I forget, fp. I saw it, too, but I don't know if he ever made the presentation available anywhere else.

Still not sure what thread that was

This one.

or what the offending post actually said

Read post #1.

or when Delta Socrates pulled out his switchblade

Read post #1.

or who Bialek is

The author of TFA.

or what Bialek's article was about.

RTFA.

Ironically, I read the article when it was first posted, but I hadn't paid much attention to the name of the author. And while IMO the argument to an extent begs the question---which is that whatever the numbers, there has been a clear decline in African American Major Leaguers (though not pre-1947 ineligibles)---I didn't find its agnostic tone paricularly unobjectionable.

But while I apologize for not remembering the other details, I'm still not sure what all this had to do with the unexplained shutting down of a different thread. I feel a bit like Groucho Marx in A Day at the Races, having to buy one of Chico's tip sheets to pick the next race, then having to buy a code book in order to decipher the tip sheet, and then having to buy a special dictionary in order to understand the code book.

All of this could easily have been avoided if Dan had just written in the Palin thread, "I'm now shutting down this thread because [insert miscreant's name] just took its tone one step too far, and enough is enough." What's so hard about that?

The idea that southern cities and towns are not deeply divided along racial lines, though, is insane, and I have no idea what he's talking about.

I'd like to second Dayn Perry and call BS on Beano. I grew up in the north and lived three years in Georgia. I really can't think of a single positive way in which that state has "dealt with race" and they sure as hell aren't integrated.

Several quotes here misstating what I said. I said that the south has more integration than many of the northern cities I cited. I am not saying it lacks segregation, good god no.....but it has less and it more integrated than the north. I can further specificity for clarity, it is major cities and metro areas in the south where you see more whites living with blacks and vice versa.

I want to make clear that I am not stating the south lacks segregation, I never said this. But I do want to point out that the north should not pat itself on the back--almost condescendingly--pretending that they don't have racial problems and I am going to go as far to say that today, 2008, the northern cities I listed (plus Detroit--missed that) have just as bad, or in many cases, a worse segregation problem. Further, the south lived through many more confrontations on race than the north, I find because of this, there is quite a bit of ignorance in the north to black culture and issues that affect black people.

While we all know the south has had many more serious issues with race than the north, today the south has a more advanced understanding of race relations and the north is still stuck in a pretend they (black people) don't exist--and probably never see a black person--mindset. Seriously, you can live in a major northern city--urban area--and not see a black person. This is almost impossible in a southern urban area.

<a href='http://www.allbusiness.com/society-social-assistance-lifestyle/ethics/8926548-1.html"<A-ha!</a< But I haven't read through it. He cites 933 black ballplayers on page 2 out of 5,490. That's 17 percent.

EDIT: I give up, Primer isn't recognizing my >

Going to page 3 of the Armour link I read:

'Black players first accounted for 10% of rosters in 1958, reached 20% in 1965, and 28% in 1986. Recent studies suggest the number is over 30% today (to reiterate, I am including dark-skinned Latinos as well as African American players)'

So Armour's figure does, in fact, find the same peak as Loy. However, we don't know if Armour's method takes us to the low level mentioned in Bialik's article.

Seriously, you can live in a major northern city--urban area--and not see a black person.

Beano, while I don't disagree that the north has nothing to brag about, this is a fairly big stretch, unless you're talking about cities that have few blacks to begin with, which is a wholly separate question.

To take the example I know best (Washington and the metro DC area), in both public life and residential mix there's far more integration than there was 20 or 30 years ago, and infinitely more than there was 50 or 60 years ago, when Washington was an official "southern" (i.e. legally segregated) city. And this is true even though there's been a significant drop in the percentage of African Americans within the DC city limits over the past 25 years.

I'm not saying for a second that Washington is some sort of a racial utopia---hah!---and I can't really compare it to a region that I've haven't lived in since 1970, but I have a hard time believing that the level of residential and social integration in Birmingham or Atlanta or Charlotte matches that of Washington. Of course maybe I just spend to much time in the throughly integrated pool halls to know what's going on in the trenches of the Georgetown cocktail parties.

. Every person's most valuable property is themselves and it's a finite resource. When you take the product of someone's labors and give it to someone else, you're taking their time, so any restriction on this should, as a principle, be as minimal as possible.

This is the perfect argument for universal health care.

You delve into an issue with ramifications you know nothing about and call me Mr. Attitude?

Basically your argument that you can attack Juan Williams is that he was born in Panama and you live there (I guess I assume you were born there; but you haven't said so yet, or I missed it). I don't find that to be a compelling argument at all.

I'm not saying for a second that Washington is some sort of a racial utopia---hah!---and I can't really compare it to a region that I've haven't lived in since 1970, but I have a hard time believing that the level of residential and social integration in Birmingham or Atlanta or Charlotte matches that of Washington.

As I understand the data on integration, cities of the Northeast are very different from cities in the Midwest are very different from cities in the Southeast are very different from cities in the Southwest.

