom to share, for those willing to listen.
3
If all the liberal whites who wants integration would actually move to majority black neighborhoods and enroll their kids in local public schools, this problem would be solved in an instant.
But that wouldn't happen, would it?
13
That's fine with me if, at the same time, the wall will be built, not at the border to Mexico but rather around those Jim Crow-shacks, complete with a, from the outside, lockable heavy duty metal port.
Nice strawman you have there.
I'm very curious about the author's personal choice of his own neighborhood throughout his life.
13
The answer is Liberty.
Ad hominem attacks aren't terribly persuasive. Where Mr. Mondale lives is not the point. The Fair Housing Act is not about bringing white folks to minority communities. Just the opposite, it's about allowing mobility from racial ghettos created by actions of the past. The solution is not mass migration of upper-middle class whites to minority areas (which primarily leads to disruption of existing minority communities, see Brooklyn, San Francisco, downtown Los Angeles). Rather, as Mr. Mondale suggests, the solution is legal empowerment to leave the racial ghettos of the past behind.
One thing that greatly concerns me about the FHA, and what it communicates, is its built in assumption that everyone will do better if shipped to white neighborhoods, and that neighborhoods which do not have a significant number of white individuals, are "less than" in some way.
This assumption is both problematic and offensive. It's essentially a deeply racist perspective, one which takes the view that whites are always "better than" the other racial groups and that their neighborhoods are better. It also devalues black neighborhoods, and suggests to black individuals, harmfully I might add, that the biggest problem they have in their neighborhood does not have to do with crime, and anti-crime strategies, or with gangs and gang violence, or with community or family dysfunction, or with dilapidated buildings and the need for funds for renovation, but rather the biggest problem is they just don't have enough white people in their neighborhood.
And if only they had more white people there, things would surely be balanced and better and the problems would go away. This "white-people-are-the-angels-who-bring-all-good-things-to-you-miserable-wretches" perspective has indeed been shaped into law, and part of that law is the Fair Housing Act. It has also unfortunately been deeply assimilated into the psyches of many in poor black neighborhoods, who think that "The Man" ( the symbol of all those white angels from whom cornucopia flows) owes them a lot.
6
Amazing how you manage to twist laws designed to stop ongoing discrimination by whites against Blacks into a neo-Confederate diatribe against Blacks and their alleged shortcomings.
Perhaps you might do well to look at the wealth gaps between blacks and whites or which neighborhoods get environmentally unsafe living conditions or the ongoing current discrimination in the housing loan markets before you claim that these silly black people are just sitting around thinking that white angels owe them something.
3
I believe your assumption is wrong. There is no "better" white neighbourhoods, There is only better mixed neighbourhoods.
Kind of depends on preference, doesn't it? Do people no longer even have a right to their own preferences? And if you love integrated neighborhoods so much, why aren't you living in Baltimore or Chicago, instead of posting from the safely of Sweden?
1
Every law that manages human relations including fair housing is 'mandated social engineering' of the kind maligned by the neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson. Carson has neither the education nor the experience nor the talent to manage HUD.
6
Mr. Carson is uniquely qualified to manage HUD. As a person of color--who is not only intelligent and accomplished--but who actually lived in government housing--whose family survived for a time on Welfare, why would you say he is not qualified--just because he's a republican? Does it take a liberal college professor to run HUD?
7
Carson himself has admitted he's over his head. Part of the reason he is not qualified is because he hasn't had any professional experience in housing. He's no more qualified to run a housing agency than a real estate developer (like Trump) is to do your brain surgery.
Please set your bar higher than "he's black and smart". There are more of us around than you think.
@Jesse - Carson is unqualified because he has limited background urban planning, landlord/tenant law, or real estate management. He knows a lot about biology and systems, though. Let him fix your car's engine!
We have lawless administration.
3
Time to add a third metric - beyond race and class...
A sense of ownership and self-reliance...
Does one want to:
> Light a candle
> Curse the darkness
> Get the state to install streetlights - so they can be shot out so dealing can be done more discreetly
If ownership and self-reliance are capitalist - and capitalist is profit-seeking - then, of course, self-reliance is suspect, if not downright deplorable...
But - what about the patronage-seeking of those noble progressives...
Couple of examples - first from your paper...
*ttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/nyregion/nycha-scandals-chairwoman-resigns.html
"...Years of disinvestment and neglect by the federal government flared into a political issue that may have cost Ms. Olatoye her job...
Uuuh - false paperwork about lead-paint inspections never done...
For next one - so badly misfit the NYT narrative, had to go to the NYP...
https://nypost.com/2018/04/09/de-blasio-aide-arrested-with-gun-was-ridin...
"...The Mayor Bill de Blasio aide charged with riding around with a loaded gun was nabbed in an SUV that reeked of marijuana...
"...Stevens...works as a deputy director in the mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice...
If these were outliers, it'd be one thing, but the NYC:
> Public-sector housing system
> Subway system and convenient Albany-NYC political dodgeball
> Lower half of the K-12 school system
All basket cases - wards of the state
Obamacare of another kind...
3
Is having an integrated society a moral imperative? If it is, then we should be ever-striving to achieve whatever it is this looks like in practice, simply because it is in and of itself the right way to live.
If it is not, then integration is merely utilitarian, a means to an end. This seems to be where the notion of racial integration stands nowadays. It is the means to improve educational outcomes for Black and Hispanic students for example. That is the selling point. Apart from this, it requires convincing non-Blacks and Hispanics to partner in this endeavor, which in the zero-sum game mentality of today, means integration rarely happens.
The problem with integration as utilitarian is also that if the object can be achieved some other way, then it's not useful, and even worth discarding. Hence the comparison to Asians, who not infrequently will sequester themselves apart from society while maintaining generally good outcomes in education. Hence the convenient focus on other areas of systemic racism, with the argument that if these are fixed, then racial integration in housing for example matters less (because it's also harder to achieve).
Which is it?
4
Sea level rise will destroy more low income homes than higher income homes . The law may not be able to compel integration , but it can control density as every high price zoned county gives evidence . A high speed transportation plan could facilitate residential density limits and feasible workplace to residence commutes .
1
A great editorial by Vice-President Mondale. The Trump administration is ignoring these laws, too, just as it is no longer observing norms and conventions of behavior regarding other statutes.
It is going to take decades to undo the damage caused by this administration.
8
"We know that growing up in an integrated community provides children with a better chance to graduate from high school, attend college, get and keep good jobs, earn a higher income and pass on wealth to subsequent generations."
