“When I was young, my family of six lived in a 2-bedroom apartment. My parents had one room, my widowed grandmother the other, and we three kids slept in sleeping bags in the living room.”
Similarly, we had 5 of us in a 2 bedroom rowhouse (think Archie Bunker’s neighborhood and now go one step lower). My great grandfather had one bedroom, my grandmother, mother and I shared the other, and my grandfather slept on the living room sofa. Why there? So he wouldn’t disturb the household when he left at 4 am for his steelworker job, the first of his 2 jobs.
My eventual (step) dad who wasn’t yet in the picture at the point dropped out of high school, enlisted in the military, and earned his GED while serving in Vietnam. I was the first in my family to graduate from college, though my mom went back to college herself when I was in college.
And ucb, my family also went from lowest quintile to highest in a generation. Some luck, some innate skill and a lot of hard work.
For many families property ownership produced the income that sent the kids to college and got them into high paying professions. What other ways than buying property do people begin to create wealth? Maybe owning a business?
While I agree with all you are writing about passing on values, the values we have are a lot easier to have when we come from privilege. I read that in Coates as well. He is persuasive to me.
Have you read his works? My analysis is probably overly simplistic if not just incorrect. That’s why I usually do my best to post links.
“However, the worst impact of slavery and discrimination isn’t that African-Americans aren’t inheriting nice houses. With apologies to Mr Coates, that diagnosis is just economically ignorant. It’s that they were denied education, training in skilled trades and professions, and a whole host of other opportunities. This made it extremely hard for young people to see any payoff from productively developing their own talents or to have positive role models and mentors whose paths they could follow.”
In which case the “problem” of a Yale hall (seen by a few hundred students) being poorly named pales in comparison. Even if you rename it the Racism Sucks Hall, you’re not addressing the real problems. It’s just window dressing. It doesn’t rectify poor schools, lack of job opportunities, etc. A bunch of black Yale students might feel better - but those kids are now already on third base if they are at Yale.
“For many families property ownership produced the income that sent the kids to college and got them into high paying professions. What other ways than buying property do people begin to create wealth? Maybe owning a business?”
The working class (white) people of my youth may have eventually paid off and owned their row houses (which today might go for a whopping $40,000) but that isn’t what enabled their kids to go to college - because their kids didn’t go to college. They started businesses, particularly retail or wholesale manufacturing, and grew from there. There’s a reason for the stereotype of Jews in retail - because it was a way of earning money that didn’t require a degree.
I was reading a recent article on gentrification and it’s interesting, because the (let’s say) black family who owns a home in a neighborhood that becomes “hot” and sells it to the condo developer who builds lofts and ultimately brings in coffee shops and artisanal cheese shops is considered to have sold out.
Michelle Obama grew up sharing a one (maybe two) bedroom apartment with her grandparents. I think her family actually owned the entire house, but rented out the other apartment to make money. Her father was employed, was very active in politics, but saved money by living lean.
I would never have guessed in a million years that you were Jewish, dstark. For whatever’s that worth. Which is nothing.
No one is disagreeing that blacks haven’t suffered (and still continue to suffer) terrible racism in this country, so I don’t know why this straw man is being built. What is being debated is, in the scale of things to address, how big / important is the potential renaming of Calhoun (or similar). It wouldn’t have helped Philando Castile in MN. It wouldn’t help the kids on the south side of Chicago who have suboptimal schools and have to worry about being shot on their way home each day.
JHS said (and he’s absolutely correct) that my comment about estate taxes is a first-world problem. Absolutely agree. But I’m not so sure that renaming Calhoun isn’t ultimately a first-world problem in the context of addressing systemic racism in the US. I don’t know, but could be open to being convinced.
I actually lived the first half of my life in a place where there were policies in place to ensure and create systemic inequality against people like myself. You know what was the answer? - kids were told to keep their heads down and work extra hard because they would be discriminated against. They were told that when they jump - they must clear the bar with a foot to spare.
Over the years I worked with a number of black IT professionals who spent their whole life in the US and none of them lived in a lead paint infested housing. Most of them were immigrants but some were “locals”. So I guess there are opportunities for black people in the US to have a good life if you work hard. Black Yale students probably know this very well.
I am all for extra help but what should it be? Reparations? Erecting statues, renaming buildings, spending $50mil to hire more specialists in victim studies?
I never meant that students on financial aid had no right to object, just said that students accepting Jefferson scholarships or other awards named after old white guys who may not have the best records judged against today’s standards don’t object to taking the money in those scholarship funds.
Dick Cheney, Kennedys, Gates, and a lot of other people of all kinds of political and business backgrounds have scholarships named for them, and whether the students agree with their politics or how they earned the money to fund those scholarships, the students accept them. The colleges accept buildings and research projects from them, and no one is saying “No thanks, we don’t want your tainted money.” Not from decades ago, but now. Oil money, military research contracts, big evil Wall Street money. In 50 years, will students petition to have those names removed from buildings? Will they be saying “I want to work in this fancy lab, but don’t like the IBM/Microsoft/Dell name on the door”?
@Pizzagirl, YOU may be well informed and a proponent of Affirmative Action (as I am, in fact.) But the vast majority of Americans remain woefully ignorant about the historical and modern reality for black people in this country. The questioning, just a few days ago, of Michelle Obama’s assertion that slaves were used to build the White House is a prime example.
Then the solution isn’t to make Calhoun (who is obscure enough to most people who aren’t either history buffs up on Soith Carolina senators and VPs, or who don’t live on Yale’s campus) “disappear.” The solution is to talk about him MORE, to serve as a reminder that many people who played critical roles in our nation’s history also stood for things we believe today to be unacceptable. (And that serves as a reminder when POTUS candidates talk about minorities in unacceptable ways…)
IOW. We are agreed on the end goal, just not the tactics. I’m actually not saying it would be a bad idea to rename it. But just “disappearing” it doesn’t accomplish the goal either. Our history will always be shaped by imperfect men and women.
“The solution is to talk about him MORE, to serve as a reminder that many people who played critical roles in our nation’s history also stood for things we believe today to be unacceptable.”
@Pizzagirl That I totally agree with… in fact, I believe that Georgetown is also dealing with similar issues, and its decision is to make that part of its history more visible.
I’ve heard the same argument for Columbus Day, and it just doesn’t makes sense when you’re talking about naming things after people. If you name a day or a building after someone, you’re obviously honoring them, not just raising awareness.
I don’t think it’s about erasing history, it’s about trying to determine whether historical figures did enough good given the context of their time - of course, that does not resolve the debate.
"But the vast majority of Americans remain woefully ignorant about the historical and modern reality for black people in this country. "
That’s true, but then here is how I look at it: This is a hall on a campus that 99.9% of people never give one minute’s thought to in their lives. While changing the name may have symbolic meaning on that campus, it does nothing, absolutely nothing (IMO) “on the ground” to improve the lives of black people.
Put another way: Let’s take the average, relatively ignorant person. Which is going to be more compelling to make him stop and think differently about race relations?
A) I just saw a video of a black guy minding his own business, stopped on a routine traffic stop, and oh my goodness he was shot dead for no reason at all. That’s not right.
OR
B) Some smart-aleck college students on some fancy-schmancy campus full of rich snobs have so much time on their hands that they are “offended” by the name on a building of some dead white guy I myself haven’t ever heard of, just because a zillion years ago he owned slaves.
In other words – I think focusing on B can win the battle but lose the war.
