A Black a Block

Note: Repost from the old blog. “A Black a block. Spread em out and civilize em.” This comment was a favorite of Avram Davidson, a famous science fiction writer who was a friend of my family, and a friend of mine. I discuss him in this post. I hate to quote Avram in a racist way, but he did have some racist tendencies, even if he was a progressive person. I’m an integrationist. Large clusters of Blacks are bad for Blacks and bad for everyone else. Blacks function best and others are harmed least when Blacks are spread thinly as a minority through the community. Put them in one place and you get a ghetto. Even when you spread them out, they still cause problems, but not mayhem, which is what you get when they cluster into ghettos. Blacks in ghettos descend to the lowest common denominator and are driven by the culture to bring out the worst of their tendencies. Spread thinly into non-Black areas, they have better examples, fewer ghetto morons to emulate, and seem to do better. I posted this suggestion on a website and received a number of rejoinders. The rejoinders varied: It won’t work. We’re trying it and it isn’t working. Whites shouldn’t have to put up with any Blacks in their areas. The races should be segregated. Or at least Whites should have the right to decide to keep all Blacks out of White neighborhoods. The only solution to Blacks is to send them back to Africa. Blacks are animals and it is therefore impossible to integrate them at all with Whites. Section 8 housing is already trying something like this – to redistribute ghetto Blacks into non-Black and better neighborhoods and it is failing. My response to the rejoinders is that segregation is illegal, and it’s not coming back. White separatism is probably illegal, and it’s not going to happen either. Blacks are never going to be sent back to Africa, and are not going there on their own. The real problem is large concentrations of Blacks in ghettos and even possibly in states. Here in California, we don’t have much of a Black problem. This town I live in is But they really do cause few problems here. They don’t have any numbers at all, and there is no ghetto for them to cluster in to drive them down to the lowest denominator. The Blacks around here live with Hispanics and some Whites and they seem to do better than they would in an all-Black hood. I know a few Blacks around here. They are already sort of ghetto as it is, but I am convinced that living outside of a ghetto is benefiting them. One woman I think of has several daughters. The 14 yr old is an honor student, plays in the band and has tons of White friends. Another daughter is at university and has a White boyfriend. Another daughter upstairs is in some medical assistant program. Other relatives are in the service in Iraq or work as probation officers. The woman herself is a retired schoolteacher. The Black lady next door is a Jehovah’s Witness. I’m convinced that these Blacks would be so screwed if they were in a ghetto. A lot of them are already somewhat ghetto as it is and you know they would go full ghetto in the hood. Even the ones doing well now, I just could not see them doing this well in the hood. Forget it. If the option is to have Blacks packed into ghettos where they reinforce each other down to the lowest common denominator and commit tons of mayhem not just to themselves but to non-Blacks inside and outside the ghetto, or to spread them thinly where they just create problems and not mayhem, I say the latter is better. They’re coming to White areas anyway, there’s no stopping them. I live in a complex that has a lot of Section 8 in it. It’s no different from the rest of this barrio really. The Section 8 people vary a lot. Some of the Section 8 people in there are Whites on disability, and they are the most harmless and civilized folks you will ever meet. I think that the Section 8 problems are grossly exaggerated, though it is true that while many are not doing dramatically better, they are doing somewhat better.

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11 thoughts on “A Black a Block”

    1. In particular, Portland is held up as a paradigm, with its urban growth boundary, extensive transit system, excellent cycling culture, and a pro-density policy.

      I’m not sure what race has to do with any of these above policies. Or IOW, I see no reason why these same policies couldn’t be implemented in more heavily minority cities.
      Only thing I can think of perhaps is that white flight has not happened in Portland because there’s not enough minorities to flee from. As one of the commentors of the article noted, many whites may be opposed to public transit because they perceive it as “our” tax dollars going to support “them”. Probably the same reason whites are not supporting a public health care option. Their false perception that minorities are free-loaders while whites are taxpayers, when in fact EVERYONE will benefit.

  1. Oak Park, IL is the where the “black-a-block” policy of government regulation of real estate agents to prevent white flight was most thoroughly implemented. It’s very illegal, but it seems to have worked pretty well: the murder rate is about 1/25th of what it is in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago right across Austin Boulevard.

  2. Steve – how do you account for the disparity between the US and Bermuda+Barbados that larry mentions?
    A brief look at Wikipedia suggests that while slavery existed in both places, the slaves had more varied employment (shipbuilding, seafaring, raising livestock), rather than beasts of burden as in the US. Slavery also ended sooner than the US. A more skilled set of ex-slaves must have a more productive life than ex-rural slaves. As well as a black-a-block, an immigration programme which brought in skilled caribbeans and west africans would be a benefit. As you know, many affirmative action places go to these folk anyway.

  3. I should add that a black-a-block scheme is unlikely to work, from a statistical point of view. Blacks are 15% of the population, which is not just a drop in the water. Additionally, a main African-American problem is family collapse, which which be accelerated by a black-a-block dispersal.

  4. http://www.city-data.com/
    Has a lot of interesting data. If you scroll down to the interactive map, you can see 48% of U.S. counties are <2% Black.
    The distribution is not Guassian, but slightly bimodal. There are more counties around 70% Black than 50% Black, and a lot that are very Black at all.
    I grew up in a plantation county listed as 10%-20% Black in slavery times, and the election here had to be rigged in favor of the union (as we had the national arsenal) yet know we are listed as 6% Black. The great migration may be the culprit, although there was no sharecropping involved here (more land?)

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