Children may be helped by expensive housing vouchers. A better approach would provide educational vouchers and allow students to attend multiple schools. Why not study math and baseball in the local public high school, study history, dance and other electives in the church school and use home tutoring for science? Let children travel with coordinated schedules and public schools will stop being the main determinate of housing values and segregation.
Of course, this solution may actually work for all children, reduce costs, and harm the Democratic narrative while supporting family choice.
3
Great suggestion for parents with substantial resources.
1
Good luck reviving this legislation. The Republican party has gone completely reactionary, and this is no longer the Democratic Party of the Roosevelt and Johnson New Deal - it's the centrist party of the Clinton raw deal.
1
Fair Housing ends when you can not afford the neighborhood. Progressive concentration of wealth, beginning in earnest with Reagan, and the catastrophic Great Recession brought on by wealthy Grifters (who mostly emerged unscathed from their dirty dealing), has further eroded the chances for anyone of lesser means, to “Move On Up” in the words of George Jefferson. Color “is” what matters. And that color is “Green”.
32
No amount of green nor education has ever been able to turn the vast majority of blacks who are not athletes nor entertainers nor politicians white. Color aka race always matters. And the color aka race that always matters most is white.
6
I think you sell yourself short. I find the idea that minorities can succeed only if they live with whites to be another kind of racism. Everyone wants what is best for their children, family, etc. It takes money to achieve that and we know the people in power aren't going to be giving anything away to anybody, regardless of their color. We all have to work to get the kind of life we want. We may not make it, but at least we will have tried. I grew up in Army housing, all colors, religions, ethnicities together. When we left the military and were looking for a place to live, that was high on our list.
1
Elimination of groups through integration is the only answer to racism.
4
Obviously zero chance for this law under Trump.
2
"The house has already been sold." "We just filled the job.". "Sorry." What we say in public is not the white lies we say in private.
7
While I know living in the "good old days" was not good for everyone at least this country had a trajectory that was moving us forward with innovation, integration and ideas. Now we are moving backwards with stupidity, segregation and sordid affairs by a sinister "leader". America could have truly been a great nation, not anymore.
11
Google the term "lowest common denominator" and consider how it relates to "privilege" and culture today.
Resolve discrimination? Not during this administration...
2
The headline should read "The Civil Rights Law We Ignore."
3
What’s stopping all the concerned, privileged white people from solving this problem themselves? Move to the diverse neighborhoods (although be prepared for the backlash when you “gentrify” it). Enroll your children in the poor performing public school. If your solution is so great put your money where your mouth is and actually live your values, rather than trying to claim the moral high ground by legislating and regulating that others do what you aren’t willing to do yourself.
12
Your tone of ridicule inokies no does anything you list. My white best friend enrolled both her students in "the brown school", went back to college for a teaching degree and teaches there now. She FIRMLY believes her now adult children benefitted greatly.
1
Or whites could stop discriminating against black people trying to purchase homes. Either way.
2
Thank you for your service, Vice President Mondale. You are an American hero. We need far more people like you.
11
With all the crazy, near-constitutional-crisis stuff going on, we needed an op ed on this subject from. Former Democratic leader like we needed a hole in the head. First the Dems need to get elected, then we need to deal with fifty important issues, then we need to mess around with who lives where.
Who lives where impacts everything else.
1
Where have all the new Walter Mondales and George Romneys gone? Long time passing....... :(
6
What was Ben Carson's housing when he was a kid?
He did pretty well for himself, Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Hopkins.
3
For awhile I think he lived in the projects.
1
"What was Ben Carson's housing when he was a kid?"
He lived in public housing with his single mother. Does that work for you?
You know who else succeeded thanks to his disciplinarian grandfather who would not allow any bar lowering or excuses? Clarence Thomas.
3
Ben Carson has a point.
3
You read this and it makes you wonder if the Times will survive in coming decades. Bringing out an old fossil like Mondale to talk about a law that virtually no one remembers and that no one really cares about -- who came up with that idea? This stuff is just so passé in the world we now live in.
6
It's passe because it doesn't affect you.
This is why things do not get any better; folks are so dismissive because they believe it's not important.
I teach in an urban city and this is critical to my work. We have mostly renters so the tax base isn't here to subsidize the schools like richer, Whiter communities next door.
The only White people my kids see are people in charge; cops, teachers, judges. These folks work here but wouldn't dare live in the community they work in.
I came from a community like this and now I rent in the suburbs. I've thought about moving where I work but as a teacher, I can't afford it.
My kids are bright and deserve better. They would benefit from being exposed to other cultures. Same of the White kids who live in the tony town next door. We will not learn to get along until we stop separating ourselves.
But I guess that statement is passe as well.
8
We subsidize underperforming school districts heavily. Where does the money go if it is not going to the students?
1
@Peg: Sorry, I don't agree with your characterization of my comment. There are lots of things that don't affect me that I do care about, thank you very much. In any case I didn't say I cared nothing about the issue. My comment made the point that this law and the author, Mr. Mondale, are relics of a bygone time and have no relevance today, whether you or I like it or not.
The law has worked in most middle class suburbs. But what keeps us separate is economics. Until equal opportunities in hiring and education are more strongly enforced, the housing can't because of money earned.
4
@Tom - Actually, its not only hiring and education. Philadelphia is under the gun because of apparent mortgage redlining. Funds earmarked to renovate predominantly minority neighborhoods have gone to White gentrifiers instead of Black residents with equal credit qualifications.
It's complicated. A minority Doctor moving into a wealthy neighborhood will have less difficulty than a much lower class minority moving into a much lower class neighborhood for the obvious reasons like education breeds tolerance and wealth brings social mobility. White flight is real and not entirely based on racism, but also on crime rates, cultural differences and plain old fear, especially amongst the less educated. In my humble opinion Democrats need to pay attention to these details if they want to win more elections. One size solutions do not fit all cases.
6
I guess you have never read Ellis Cose' s "Rage of a Privileged Class" or the recent study that showed that even black boys from intact wealthy families are more likely to suffer the impacts of white racism. Racial hatred is not something that is altered by wealth, class, or gender.
Any black person who's walking down the street of his wealthy (mostly white) community could tell you that.
1
No law can make an integrated society, what this law has done is mostly already accomplished. Freedom to live where you can afford and want to live. My neighborhood has always had some Blacks, but today I don't even notice or care. That is the true measure of the changes that I have seen on race relations.
7
The persistent failure of the Fait Housing Act results from entrenched racist attitudes. Mr Mondale treads lightly and doesn’t lay blame. There will be progress only when we step on some toes. Mr. Mondale is all too polite.
9
Yup, since the "glass ceiling" is shattered, who needs Fair Housing Legislation?
We had the "end of history," the "end of conflict," and now we have, thanks to Trump and Carson, the "end of discrimination."