Beano's citing Midwestern cities, which really are insanely segregated, but not Northeastern cities. I'd suggest that dividing the country only into the "south" and "north" obscures the real divisions in the histories of these cities.

Hey Szym,

Can we point to all of this and the fact that it's not rare and say that the experiment of moving the Lounge to the "Forum" has failed? And can we get the Lounge back on the mainland? Moving it made zero dent in the number of, length of, or vitriol of off-topic threads.

Love and smooches,
Jeff

I hadn't been following the Palin thread, but as to thread shutdowns generally: I'm mindful of the difficult task that Dan has to balance the various factors in deciding whether to shut down a thread, and I'm respectful of his decision to do so. Still, I've been frustrated in the past when a thread has simply been closed without warning or explanation; I think the frustration stems from investing significant time and energy into a discussion -- and enjoying a good discussion -- only to see it suddenly cut off.

Sometimes I will later stumble upon a discussion in another thread of people trying to figure out why the thread in question was closed, which usually is followed by an explanation by Dan. Perhaps a better way to do this, as others suggested, is to have a brief explanation in the closing thread of why the thread is being closed. For example, if the issue is that there are too many political threads going on at once, explain that and then provide a link to the one thread where all the discussions are being diverted into.

Just my .02.

I want to make clear that I am not stating the south lacks segregation, I never said this. But I do want to point out that the north should not pat itself on the back--almost condescendingly--pretending that they don't have racial problems and I am going to go as far to say that today, 2008, the northern cities I listed (plus Detroit--missed that) have just as bad, or in many cases, a worse segregation problem.

Massive strawman alert. Either that or you are profoundly ignorant of decades of discussion about issues like redlining and white flight in northern industrial cities.

Further, the south lived through many more confrontations on race than the north, I find because of this, there is quite a bit of ignorance in the north to black culture and issues that affect black people.

Yeah. No one in the north noticed those race riots in the 60s and early 70s in Harlem and Rochester and Philadelphia and Milwaukee and Minneapolis and Baltimore and Chicago and Newark and Detroit and Camden and Buffalo and etc.

You do have to love the claim that they're ignorant of black culture and issues affecting black people, given how many of those cities have subsequently elected black mayors. Just for starters.

Actually, I don't think Armour in his presentation agrees with the point Bialik is making. In fact, Armour supports the contradictory, Loy position. I don't see two researchers challenging Loy at all.

Timmerman appears to be separating black Latinos from African-Americans, whereas Armour appears to be using his idea of whether the player would have been excluded, pre-1947. And I don't see who the second researcher is.

This is actually a highly suspect article.

Has anybody had any luck with the rollover of the 15 pictured players? Nothing happens for me.

Are you really trying to take the issue that's probably the blackest mark on American conservatism and flip it on us? Yeah, sure, Democrats used to own a lot of slaves- back when they were conservatives and the Republican party was made up of radical liberals. What the hell is your point? Between that and the jaw-droppingly false (and transparent) assertion that Red States are more progressive than Blue on race, you're really letting your political biases embarrass you on this.

Wow, just a lot of garbage here.

So I think I'm getting it now, you are hypersensitive to the Red/Blue stereotyping and kind of want to keep--whatever meaning you think that holds--intact? In my experience, the only people that really make a big deal out of RED/BLUE, "red state" "blue state" are liberal democrats. I'm fascinated how liberals seem to need a narrative to tell a story, they crave labels and need to label things.

Are you really trying to take the issue that's probably the blackest mark on American conservatism and flip it on us?

I don't even know where to begin with this one. What are you trying to say? Who is "us"? Are you trying to suggest that I am a supporter of slavery? That you fraught against it? That is utterly preposterous. Are you really trying to pretend that conservative in 1850 is the same thing as conservative in 2008? I suggest you open a book sometime. You have confused your adjectives and political ideologies. There is no institution or organization called "American conservatism". You are a confused lad.

What is especially alarming, is that based upon your flip statement above, it seems you look upon the conservatives of today as the very people that owned slaves and lynched people, you should be embarrassed with your juvenile understanding of history, and ashamed of yourself. You really make me sick.

Classical liberalism is the ideology that has driven Republican ideologies from the beginning. The modern day "conservatives" had not formed until around WWII in response to New Deal socialism. Republicans and many modern conservatives have a history of promoting individual freedom, individual liberties, individual property rights, natural rights, individual freedom from restraint, civil liberty protections, free markets, constitutional limitation of government.

I'm not going to bother going on here. It is clear you have a lot of hate to resolve with yourself.

Yeah. No one in the north noticed those race riots in the 60s and early 70s in Harlem and Rochester and Philadelphia and Milwaukee and Minneapolis and Baltimore and Chicago and Newark and Detroit and Camden and Buffalo and etc.

You do have to love the claim that they're ignorant of black culture and issues affecting black people, given how many of those cities have subsequently elected black mayors. Just for starters.

