This is some amazing logic here. For starters discrimination went far beyond simple redlining.
When the suburban boom started black people were effectively barred or shut out of many of them. Yet somehow you’ve determined they didn’t want to live there even if they could.
And today well over half of black people live in the suburbs or rural areas yet you’ve decided they still don’t want to?
Fine. Here's the demolition of that dreck video:
Conner starts out with what is supposed to be a humorous anecdote. Instead, it is simply an argument from anecdote and a logical fallacy.
Then at 0:32, he makes a sweeping generalization "It was decades of racist federal policy..." That isn't true, and he offers no supporting evidence for his position. From there, he trots out his 'Redlining game' to show the history of redlining. The only problem is he narrowly defines the problem as one of solely race.
Redlining was NOT primarily racist--yes, there was a streak of racism involved in it--but it was as much about property values, crime, urban decay, and associated issues. That is, older neighborhoods with homes now in decline were often ones that minorities moved into because that was what they could afford. With the homes in poor condition, higher crime, and other negative issues--other than race--loan companies were reluctant to invest in these areas. That is, they 'redlined' them. Auto and home insurance companies do the same thing, more or less, today. They jack up rates in such areas because they cannot otherwise make a profit, but they are forced to sell policies to people living there.
Then he uses hyperbole at 1:26 "No loans were available..." Untrue. Loans were available but often the customer was turned down because of poor credit, lack of collateral (eg., the home was worth less or close to the value of the loan making it risky). He follows this with a lie "(Redlining) was done in areas where African Americans and other minorities lived..." (1:46) Whites, usually poorer ones, still lived in these areas too, often making up a significant portion of the population. They were not more able to get loans and such than their minority neighbors for the reasons I outlined.
The truth is that older neighborhoods closer to the city center had become rundown with declining property values. They tended to have more crime, and were simply not loan worthy regardless of the person asking for one's race. It's like taking out a loan on an older, used, car when you have poor credit.
Next, the trots out Levittown Long Island NY as a cherry-picked example of racism. This is from the late 1940's (just post WW 2). He uses an historical fallacy in a sweeping generalization and implies that this was common practice everywhere in the US when it was not. Worse, he makes a very tenuous implication that it is still going on.
At 2:17 he makes a false statement. That is, he lies. The federal government did not specifically tell or order developers to discriminate in the post war era. Conner makes no specific reference to any law or legislation about this. By the 70's this whole line of bullshit starts to fall apart.
In fact, what he argues occurred could be equally applied to Pullman and other Company towns from the late 19th Century forward across the US. These often had completely White populations.
With these, those that could manage their finances and get ahead with savings and such were able to get loans and eventually move out of the company town into the "free" economy. Those that couldn't were often stuck in the company town, often owing the company large sums of money borrowed forward against their future pay. The result is the same, only without race.
Egregiously, at 4:20 he trots out Nikole Hanna-Jones of the NY Times. She is best known for her thoroughly debunked and discredited
1619 Project. Given her demonstrated bias and poor record of research honesty, she hardly makes a credible source.
The video is tripe and nothing more.
Oh Matty, Matty, Matty .... so triggered by a simple video that tells a few truisms about America, he just sputters and fumes like a fool.
www.forbes.com
catalyst-journal.com