It's party time! Job is done. Thank you all. Just pull up the moving truck.
3
Mortgage discrimination is alive and well. Thanks Mondale, but where is the outcry and legislation to stop it? Black and Latino wealth, mostly in home equity, declined by two thirds in the last financial crisis, largely due to subprime lending targeted by zip code. Black homeownership has declined and, in many regions, is lower than it was in 1968.
3
I am sure Walter Mondale and his ilk who cut their teeth in the civil rights era of the 60s and 70s did a yeoman service for ending discrimination, but the times have changed and the nation has moved on. The country is no longer black and white. Hispanics are a substantial minority and will replace Blacks as the largest minority in a few years. Asians are also a substantial minority which are growing. The issues such as redlining, mortgage denial or steering certain races away from certain neighborhoods do not exist anymore. If anything hurt the minorities most in recent years, it was indiscriminate lending which led people to buy more house than they could afford, leading to foreclosures and loss of equity. Today, most transactions, including mortgage applications and purchase agreements happen online where race does not even enter into the picture. In fact, what you have today is self-segregation based on economic class and family structure. Yes, there is disparity, but every disparity does not mean discrimination. Government cannot make up for an absentee father no matter how much social service or cash is given to the family. We are where we are because of choice that we or our parents made. Yes, there was discrimination in the past, but 3 generations have passed, what about the choices that were made in those 3 generations? The state owes everyone equality in opportunity, but to get results, effort and sacrifice has to be there.
8
Nope redlining still goes on.
2
In which world are you living where there is no racial steering, redlining, or discrimination in loans? Wells Fargo alone has been sued repeatedly for such actions and for discrimination in hiring and promotion.
Again, studies, some just recently quoted in this newspaper, have shown that current day discrimination against Black people, particularly Black men, is a serious problem.
When whites are more likely to hire a white felon than a Black man without a felony record, when white high school graduates have more income and wealth than Black college graduates, that means there is still racism on going.
White hiring managers often throw out resumes with "Black sounding names" yet you have the gall to claim there's no discrimination. I wish I could downvote your comment for its ridiculousness.
2
We would be living in a far better world if Mondale had defeated Reagan.
11
Ha ha ha! Funniest comment I have read here
2
Dweller no doubt likes actors and the roles they play. Too bad Reagan had such awful script writers.
We know that growing up in an integrated community provides children with a better chance to graduate from high school, attend college, get and keep good jobs, earn a higher income and pass on wealth to subsequent generations.
--------------
Can we talk? The answer to integration is to address the attitudes toward education that predominate in black communities and in the popular black culture.
When the schools go south, people with children move out. Black middle-class people, white people, anyone with younger children in the families in need of quality educations.
It's not about money either, or the quality of the facilities. You could have a beautiful school district, excellent teachers, and plenty of tax money buying the latest thing in education... If the children have been conditioned to think of learning as a white thing though, and they reject the necessary discipline to learn and achieve, then the schools go south. And people move out, into better public school districts or pull their kids out and figure out a way to send them to private schools. The only ones who can afford to stay are the empty nesters who have no more children to educate, the gays and non-parents, and those in the lower grades where so much additional teaching can be done at home.
Look at Chicago's south suburbs, after the city residents are being forced out via regentrification or emptying of the public housing and distribution of housing vouchers. The schools went south; people moved.
9
It does??? For who, and is it because of race or rather some other more relevant criteria. It is way too easy for ignorant people to confuse correlation with causality. I bet income and family are way more an issue than race.
2
If blacks have such little stress on education why did they immediately start building colleges when they were kept out of them? Why the fight for integrated schools in the first place putting their children in harm's way? This read is a total fail and an assumption that white people who are suddenly experts in black culture love to say because they are ignorant. Often people coming from white schools whose emphasis is on how well the football team does not the debate or science team.
2
The "acting white" thing is a myth that has been repeatedly debunked.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/1/5/14175116/acting-white-myth-black...
But because racism is still more acceptable than anti-Semitism or sexism supposedly sober people love to regurgitate ugly shibboleths about Blacks.
1
That Vice President Mondale was not elected president in 1984 was and is, to this day, a great loss for our Country.
11
I was so hopeful as I aged that I would see a more equal, fair and respectful world - including respect for differences. As you clearly remind us Mr. Mondale, the foundation was there and both sides of the aisle were working together to build a better world for our future generations. But somehow, somewhere, we've seriously lost our way.
Housing is such a fundamental element for every human being. It is also the most difficult to need for those will little means to fill. We've gradually moved to a place where we tolerate and allow unconscionable levels of eviction, prejudice and racism to pervade our society. And now thanks to Ben Carson, the most egregious hypocrite of Trump's staff, will race us right to the early 19th century and as a result, create more and larger poverty stricken neighborhoods. Utterly shameful.
3
You have not? You must be young, I have seen massive change. I remember when baseball players had a segregated league and when they arrives had to eat in the parking lot.
5
Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and especially Trump suffer horribly compared to Walter Mondale.
I hope the Blue Wave ushers in a new generation of Mondales. Lord knows we need it.
3
I remember watching the nightly news of Rev. Kings march - my Rabbi was with him. My dad was an equal opportunity hater - EVERYONE WAS OK, until a person gave my dad a reason to dislike him, like cheating, stealing, not showing for work, etc. My dad's business was selling auto parts, new and used.
Employment was offered to anyone if Dad needed another employee: color, language, ex-con, religion etc didn't matter. He was no saint but tried to be fair to everyone. I believe being a Medic with the Marines on Iwo Jima and Nagasaki taught him any lessons he hadn't learned when he enlisted in the Navy at age 17 in '43.
Our President avoided Military service and was a well-known landlord who DISCRIMINATED against Blacks, Browns, certain religions, nationality etc.
Pres. Trump probably never met VP Mondale, and Mr. Trump I doubt, ever paid attention to what was said and what laws were enacted and programs to level the playing field.
The President takes delight in cheating workers & companies out of money. Civil Rights is the concept that no one should cheat, be prejudice, have hate in his/her heart. TRUMP DIDN'T GET THAT ASSIGNMENT.
Trump is the embodiment of why we missed our chance to have true Civil Rights. And worse he ignores the rule of law, our society's and God's, however worshipped and regardless of name.
I feel sorry for the President only because he is causing so much misery and carries it in his own life.