Wow, you missed the point. Obviously many of these cities elected black mayors, most midwestern-norther cities are the segregated areas for the local area black population.

I should have clarified that the issue of segregation I am referring to is a metro area wide occurrence.

So I think I'm getting it now, you are hypersensitive to the Red/Blue stereotyping and kind of want to keep--whatever meaning you think that holds--intact? In my experience, the only people that really make a big deal out of RED/BLUE, "red state" "blue state" are liberal democrats. I'm fascinated how liberals seem to need a narrative to tell a story, they crave labels and need to label things.

This is almost unbelievably un-self-conscious. You're labeling liberal democrats as "label-assigners".

they crave labels and need to label things

As Spock would have said: fascinating.

Do we have any professional linguists in the crowd? Géza Ottlik, who ruled a narrow but important segment of my ontological world until the day he died, and of whom I doubt any other BTFers have ever even heard, insisted that you couldn't understand a thing until you had a name for it.

I should preface this by saying that I can't figure out what the beef against Juan Williams' choice of identity is. It's his life, and we're all self-inventions to some extent. I'm half "Norwegian," and I doubt if I've given the Norwegian part ten seconds of thought in my life. I can't even stand seafood.

Classical liberalism is the ideology that has driven Republican ideologies from the beginning. The modern day "conservatives" had not formed until around WWII in response to New Deal socialism. Republicans and many modern conservatives have a history of promoting individual freedom, individual liberties, individual property rights, natural rights, individual freedom from restraint, civil liberty protections, free markets, constitutional limitation of government.

I see what you're getting at, but it's not quite as neat as that. The 1930's were full of antecedents of modern conservatism, especially when you get out of the realm of theory and into day-to-day rhetoric and practice. The tone of the anti-FDR rhetoric during the mid-decade was strikingly similar to that directed against Obama today and the Clintons in the 90's. You tell me whether or not the them of this then-famous Republican ditty from the 1936 campaign wouldn't resonate among Republicans and libertarians today, even on some of these BTF threads:

When the organizers needed dough,
I closed up plants for the C.I.O.
I ruined jobs and I ruined health
And I put the screws to the rich men’s wealth.
And some who couldn’t stand the gaff
Would call on me, and how I’d laugh.
When they got strong on certain things
I’d pack and head for Warm Springs.
I ruined their country, their homes, and then
I placed the blame on The Nine Old Men**.

But the deeper problem is that your take on modern day conservatism is extremely selective. Not that liberals aren't often equally selective in their own memories, but take a look of the Godfather of modern conservatism, William F. Buckley, Jr.

While there were plenty of things to admire about Good Old Bill, the fact is that well into his prime of life, he defended:

segregation laws;

Orval Faubus, Ross Barnett, and George Wallace;

South Africa;

Joe McCarthy (even wrote a whole book on that subject);

state bans on contraceptive devices;

an aggressively expansive role for the U.S. military in the third world;....

I'll leave it at that. And I'll note that unlike many of his contemporaries, he backed off on lots of his earlier views, and in the googoo cliche, he "grew." But I don't see how you can disassociate either Buckley or his large number of followers from Conservatism as it was practiced for much of the 20th century.

And I don't see how any of the above positions have much to do with things like individual liberty---unless you restrict the concept of individual liberty to white people only. Which in fact, Buckley did, on the many occasions that he spoke on his belief in white superiority, which he used to justify his backing of southern state imposed segregation.

IOW you can't blame this all on the Dixiecrats. They had plenty of allies among northern conservatives.

This doesn't mean that there weren't plenty of hypocrital northern liberals who liked to confine the subject of civil rights to Alabama, and not to their own cities. But this idea that modern (i.e. post-Herbert Hoover) conservatives were ever some sort of reliable bastion of human liberty in practice is a stretch, to say the least.

**FDR's term for the Supreme Court at the time it was overturning many early New Deal laws.

(EDIT: to post 115)
Wow, what a spectacular lack of substance your arguments have. It takes an incredibly pompous pedant to lecture someone on "terminology" when discussing concepts as simple as "liberalism" and "conservatism." Note the lack of capital letters there, and throughout my post. Just to draw that out for you: when a practice in society comes under question to the point where there are two opposing sides to the issue, the group that wants to change or abolish the practice are "radicals" "liberals" or "progressives" and the side that wants to keep or preserve it are "reactionaries" or "conservatives." Doesn't matter what a Liberal or Conservative Party at any point in history might stand for. That has as little bearing on things as your ridiculous attempt to associate slavery with modern Democrats or pat modern Republicans on the back.
Not only that, but your views are so inconsistent from point to point, that I am actually at a loss to respond to all of your idiocy. First you make your Democrat/Republican "point," then, when I challenge you on it, you accuse me of doing something similar with the terms "liberal/conservative," and say I'M confused and should be ashamed of my understanding of history? Are you kidding? I know cognitive dissonance is essential to your political philosophy, but please just go back and read your own words once in awhile.
As far as your Red/Blue armchair psycho-analysis: completely not worth my time. Although how that differs from the rest of our "dialogue" is debatable.