Richard Isacoff, J.D. (former MAARNG)
5
I live in a city which many Americans would consider very liberal. African Americans are free to live anywhere they want. Yet many of them tend to self-segregate...living in predominately black residential areas. But I also notice that other ethnicities Hispanics, Asians, etc. do the same thing. If you look closely you will find self-segregation by religion too. One of my friends is an Orthodox Jew. He lives in a small self-contained Orthodox community. Anyone could live and be welcome where he resides but none choose to. Which is the crux of the "problem"....if there is indeed a problem. Left to our own devices we as Americans tend to self-segregate by race, religion, gender, class, sexual orientation, & a host of other things. And here's the dirty little secret that no one wants to talk about. The Fair Housing Act can't force us to start integrating...not if we freely choose not to...& clearly many of us have chosen to live where we feel comfortable. The only way to change this is “mandated social engineering.” The current method of doing this is trying to disperse poor people to wealthier neighborhoods. Not surprisingly it has been met with fierce opposition. People are starting to ask why should access to opportunity be defined by how many white neighbors you have? Moving around poor people doesn't begin to solve the problems related to disinvestment in communities of color. Forced integration isn't the answer...it goes against our nature...there has to be a better way.
9
We have the better way, it is called freedom. Now poor people will never be able to afford to live in rich neighborhoods, not here or anywhere.
2
I agree, attempts at social engineering cannot and should not overcome natural attempts to self-segregate in some ways. Race is likely not the most natural line along which to self-segregate. Class and income level are more natural and fit better with housing developments. There are wealthier and poorer areas of most cities. There are eminently practical reasons why people in middle class and wealthy areas don't want poor people moving in, bringing with them the cultures they are used to, cultural values that may not fit well in middle class or wealthy areas.
The importance of culture in any given setting can hardly be understated, and this is something neither Mondale nor any other FHA advocate seems to comprehend well. Look at some of the safest, happiest, lowest-crime and highest satisfaction regions in the world _in Nordic countries like Finland, Sweden) and you'll find highly homogeneous settings. People do best when living in communities with people with similar culture and/or values. Forcing very different people into a neighborhood does not have good results.
I would agree that there should be protections against overt discrimination in real estate sales and rentals of whole units, but FHA is overreaching in insisting that those wanting to rent a room in their own home cannot place ads describing the kind of roommate they want, including race and religion. People have to have the right to choose those who live in their own house with them.
4
Nice to see this from VP Mondale! Too bad we weren't smart enough to elect him.
6
Surely we need to continue advancing, or, as the facts show, resume advancing toward that fair future that Dr. King dreamt.
2
Great point but as we are more than 90% of the way there progress is of course much slower as there is little to actually do especially by new laws which we need less of.
1
Yes Senator the Civil Right Act and Voting Rights Act were milestones.
I am not as familiar with the Housing Act but you have to be careful here. It is a delicate balance.
The goal should not be total integration but that everybody has a fair and equal shot at advancement, ie everybody of any race should be treated with respect and equality.
It integration follows great, if not, that's ok, most people tend to want to live with their own race or even ethnic background or religion sometimes.
The extreme liberals of the late 1950s and early 1960s perverted the great work down by progressives from Teddy Roosevelt, through FDR and right up to LBJ by creating the welfare state of millions of minorities on the dole as damaged, we have to care for them forever souls.
I know I saw what happened to NYC in the 1970s.
It almost destroyed the city.
16
Historically neighborhood housing integration is the brief period between the arrival of the first black family and last white family fleeing. And it has little to do with socioeconomics and education aka class and everything to do with color aka race aka caste.
A physically identifiable minority historically defined by humanity denying enslavement followed by being treated separate and unequal has no power to sustain integration against a hostile white majority. Moreover, a majority of those benefiting from and depending upon the welfare state are and have always been white. While the proportion of blacks on welfare is higher there are 5x as many white people.
13
Thank you for your replies Cactus Jerry and Blackmamba.
I tend to agree more with Cactus Jerry but even here it is a delicate balance. A great majority of democrats don't believe in the welfare state either. It is the extreme liberals that ruin the great work done by progressive.
5
White flight had started long before Coleman Young became mayor. And calling Young a socialist just shows that you know nothing about socialism or Young or Detroit.
“We know that growing up in an integrated community provides children with a better chance to graduate from high school, attend college, get and keep good jobs, earn a higher income and pass on wealth to subsequent generations.”
This is typical and dishonest. The kids in my largely segregated, white, wealthy community do very well, with virtually all attending college, etc. What the author is actually claiming without saying so is that black kids do better when shuttled into white communities, but fails to cite any evidence as to whether the original residents are adversely impacted by this importation of poverty and other social problems.
9
Or that it is the integrated neighborhoods that make the difference. It is far more likely that those who move there are different.
1
Mr. Mondale, with all due respect: Wikipedia lists you as having a residence in a certain part of Minneapolis that is literally 99.9% white and affluent. The goal of integration is a good one, but you and other affluent whites who speak to the problems of segregation need to explain why your own neighborhoods are not, after all these years, integrated. Perhaps, after you've acknowledged and explained your own reluctance to live with people of color from across the economic spectrum as your neighbors, you can then more effectively deal with the problem in the rest of the country.
12
Amen!
5
Suggest Walter advocate for public housing in his gated community. What a hypocrite !!!!
1
@mijosc - Since few White Americans can afford to live in those neighborhoods, even fewer Black Americans can afford to. Income, not race.
1
This article clearly outlines the difference between "anti-discrimination" and "integration". The former should be enforced to its fullest extent. When integration is discussed in articles like this, though, the unspoken assumption is that whites are actively excluding blacks from neighborhoods. It does not consider things such as black may actually want to live near other blacks and are not forced to do so. Either we should stop lamenting about segregation or go "all-in". For "all-in", let's reduce housing subsidies for individuals who live in areas where they are of similar race of those around them and give them bonuses for moving to an area of a different race. If we, as a society, believe that integration is an absolute positive, then let's add economic incentives to make this happen. Otherwise, we will be like elementary kids in a lunch room of an integrated school. Kids of similar races will naturally sit with other kids who look like themselves, whether white, black, Hispanic or Asian.
1
@ Jeff - Nice try! How about mortgage redlining limiting the housing options of Blacks? http://www.philly.com/philly/business/real_estate/federal-mortgage-home-...
I would be curious to know who Mr. Mondale has for neighbors. My bet is that they are not of a different socio-economic class from him. Has he advocated for supportive/low income housing to be built in his own neighborhood?
6
Or better yet move into areas populated by poor people of another race that he wants to help.
4
What the author fails to acknowledge is that people have the freedom to live with whomever they choose. Some people will self select to live with others that are similar to themselves whether it is racially, religious, political, sexual orientation, economic, etc. Some people will self select to live with others that are different than themselves. No matter the path, the decision rests with each individual. The government has no role in pre-defining the individual’s choice over where and with whom they will live. Liberty denied by the government to one is liberty denied to all.
7
Thank you Mr. Mondale. You would have made a great president.
3
Wealth inequality and racism go hand in hand.
The war on poorer people continues, with gutting the safety net next in the block. This finds a good portion of its fuel in racial resentment politics.
No money, no options, keeps people in stasis, and the uppityness tamped to a pasty whitewash.
Solution is simple: treat everyone respectfully, and stop the insane consolidation of wealth in the hands of 2 or 3 racist puppeteers.
2
Institutionalized racism endures, and housing and education are glaring examples. Is this injustice subconscious, or a willful process?
2
The Federalist Society is firmly in charge - and the entire Trump administration does their bidding. My only questions are why do they and where do they find these loyalists who blindly dismantle our institutions? Ben Carson was a pediatric neurosurgeon. He devoted his life to caring for them and now he is destroying them...from a nice $31,000 table
There is kompromat on all of them - there must be - or these folks are really that bad and just don’t care.
4
Remember that this law only passed because of King's murder and the ensuing riots which burned parts of many cities.
Riots caused in no small part by the housing crisis in black neighborhoods caused by segregation.
2
AS with all else in this world, the pursuit of the almighty dollar has played a significant role in deterring implementation of the Fair Housing Act. I encourage others to read "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City," by Matthew Desmond.
This book is an eye opener! It illustrates how landlords, realtor associations, the courts and public policy have played a role in keeping people segregated and poor. There is no chance for them to rise or escape when oppressing them is so profitable.
6
In Chicago, the Fair Housing Act and Section 8 had disastrous unintended consequences surely not contemplated by Mr. Mondale and his colleagues, our infamous crime epidemic first and foremost. The legislation was passed in haste and laid waste to many fine communities of all demographics and hues. Section 8 continues to compound the problem. Recipients are steered to the lowest bidding landlords, who are unwilling or unable to maintain their properties, and the cycle of despair spirals ever downward.
Many of the civil rights reforms have achieved their goals. Professions have been diversified. Cosmopolitan youth are "woke".
Science has debunked the social construct of race.
Racially diverse couples are creating a biological melting pot.
Meanwhile, solutions to the economic, political, and sociological challenges posed by the racial construct remain elusive. Accelerating progress requires persistence, intellectual rigor, and evidence-based remedies.
I believe the most promising route is empowering all Americans to declare economic independence. Myriad organizations are working hard to that end, including the Small Business Administration. Perhaps funds currently allocated elsewhere would be better spent there.
In the final analysis, the real estate that matters most is between our ears.
5
Excellent Post. Progressive but not extreme liberal or reactionary.
3
I agree with those who are pleased to hear from Walter Mondale in this important column. Today, with economic disparity more the case, it is as necessary as ever to have housing for those who for many reasons cannot afford to live in housing for those who have made it, economically. There is good and well-tended public housing, and the discussion Mondale tried to engender is not about all the bad public housing or the government taking over, but about the notion of a nation that tries to care for all. In many sovereign nations throughout the world, this is possible, as it has been here in certain places. Now we have a so-called housing secretary, a former neurosurgeon, who doesn't see it that way. What a president and what a cabinet! Thanks for your exemplary service, Mr. Mondale.
4
I have never lived near "The Projects", but once, while driving on the outskirts of Baltimore, a friend of mine pointed them out. I couldn't help being reminded of government housing in the Soviet Union. Funny how socialism--not matter where it exists, always ends up looking the same.
It indeed seems like the most stark examples of segregation in the country exist in government-owned housing. That's right--the same government that claims to want to end segregation, is the main culprit.
But I ask you...given that government housing is often run-down, drug-infested, mostly minority occupied and so violent that even the police fear to patrol there--who in their right mind would want to reside in these places? If my family were lower class and white--and if I had any other options, that last place I'd want to live is in "The Projects". How could I feel safe--if even the police fear to tread there?
Public housing--just another failed liberal experiment--another in a long line of "feel good" initiatives that serve to trap people through dependency--and function as a disincentive to strive for something better.
For those paying attention, I ask--why should we be surprised? This is just another government program that sounded compassionate at the time--but has actually made things worse--and has created more of what the program was mean to correct--another anti-poverty program leading to more poverty.
8
You bring up some important issues, although I don't think the standard conservative talking points you hit here totally align with the facts. The bigger question, however, is if nothing we have tried has worked, what would work? I would argue that your implied answer, that segregation and all the problems associated with it would go away by themselves if we just did nothing and ignored them, has no basis in fact or history.
3
Excellent points!
1
Indeed, the "socialist" housing provided by the government is segregated and run down. Perhaps that is because of myopic conservatives such as yourself. When built, these were to be an improvement over the tar paper shacks and slums their inhabitants lived in previously. Once built, over time, right wing members of the mostly Republican party did everything they could to end funding for programs that would have helped the people living there; and thus have led to their stagnation, devolvement and transformation into concrete block "tar paper shacks"
2
Thank you, Mr. Vice-President, for writing a piece about a moment of high integrity as we endure these troubled times.
6
So good to hear from Walter Mondale whose voice we should hear more often in our national debates on the important issues.
5
And here is yesterday's man peddling yesterday's law. Republicans understand where power is in this country, and that's why they're in charge at the state level. When Democrats start being a party of states rather than a party of DC, they too might be able to take charge.
2
Intermarriage will be the eventual solution to the tribalism of race and ethnicity. Anytime I see families with mixed race kids, I see the gradual breakdown of segregation. I am all for ethnic pride, but ethnic purity...not so much.
29
You would be incorrect on this. No matter the level of intermarriage, the individual will still be considered black. Look at the last president who was 50% white... we was the first black president.
2
To each their own. I don't tell you who to date/marry, and you don't dictate to me. We are still supposed to have freedom of association in this country, I believe.
Of course Ben Carson, a Republican, refers to his own agency's integration rules as "mandated social engineering." That's what Republicans call any effort by the federal government to level the playing field.
Strictly speaking, I suppose he is correct. But it sometimes takes mandated social engineering to correct history's previous wrongs. In this case, those wrongs include 150 years of Jim Crow, redlining, and discrimination against blacks by banks in issuing loans. Those vile practices were also "social engineering", but Carson has nothing to say about them.
To have a Republican running HUD is like having Count Dracula run the neighborhood blood bank.
13
Is Ben Carson Black in your opinion?
As we know, economic inequality is becoming more prevalent in or country, exacerbating this problem of segregation and unfair housing that Mr.Mondale’s bill tried to help. Those families who can afford to, will choose to live in a district that has a “good” school (more parental support, fundraisers, volunteers etc.), leaving those who can’t afford to, in the less affluent school districts, thereby perpetuating the problem. Until we address the economic inequality in our society we will not be able to address Fair Housing.