Wow, you missed the point. Obviously many of these cities elected black mayors, most midwestern-norther cities are the segregated areas for the local area black population.

I should have clarified that the issue of segregation I am referring to is a metro area wide occurrence.

I missed no point. You made a broad, pejorative statement about northern "ignorance" of black culture and black issues, suggesting that ignorance was somehow greater than it is in the South. You've offered no evidence for this, of course, just your own condescending stereotypes about Northerners and your invented fantasy about their attitudes on race - a condescending stereotype and invented fantasy that ignores, I'll repeat, decades of discussion in the North about issues like redlining and white flight and bussing.

If you live in any of those metro areas, you've seen African-American populations claim majority and/or significantly plurality voting share in the cities at the heart of the region, and have seen those populations vote blacks into office - not just mayoralties, but congressional seats and even governor's and U.S. Senate offices. You are, as a result, well aware of what "black issues" are in the cities in your metro area, even while there might be huge disagreement between, say, suburban commuters and urban residents about the importance of those issues, or whether they're actually racial issues at all or merely economic ones.

Beano,

Please read post 1, where I make this comment

even though he was born in Colón, here in my country of Panama.

Is that clear to you?

Other than that, the fact that you don't understand (or don't care to understand) doesn't mean there's no issue.

Hey Szym,

Can we point to all of this and the fact that it's not rare and say that the experiment of moving the Lounge to the "Forum" has failed? And can we get the Lounge back on the mainland? Moving it made zero dent in the number of, length of, or vitriol of off-topic threads.

Love and smooches,
Jeff

Yes, yes, but Bernal Diaz.

JC, that's a point in favor of moving the Lounge back.

Sure it is, you're taking away time. Every person's most valuable property is themselves and it's a finite resource. When you take the product of someone's labors and give it to someone else, you're taking their time, so any restriction on this should, as a principle, be as minimal as possible.

I am accounting for time... No man is an island. No (or very little) production or labor is done independently of society. I am not going to go all red on you and state that _100%_ of your labor is owed to the collective, but SOME of it is. Every society of more than 3 persons recognizes this. It's just the % that is in the details.

Or to agree with you; different people have different interpretations of 'as minimal as possible'.

This means that redistributionism is always on the table, because there is nothing natural about any particular distribution of property - every social and economic arrangement is in part a function of the work of power, to enforce the structures of that agreement. There was no social contract that arranged the world as it is, to which to appeal to defend the natural-ness of a particular arrangement of economics and society.

Matt, you may not like me. I know we've had our differences in the past, but I'm curious. Do you think that bureaucrats and elected officials would do a better job of this than private parties? My apologies. You've probably addressed this numerous times, but I decided to turn over a new leaf and read the occasional politically driven thread. If anything, I think that the recent administration may be an argument against more government intervention in the economy.

Honest question: I haven't been to the Lounge in years, but IIRC back then it was little more than a bunch of snarky sound bite comments that didn't seem more than a baby step above text messaging. Is it any different now?

If anything, I think that the recent administration may be an argument against more government intervention in the economy.

You can make a case against government intervention in the economy, but that's not it. That's like saying that since Alfonso Soriano chases outside sliders like a dog chases his tail, we can tell from that, that every other batter is bound to do likewise.

And to that you have to add that for the past 28 years the whole goddam point of the Republican Party is to "prove" that government doesn't work, which makes it even more of a nonapplicable standard of proof to begin with.

Basically, you're arguing that unless I assent to something for which you have no evidence, all of society falls apart. I find that deeply unconvincing. I think that lots of pretty good societies have existed which didn't presume an 18th c. Anglo-American anthropology.

I disagree with your formulation, but accepting it for the sake of argument, I don't think that any society which is not based essentially on a Lockean-type approach to individual liberty can be described as "pretty good."

No, I believe that there is no metaphysical right to property that exists previous to social and economic arrangements. Can you please show me one exists? There was no natural state of nature in which people agreed to social contracts that laid out rights and property. Can you point me to the evidence for it?

If there's no "metaphysical right to property" that exists, what about a "metaphysical right to" liberty? Is the claim that slavery is wrong just a societal construct, in your view? That's what you seem to say here:

If all we have are the empirical, actually-existing social and economic arrangements of the real world, then it is clear that we only have freedom and property based on those arrangements. They are real, contingent, historical, material things, not airy-fairy metaphysical things. And we know these arrangements are historically contingent, because they differ across time and space. So we need to ask which arrangements will be both possible to achieve and most productive of the good, and how we understand the good. This means that redistributionism is always on the table, because there is nothing natural about any particular distribution of property - every social and economic arrangement is in part a function of the work of power, to enforce the structures of that agreement. There was no social contract that arranged the world as it is, to which to appeal to defend the natural-ness of a particular arrangement of economics and society.