13
The Fair Housing Act is an incredible tool to help end unfair housing practices. Unfortunately, legal action is often one of the only ways to actually implement it. Thompson v. HUD, litigated by the ACLU and the Legal Defense and Educational Fund of the NAACP, has been having some real success in creating low income housing in so-called areas of opportunity, among other measures, in Baltimore and its suburbs, one of the most segregated regions in the country. This has happened only after years of litigation, though, and relatively sympathetic presidential administrations. It is hard to believe that under the current one, fair housing will get the attention it deserves.
8
Economics more than race is the dividing line in housing, schools, churches, social clubs. Even those who are technically "middle class" cannot live in many "gated" communities because of the cost, or even in communities where the school taxes are very high.
Should there be a government housing subsidy depending on income to offset the difference?
3
To answer your literal question: yes. In fact, subsidies already exist in the form of a progressive income tax and section 8 housing vouchers, among others. Universal basic income would be another step in that direction.
Your implied question seems to be facetious: should the government make it possible for everyone to live as the wealthy do, in gated communities? Obviously not. That is neither feasible nor desirable.
I have a question for you: should gated communities be allowed to segregate themselves, just because they can? They drain support from public institutions for services they provide privately, be it security or a swimming pool. Maybe every housing community that employs private security should be required to have 10% of its stock be affordable housing, or even to rent that 10% only to Section 8 tenants.
If the answer is No, is there any higher reason than that people should be allowed to live as their money allows them to? Is the government allowed no social purpose?
4
When you have private land and private roads, the government does not have any say in the matter. A gated community is simply a NYC co-op spread over a wider area. How many NYC co-ops think they should provide 10% of units as affordable housing?
6
Perhaps we should adopt the Chinese model whereby people have to live where the government tells them to. That way we could ensure that all ZIP codes are perfectly inbtegrated according to a proprietary .gov algo. That might mean that if you live in, say Maine, to would be forcibly relocated to say the Englewood neighborhood in Chicago and trade places with a family residing there. But surely no sacrifice is too great to achieve the noble goals of the state. Whenever I watch Doctor Zhivago I am inspired to share my humble abode wit an exponentially increasing number of my less fortunate comrades.
Mr. Carson (along with Justice Thomas) seems to be an African-American who worked hard and made it against considerable odds, but for some reason resents anything which looks like offering others a helping hand. The need for the gov't to help underscores the biases and odds which still exist. Men like Carson & Thomas could see such evidence as highlighting their own great feats. Instead, they seem to see these gov't efforts as somehow denigrating them. They seem to think, 'I made it (mostly) without whitey's help, so all others should, too.' In the process, they hurt a lot of people.
50
Kudos for stipulating these two gentleman are in fact African-American, a point of contention in some circles.
1
When a helping hand lasts generations, I can understand why anyone gets upset. Imaging 3 generations living off the taxpayers. Enough is enough!
Thomas may have had a lot of private support among the elite AngloSaxon community in his childhood county. The poor white and black grapevine in that community holds that his father or grandfather was an "outside child" of a powerful Southern White Knight Dragon Master family, and it was that gentleman who gave his black grandson an Aegus of AngloSaxon privilege. Because of this Aegus, Thomas' family had the social privilege of treating the poor white and black people in the area with contempt and verbal tongue-lashings.
It would be interesting to see the results of Mister Thomas' DNA compared with the DNA of the older Country-Club men in his hometown. I personally believe we would find his all-Anglo siblings.
America's current president and his father spent decades defying the spirit and the letter of this law.
Trump's appointment of Ben Carson as Housing Secretary is a blatant attempt to undo years of progress in fair housing.
33
I think Fritz hit the nail on the head here.
It is unavoidably disturbing to contemplate that "things have gotten worse in Minnesota".
20
Watching the spread of homes across the San Fernando Valley, changing the farm of Amos McCoy into a shopping mall, the only differences you could see from the hills was the roof color. A thousand red roof homes to the north, a thousand black roof to the south. But the color of those moving in was white. In my town we had a slightly diverse school system from Jr. High up. Race and income divides insulate our kids from each other promoting internal divisions. We must work for diversity of race, ethnic background, national origin, and income disparity in our communities to enrich our kids and everyone's future.
20
The consequence of residential segregation is that the “other” is on the other side of the barrier—physical, economic, and cultural. Living next door or down the street from someone who is different offers everyone a chance to get to know each other. Physical separation encourages us to think of people who are different not as individuals but as an unknown group. When we don’t know someone or a group of people well, we fill in the blanks with assumptions and fears.
One of the crimes of residential segregation is that we don’t get to know the friends we might have.
36
Gated communities or just communities without affordable housing have done more damage to racial integration and even the general social fabric of America than anything else, and the Fair Housing Act is inadequate in itself to integrate American society.
We have come to an extremely dangerous level of class resentment that is the result of declining wages for blue collar workers and divide and conquer strategies of right wing political operatives.
If Democrats had been able to sustain the strength of the union movement in this country, the huge wage gap between low skill workers and highly trained professionals could have been prevented. My father was a doctor, but I went to public schools filled with the children of carpenters, plumbers and printers along side the children of engineers, doctors and lawyers.
However, after the forced integration of the south, Republicans have successfully inserted a wedge between black and white blue collar workers, neutralizing their political power with too many working class whites identifying the Democratic party as the servers of "undeserving" minorities at their expense.
This exodus of white working class voters to the GOP has allowed the pilfering of unions and reduced the power of organization that assured these workers living wages close enough to what professionals were making to keep them in the same neighborhoods.
43
Fair Housing and desegregated schools are inexplicably linked. In housing, as in schools, it is privilege and entitlement that determines value. The more you are asked to pay the more you expect the kind of neighborhood (zoning laws) and schools (school boundaries) to which you are entitled.
In a city of skyscraper dwellings rather than having isolated designated buildings and neighborhoods for "public
housing" we should require affordable housing (and appropriate public airspace) in each high-rise building. The only currency allowed for Developer "air rights" should be in units of affordable housing.
17
The incredible irony here of writing this comment from PALO ALTO is lost on you. How white is Palo Alto? How many gated communities? What is the median cost of a home in Palo Alto -- about $2 million or so? Do you think ANY average Americans, whether black OR white, can afford to live anywhere NEAR Palo Alto?