Slavery is always on the table, because there is nothing natural about the notion that people can't be chattel? It's just contingent on the particular historical development of our culture? Slavery's only bad because the abolitionists won?

Do we have any professional linguists in the crowd? Géza Ottlik, who ruled a narrow but important segment of my ontological world until the day he died, and of whom I doubt any other BTFers have ever even heard,...

Amateur linguist, professional bridge player for a few years, which is where I remember Geza from. He was a terrific writer on bridge, though he took a back seat in that to his famous (in bridge circles, anyway) co-author, Hugh Kelsey. Don't know why that was, exactly.

...insisted that you couldn't understand a thing until you had a name for it.

No buddhist, Ottlik.

kevin's been involved in the last 3 megathread shutdowns, hasn't he? There was the 6000+ post thread where he carried on about someone who owed him money for a ticket, then there was the 3000+ post thread he dynamited, and now, apparently, the Palin thread. What are the odds?

I'd probably start from the precariousness of life - we know that it doesn't take a lot to kill someone. It makes sense to figure out what social arrangements, as a basic floor, help to buttress life. I'd think that a floor of protections for food, shelter, and health care should be at the bottom. Recognizing that no one has an absolute right to their social position, we'd look to arrange things such that no one would starve or freeze to death, and no one would die of treatable illnesses.

But why is life special? Why should social arrangements be designed to maximize life? Anything other than personal preference to appeal to?

I hope you don't think that I'm trying to pretty things up here. But I do think that it's important to be precise in one's descriptions, because otherwise you often wind up with the hairsplitting lawyers playing "gotcha" over terminology. Speaking for myself, I'd rather not give them that opportunity. If they're going to misrepresent our arguments, make them fabricate not only our logic but the words themselves. It's tough enough to deal with their misrepresentations without leading with your chin.

Gotta love Andy. When he does it, it's just "being precise," but when someone else does the exact same thing, it's "hairsplitting lawyers playing 'gotcha' over terminology."

Matt, you may not like me. I know we've had our differences in the past, but I'm curious. Do you think that bureaucrats and elected officials would do a better job of this than private parties? My apologies. You've probably addressed this numerous times, but I decided to turn over a new leaf and read the occasional politically driven thread. If anything, I think that the recent administration may be an argument against more government intervention in the economy.

Not Matt, but I think the answer to this is a pretty resounding yes. I don't have any particular books or articles to point you to, but if you are genuinely curious in exploring the issue, I strongly encourage poking around a little bit in the political science literature about Max Weber and bureaucracy.

Basically, the collective action problem poses some very large - probably insurmountable - dilemmas when it comes to the general welfare. One option is that there is literally no "governing structures" and the basic collective action dilemma means that no one ever has an incentive to produce a public good (very bad). The other option is that the private sector produces a de facto regulatory system. The problem is that such a structure will (by definition) be entirely predatory. Anyone tasked with organizing collective action will owe allegiance to the powers which put them there, and will have no incentive to buck that force.

Of course, it's entirely possible for bureaucratic systems to become so corrupt that they closely resemble this. But here at least you have the possibility of developing a structure that can exist parallel to the private interests. In other words, a bureaucracy done right can be quite autonomous and can provide an internal rewards structure that encourages technocrats to make good faith decisions for the public good. A system of private interests will always be staffed or organized by those with external individual interests that will routinely trump the public good.

Even more than that, each individual private actor has very good reason to fear social organization. Any such organization worth mentioning will (by its very nature) have the capacity to rein in and regulate the individual interests. Which makes it a threat to the interests of the most powerful. And that means they have a serious stake in discrediting or undermining effective development of social structure.

It's certainly not the only factor, but one significant difference between the Asian development success stories and the virtual failed states in Africa is the degree to which the former implemented autonomous bureaucracies while the latter did not. Indeed, a core unifying characteristic in many of those African states was the bizarre combination of an autocratic, predatory state with a powerless bureaucracy totally beholden to the interests of whoever came out on top of the "king of the hill" battles in the open market.

When the state is not in the business of providing collective goods, it loses its anchoring principles. That's why there is a strong synergistic relationship between autocratic, coercive states and the neoliberal nightmare of a public sector characterized by pure individual interests.

The important point here is that an autonomous bureaucracy is important not just for its regulatory capacity, but also for its imposition of a basic organizational structure that is not beholden to any particular interests. It's difficult to do in practice, but it tends to be the case that if you can't at least begin moving in that direction, most any other political or economic reforms you pursue will run into a brick wall.

Basically, the collective action problem poses some very large - probably insurmountable - dilemmas when it comes to the general welfare. One option is that there is literally no "governing structures" and the basic collective action dilemma means that no one ever has an incentive to produce a public good (very bad). The other option is that the private sector produces a de facto regulatory system. The problem is that such a structure will (by definition) be entirely predatory. Anyone tasked with organizing collective action will owe allegiance to the powers which put them there, and will have no incentive to buck that force.

Baldrick, but part of the issue is how significant one thinks collective action problems are; that is, some people see public goods hiding behind every tree, while others see only a few narrow areas where these problems exist.

Of course, it's entirely possible for bureaucratic systems to become so corrupt that they closely resemble this. But here at least you have the possibility of developing a structure that can exist parallel to the private interests. In other words, a bureaucracy done right can be quite autonomous and can provide an internal rewards structure that encourages technocrats to make good faith decisions for the public good. A system of private interests will always be staffed or organized by those with external individual interests that will routinely trump the public good.

The problem is that pesky democracy; many people tend to have these weird notions that they, rather than autonomous bureaucrats, ought to run the government. (And many of us individualists have this weird notion that there is no "public good" in the sense you're using it here, but rather many conceptions of the good.) The only way around these problems is either to have a small, basically homogenous society where the vast majority of people agree on what "the good" is, or (to paraphrase Clemenceau) to decide that government is too important to be left to the people, and to narrowly proscribe the role elected government can actually play in actual governance. 

Of course, the big problem with this approach is that "corruption" isn't the primary worry; the knowledge problem is. Just because technocrats are well-meaning doesn't mean that they're capable of doing the job.

While we all know the south has had many more serious issues with race than the north, today the south has a more advanced understanding of race relations and the north is still stuck in a pretend they (black people) don't exist--and probably never see a black person--mindset. Seriously, you can live in a major northern city--urban area--and not see a black person. This is almost impossible in a southern urban area.

Beano, you and I could have many beers together. Seriously, anyone who loathes the NFL as much as I do can't be a bad guy. But you're completely out to lunch on this issue. The South has "a more advanced understanding of race relations"? When's the last time you've been to Birmingham? Or Memphis? Or New Orleans? Those cities--and I have spent a lot of time in those cities--are far more segregated than Chicago or Cleveland or Omaha or Pittsburgh or, well, pick your Midwestern city. And that's to say nothing of New York, which is the most integrated, commingled city I've ever been to. I'm just curious as to what you base this ridiculously charitable understanding of Southern race relations on. The Great Migration forced the issue upon Northern cities, and the historical record shows that they handled it better than the South.

to decide that government is too important to be left to the people

I always agreed more with the following:

anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job

Oh good lord. Where to even start?

The problem is that pesky democracy; many people tend to have these weird notions that they, rather than autonomous bureaucrats, ought to run the government.

This is *exactly* the point. In a world where there is no plausibly neutral social structure, democracy as we know it becomes impossible. It almost immediately degrades into plutocracy - with a bunch of powerful "private" interests filling the social void because the state is a rampaging autocracy. The whole idea of a state bureaucracy is that you fill it with people who have no particular stake one way or the other in ideological battles - they are simply there to run the show for whichever political interest is in power at the moment.

An example. I have a friend who works at FERC. She is an extremely liberal Democrat. And yet, she was hired by the Bush administration and has spent her time there doing her best to fulfill the policy objectives handed down to her - not always with a lot of excitement, but with a sense of duty. If Obama wins, she will continue to work there and will fulfill her new objectives. She knows A LOT about electricity regulation - more than I will ever, or want to ever, know. More than you know, too. And she has the capacity to put that knowledge to work for whatever social and economic objectives the people have decided are necessary.

The point of a bureaucracy is that there's no real need for "the people" to concern themselves with the boring day to day operation of government. And when the bureaucratic structures creak and bend - when the bureaucrats are revealed to be partisan hacks or idiots - the issue rises to the fore and the public has the chance to elect new representatives with a mandate to shake things up. Or even to simply make it clear that they might do so, and thus mobilize the current administration to get to task on the issue.

(And many of us individualists have this weird notion that there is no "public good" in the sense you're using it here, but rather many conceptions of the good.)

Once again, that is precisely the point. I do not (and frankly, no one who has any sense would) believe that there is a single "the good." It's preposterous to even suggest. Instead, there are many notions of the good, as many as there are individual people. However, there very much IS a meaningful notion of "public goods."

That is: there are clear examples of things which the overlapping interests of society, as expressed through the political channels of government, have identified as desirable. Quite often, those things are collective goods and cannot simply be wished into existence by individuals - or are prohibited by the logic of economics which would punish any particular individual for undertaking pursuit of them by being forced to pay all the cost but share all of the gain.

You know this very well, so what in the world is the point of acting like anyone who disagrees with you must take up the most literal and extreme vision of political order?

Instead, accept the far more reasonable (and inevitable) conclusion to this problem, which I explained earlier. In a world where visions of "the good" fail to perfectly align you must establish an organizational structure to resolve those concerns. The role of bureaucracy is to ensure that the battle need only be fought in one location - the political terrain - rather than fought in an endless series of localized battles over petty implementation. With a bureaucracy, you register your preference, that input is noted, and then neutral technocrats find the best way they can of fulfilling the expressed wishes of the public.