2
If "social engineering" is the use of power to provide incentives and disincentives to push people toward a particular goal, then the government is not the only entity that does so. Realtor and mortgage policies that "encourage" people to separate by race are also "social engineering," just not out in the open as the government is expected to operate. When it is more difficult for a black person to get a mortgage than for a white person at the same income level, or when it is easier for a white person to get a mortgage in an all-white neighborhood than in an integrated one, then people aren't "self-selecting" where to live. Most important, as others have mentioned, is the quality of the schools. If every district had excellent schools, parents would have more incentive to ignore hidden and biased "social engineering" and far more choices of good places to live!
64
"Same income level" level does not imply same credit score, work history or ability to pay a mortgage.
Be more lenient in lending? Then you'll be posting to this board about how folks were saddled with payments the mortgage lenderknew they couldn't pay.
3
"same income level" DOES imply at least the ability to pay a mortgage at the same level whether black or white or brown, etc. Credit scores and work history may not be the same, but one needs to look deeper than just the surface to see why it may differ. Leniency is not the answer FAIRNESS is.
The research I am referring to talks about the same ability to repay a mortgage. It could be that just as black citizens in the past had to pass special tests to register to vote, tests that their white neighbors couldn't pass, it is possible the black homebuyers are subjected to requirements that their white counterparts couldn't meet, either.
Along time ago in a galaxy far away, I went to a naturally integrated high school (which no longer exists--the building has been re-purposed) in the neighborhood located next to South Jamaica (Trump grew up in Jamaica Estates, the ritzy part of town north of us). Mitchell-Lama was one of the reasons that there was housing equality and both my honors and regular classes were rainbows.
I am so glad that I had that opportunity. If my family wanted everyone in my school to be like me, they would have sent me to a yeshiva and it would have been my loss.
Thank you Senator Mondale for the Fair Housing Act. Only from not excluding and isolating people from those who are not exactly like them can we have true societal growth.
66
Thank you, Senator Mondale.
Your opinion is much appreciated. I wish others would recall the reasons and bipartisan accomplishments, agreements Congress once agreed upon and passed. Please, encourage the opposition, the GOParty past to rebuild the party to where it once was. Hands down it was FAR more moderate than it is today. Currently the GOP is so far right and off the charts. The farthest right one can get before falling off the face of the flat earth. It would be laughable if it weren't so horribly true.
I suspect the GOP will have a two or three difficult decades ahead of them to rebuild back America's trust they once had, in trusting that both parties indeed have 'We the People' at heart.
The Fair Housing Act is extremely important and benefits ALL Americans and ALL of her residents. Please call for your fellow DEMS to support it and increase the protection of many.
The FHA made America unique, until 11/9/16. Since then people can now discriminate because of their 'firmly held' religious beliefs, until the SCOTUS decides otherwise.
Again Senator Mondale, thank you!
28
I work in a highly diverse, minority-white environment. It's how you come to the place where you see the person and not the color.
The cite Mr. Mondale makes in regards to children having better outcomes in integrated neighborhoods is actually not about racial integration, but about economic integration. For how many millions of dollars, they figured out a poor kid does better if placed in a well-off area - like you needed a study to figure that out? And of course, what is the likelihood of poor people's housing in the tony enclaves of the east and west coast? Not likely at all.
16
How sad it has been for a long time - decades - that Walter F. Mondale never took the presidential oath of office. How different the country we love and honor would have been had Sen./VP Mondale won. And HHH as well. He would have be unschackled from LJB (an excellent domestic policy/programs president, btw), and would have, if elected, returned to his rightful being: a classic people's liberal.
American voters learn slowly, some never at all.
Perhaps through history put forward by cable and over the air nets we can begin educating voters about international, national, state, and local issues so that their vote can be cast with a greater knowledge base than most voters possess today.
It is just a hope. We need broadcasters, colleges, PR and outreach firms, schools, and many more institutions to make full, proper and unbiased voter education work.
14
Mr. Carson, nobody likes the idea of mandated social engineering. It's shameful that people don't treat each other equally without it. But it was landlords like the Trumps refusing to rent apartments to black people in the early 70s that made this mandate a necessity. Today, decades later, we've come full circle: now it's Trump's HUD cabinet secretary deleting 'inclusive' and free from discrimination' from the department mission statement that proves it's still necessary for a civilized society.
74
By the content of his character, Trump is such a disgrace, the oval office has ever seen! He is an embarrassment to our nation! However, I lived in The Trump Organization, Beach Haven Apartments in Brooklyn in the 1970's. There were Black families in the development, and one, happily resided on my floor!
1
Senator, I voted for you and listened to your honesty and was impressed by your grasp of good government. I so wish you had won. Thank you for writing the article and calling attention to the details behind getting The Fair Housing bill passed. People need to be reminded that statesmen like yourself tried very hard to make America a better country.
66
I echo the praise and thanks offered to Mr. Mondale. The first vote I ever cast in a presidential election was for him.
28
It should be noted by readers as well as by Mr. Mondale, that explicit attempts have been made for the entire fifty years since The Fair Housing Act was passed, and certainly long before that, to limit the working class and the impoverished from access to subsidized housing in middle class and wealthier communities. While the motivations for doing this certainly included racism and ethnic prejudice, they also included other factors. And those other factors certainly included a conviction that simply by transplanting those who had not prepared themselves to adopt and practice the values and folkways of the communities in which they sought to embed themselves, they would largely fail to improve their lives yet would destabilize whole communities that had been stable and coherent before the attempts.
Some believe that the potential gain for some is worth the cost in destabilization to others – that the potential for desegregation is more valuable than the notion of “community” that some believe has little value; and some don’t.
We have serious challenges with racism, ethnic prejudice and other “isms” that are destructive of national unity and inclusiveness. We also have this element that insists on forcing transformational solutions through a government that lacks the practical power to impose its views at any cost on those who must bear the cost. And so we have a largely toothless Fair Housing Act: because the PEOPLE have largely rejected it.
21
Decent people want our society to be fully inclusive, and not merely of racial and ethnic minorities. However, the rational among those decent people don’t accept that a manageable or effective way of doing that is forcing people together where economic class differences can be so profound. The real solution must be to lessen the intensity of those class differences so that inclusion is facilitated organically.
Government can be used productively to channel resources to economically deprived communities that are disproportionately black and Hispanic, dramatically improving the quality and effectiveness of public education, as well as career guidance. The accountants and programmers and office managers and executives who emerge from ghettos as a consequence will develop values and folkways that are FAR more comfortable to middle class and wealthier communities, and this will facilitate a desegregation where racial and ethnic animosity ISN’T the driving force for segregation.
Adopting this focus could take fifty years or more to put a dent in segregation. However, we have here a former U.S. senator and vice-president complaining that for the past fifty years The Fair Housing Act has been toothless and largely ineffective, and his only solution is to impose government more directly and forcefully on a population that has resisted that Act from its passage. Consider going to real causes and solutions more creatively, and you might secure real movement forward.
13
Our Military has largely adopted integration successfully. There is equal pay for equal work and women and ethnic minorities can be found at the top levels of authority. I was in charge of Air Force ROTC at a very large state university and we welcomed cadets regardless of sex or ethnic background. I invited members of the Tuskegee Airmen to address our cadets on the barriers they faced and overcame. I studied aerodynamics at MIT taught by Sheila Widnall who became the first female Secretary of the Air Force during the Clinton administration. I live in an integrated reasonably affluent neighborhood in a Seattle suburb. I experienced the other side of the coin while stationed as a young man in the segregated and very backward South, and hated it as conducted by faux Christianists of the George Wallace ilk.
Integration can be successful, by facing up to bigotry, which unfortunately appear to be Trump’s most loyal base.
90
In many ways, Richard, your analysis seems to me essentially correct. But when you say "Government can be used productively to channel resources to economically deprived communities that are disproportionately black and Hispanic, dramatically improving the quality and effectiveness of public education," you are speaking like a moderate and generous person.
Would that the Republican party as it now seems to be represented in Congress recognized that what you propose would not be "mandated social engineering." But even that mild amount of channeling of resources to economically deprived communities is assaulted by Republicans as "socialism" (by which they mean "communism," having no idea of what socialism means).
It is this kind of resistance to the government's ability to redistribute wealth, which arises from many of those "middle-class and wealthier communities," that has caused the resistance Mondale writes about.
It's too bad that "conservative" has come to mean, not just "greedy" but "stingy."
12
"Fifty years ago on April 11, Congress enacted the Fair Housing Act, the last of the three great civil rights laws of the 1960s. Along with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act, it was an attempt by Congress to translate the movement led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others into enduring statute."
It is no coincidence that all three civil rights laws were signed by LBJ.
34
Dear Mr. Mondale, thank you for reflecting back on an era where public service was valued by both parties, and it was possible for a fair- and open-minded individual to vote for a candidate on the basis of policy positions. How I miss those days, and statesmen like you.
I would like to honor you and your colleagues for all that you achieved in your turn at power. I believe you knew back then that the steps you took to advance our society were tentative, and would require adjustments in the future, and you trusted that there would be leaders after your turn to make those adjustments with the same spirit of statesmanship, public service, and non-partisanship.
I hope you live to see a return to those days. You are a hero to me and many from my generation.
203
We don't often get the opportunity to thank those who contributed greatly to the crawl toward justice and equality. It is agonizingly slow and often discouraging. But it will continue. Thank you, Walter Mondale, for what you have done for this country.
176
What visionaries were Mr. Mondale and Mr. Brooke, the co-authors of the Fair Housing Act. Mondale - a Democrat, and Brooke - a Republican - worked together to fashion a far-reaching law that will have impact for decades to come. Would that today's elected officials would work in a bipartisan fashion to promote fairness and justice. Some of HUD's best Secretaries were Republicans - George Romney and Jack Kemp come to mind. These were leaders who not only cared about the people they were called to serve but had the intestinal fortitude to do what was right. They stood up for justice in the face of massive injustices and we remember them well for it.
118
Agreed truly principled leaders of that ilk are so needed.
17
America would be much better off with socioeconomically balanced communities than with our current segregated silos featuring poverty-stricken, crime-ridden, inner city minority ghettos with lousy mass transit devoid of economic opportunity, but the Whites R Us suburban nut is a tough American nut to crack.
Things have improved in the last 50 years, but not much.
Jim Crow laws - which we thought were relics of the past - have made a strong comeback in Republistan.
There are an estimated 2 million cases of housing discrimination each year according to HUD.
The National Fair Housing Alliance, the largest fair housing non-profit in the country, estimates that number to be closer to 4 million per year, excluding instances of discrimination due to disability or familial status.
The actual number of Fair Housing Act violations is likely much higher than 4 million annually.
Between the years of 1989 and 1992, just 17 of these went to court nationwide as blatant housing racism reigns supreme.
Redlining is still a major problem despite the legislation passed making it illegal.
Studies have shown that minorities who apply for mortgages are rejected 3 times as much as Caucasians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1968
America can do a lot better, but we know for certain that the current Make America White Again administration doesn't give a damn about civil rights for non-whites, so we'll have to wait for an adult Administration before progress arrives.
98
Asians are a minority, but they probably are turned down for mortgages at a much lower rate than non Asians. And if the younger generation is so wonderful, why do they commit crimes at a higher rate than older people? Wasn't the Parkland shooter a young person?
And surely Socrates, you live in an integrated community, that is socioeconomically well balanced!
2
Right on!
Because there are so few public investigators and private testers, most victims of housing discrimination are entirely unaware of what has happened to them.
9
I am of the generation that remembers passage of those great pieces of legislation. It pains me to see our country forget or try to undo the progress that was possible. Of course, as Sen. Mondale points out, nobody expected instant national housing pattern transformation, but the very idea of Inch by inch forward movement seems to have been abandoned, in housing and in voting rights, too.
I hope the young generation whose good hearts and common sense we recently saw about guns in their schools and towns will rediscover those laws -- civil rights, housing, voting rights, and environmental laws too from that era. May their lives improve and may they demonstrate the durability of our democracy despite today's ill-informed leaders who ignore the rule of law and threaten us all. America's future is theirs to save, and I pray they are willing and able to do so.
62
Implementation of Fair Housing laws and for that matter, fair lending rules are important, but where is the enforcement and compliance arm? Without oversight abuses will continue.
33
Racism simply won't go away because you can't legislate people's hearts.
Laws can only do so much.
21
It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless.
While legislation may not change the hearts of men, it does change the habits of men when it's vigorously enforced; and, when you change the habits of people, pretty soon, attitudes begin to be changed, and people begin to see that they can do things that fears caused them to feel that they could never do.
https://youtu.be/cYK9xGALPrU?t=28m36s
51
On the other hand, "accepted" world-wide prohibitions against murder have worked so well over the last 5000 years, right?
What is in people’s hearts can only change voluntarily by exposure and contact with other people.
4
Ben Carson is a big disappointment. Given the chance of a lifetime to move civil rights forward and he plays the fool, completely misguided.
79
Experience as the fool makes playing it easy.
Sad as you say. Even minorities have a percentage of individuals who are corrupt and will advance themselves and be damned to those not in a position to take advantage of others.
3
Neurosurgeon religious extremist Ben Carson heading up HUD was malignly meant to fail aided and abetted by his black faced minstrelsy. Carson is not playing the fool. That is no act.
5