Of course, the big problem with this approach is that "corruption" isn't the primary worry; the knowledge problem is. Just because technocrats are well-meaning doesn't mean that they're capable of doing the job.

Now I'm just baffled. Your premise, then, is we ought expect that millions of random individuals with no particular experience in the details of any of these issues are better suited to come up with regulatory schemes and methods of facilitation than people who spend their whole lives studying the particular issues?

This is *exactly* the point. In a world where there is no plausibly neutral social structure, democracy as we know it becomes impossible. It almost immediately degrades into plutocracy - with a bunch of powerful "private" interests filling the social void because the state is a rampaging autocracy.

I don't see how that's exactly the point when I'm saying the opposite of what you're saying; while I'm not much interested in "democracy as we know it"; my point is that such democracy is what makes your bureaucracy impossible. So you lost me on how bureaucracy prevents autocracy.

The whole idea of a state bureaucracy is that you fill it with people who have no particular stake one way or the other in ideological battles - they are simply there to run the show for whichever political interest is in power at the moment.

I understand what your vision is; what I'm saying is that it's not workable. Either the bureaucracy becomes unresponsive to the public, or it implements what the public demands, which sort of enervates the value of the bureaucratic expertise.

Moreover, your idea of a neutral bureaucracy is a chimera. While such a bureaucracy may be neutral on a purely technical point -- say, whether to pursue research into design A or design B for hydrogen fuel cells -- it won't be neutral on the big question: who should make the decisions. Real life experience with government bureaucracy shows that the one constant is that such bureaucracies strive to increase their own authority. It's a basic tenet of public choice theory, and it's borne out by reality (as well as supported by common sense; few people go into a job because they don't want to do it).

Once again, that is precisely the point. I do not (and frankly, no one who has any sense would) believe that there is a single "the good." It's preposterous to even suggest. Instead, there are many notions of the good, as many as there are individual people. However, there very much IS a meaningful notion of "public goods."

Right; as I hoped I had made clear, I agree that there exists such things as public goods (*), but that when you say "structure that encourages technocrats to make good faith decisions for the public good," that use of the phrase "public good" is different than the economic concept of "public goods."

But once again, you say "That's precisely the point" even though I'm saying the opposite of what you're suggesting. You agree that there are many individual notions of the good, yes -- but your vision seems to be that we vote on which one of those notions we want, and then hand it over to the technocrats to obtain it for us. (At least, that's how I read your statements about "technocrats [who] make good faith decisions for the public good." (emphasis added) and "the expressed wishes of the public.") What I'm saying is that there is no "the" public good, no "the" wishes of the public -- as if the public could have a collective wish, rather than scores of differing wishes -- and thus asking technocrats to make decisions to get it for us misses the mark.

(*) But, as I also noted, far fewer things fit that description than some seem to think. For instance -- to pick the example you raised -- while national defense fits the classic definition of a "public good," nothing that FERC does fits into that category.

Instead, accept the far more reasonable (and inevitable) conclusion to this problem, which I explained earlier. In a world where visions of "the good" fail to perfectly align you must establish an organizational structure to resolve those concerns.

No, you don't. That's precisely the point. First, the concerns don't need to be "resolved" at all. You can have multiple, competing notions of what's good, all operating at once. And so no "organizational structure" is needed for the purpose. Good old fashioned bottom-up, rather than top-down, decision making.

If you were talking only about true public goods -- say, national defense -- I wouldn't be quarrelling with your argument; but I think it's clear both from your paean to FERC and your general praise for the Asian model that you're talking about much more than that, that you're talking about ordinary regulatory bureaucracy.

Of course, the big problem with this approach is that "corruption" isn't the primary worry; the knowledge problem is. Just because technocrats are well-meaning doesn't mean that they're capable of doing the job.

Now I'm just baffled. Your premise, then, is we ought expect that millions of random individuals with no particular experience in the details of any of these issues are better suited to come up with regulatory schemes and methods of facilitation than people who spend their whole lives studying the particular issues?

Well, in a sense, yes, indeed. Not in the sense you seem to mean it, I don't think; no, I'm not advocating that we replace bureaucracies with public referenda on these policies. I'm talking about spontaneous order.

I hope you don't think that I'm trying to pretty things up here. But I do think that it's important to be precise in one's descriptions, because otherwise you often wind up with the hairsplitting lawyers playing "gotcha" over terminology. Speaking for myself, I'd rather not give them that opportunity. If they're going to misrepresent our arguments, make them fabricate not only our logic but the words themselves. It's tough enough to deal with their misrepresentations without leading with your chin.

Gotta love Andy. When he does it, it's just "being precise," but when someone else does the exact same thing, it's "hairsplitting lawyers playing 'gotcha' over terminology."

Gotta love David, who quotes and 'refutes' a statement I made many hours after the fact, without giving us any idea as to what the original context of the discussion was, or even what the discusssion was all about.

I guess I should be grateful for small favors from BTF's most storied Philadelphia lawyer. This time he doesn't misrepresent my argument---he just ignores it altogether, and leaves everyone else to search the thread for the original context. I suppose he'd say that it isn't his "job" to provide it.

But then actually addressing the full context of an argument has never been one of David's strong points; much better to keep things safely in the realm of fuzzy abstractions such as "freedom" and "rights," where the "freedom" or "right" of a bigot to run a Jim Crow restaurant trumps the human dignity of the customer whom he turns away because of the color of his skin.

You agree that there are many individual notions of the good, yes -- but your vision seems to be that we vote on which one of those notions we want, and then hand it over to the technocrats to obtain it for us. (At least, that's how I read your statements about "technocrats [who] make good faith decisions for the public good." (emphasis added) and "the expressed wishes of the public.") What I'm saying is that there is no "the" public good, no "the" wishes of the public -- as if the public could have a collective wish, rather than scores of differing wishes -- and thus asking technocrats to make decisions to get it for us misses the mark.

So at this stage you are basically arguing against Democracy? Because this is exactly what democracies do, albeit through the back door. People stand for election based on a certain platform, which includes (or at least should) the specific public goods that they are going to pursue should they be elected. The voters then decide based on their own individual preferences on what public goods are (more) desireable.

No, you don't. That's precisely the point. First, the concerns don't need to be "resolved" at all. You can have multiple, competing notions of what's good, all operating at once. And so no "organizational structure" is needed for the purpose. Good old fashioned bottom-up, rather than top-down, decision making.

The huge problem with this is that it gives people with power (read property) the option to act entirely for their individual good, while dismissing the views of public good held by the majority of individuals.

You also give absolutely no explanation as to how this bottom-up decision making is achieved. You casually throw out referenda, and want to rely on spontanious order? Spontanious order by it's very nature can't just simply be induced, you might end up remaining in a chaotic state. And if it does happen, there is no way of knowing how it will manifest, and if the order will indeed benifit the public good in any shape or form.

Wow, what a spectacular lack of substance your arguments have. It takes an incredibly pompous pedant to lecture someone on "terminology" when discussing concepts as simple as "liberalism" and "conservatism." Note the lack of capital letters there, and throughout my post. Just to draw that out for you: when a practice in society comes under question to the point where there are two opposing sides to the issue, the group that wants to change or abolish the practice are "radicals" "liberals" or "progressives" and the side that wants to keep or preserve it are "reactionaries" or "conservatives." Doesn't matter what a Liberal or Conservative Party at any point in history might stand for. That has as little bearing on things as your ridiculous attempt to associate slavery with modern Democrats or pat modern Republicans on the back.
Not only that, but your views are so inconsistent from point to point, that I am actually at a loss to respond to all of your idiocy. First you make your Democrat/Republican "point," then, when I challenge you on it, you accuse me of doing something similar with the terms "liberal/conservative," and say I'M confused and should be ashamed of my understanding of history? Are you kidding? I know cognitive dissonance is essential to your political philosophy, but please just go back and read your own words once in awhile.
As far as your Red/Blue armchair psycho-analysis: completely not worth my time. Although how that differs from the rest of our "dialogue" is debatable.

Mushroy, please figure out how to make your posts show paragraph spacing.

But, as I also noted, far fewer things fit that description than some seem to think. For instance -- to pick the example you raised -- while national defense fits the classic definition of a "public good," nothing that FERC does fits into that category.


What it comes down to, of course, is that you do not believe that people should be taxed to pay for things that voters decide are for the public good. Rather, people should be taxed to pay for things that you personally decide are for the public good.

That has as little bearing on things as your ridiculous attempt to associate slavery with modern Democrats or pat modern Republicans on the back.

Mushroy, obviously you are obsessed with the notion that people living today and political ideologies of today own blame for slavery. This is twice now you have brought this up. I have only suggested here that it is highly preposterous of you to blame people of today for slavery of yesterday. You display some paranoia that I am trying to "flip" the issue on "us" (presumably liberals).

You completey miss the point that I've made that nobody living, "us" or "them", is responsible for slavery. However, it is clear that you seem to want me and conservatives living today to "own" the responsibility for slavery. Nevermind the fact you are unable to address the core points of the debate here on this thread regarding segregation and racial progress of today, 2008, comparing the north and south. Instead you come right out and try to defend something (who owns slavery--of which is a preposerous concept in of itself) that is not even at issue in this debate--nobody brought it up until you did.

You are shameless. I am embarrassed for you.

First you said (all in one post):

...This issue is not about the Republicans trying to end slavery in the 1800s or the white KKK Democrats trying to oppose them....Somehow Democrats always find themselves on the wrong side of race issues. today they are against the concept of the Melting Pot, 150 years ago they were against freeing the slaves....Democrats have always been trading the races. Today they may not be owning blacks, but they are still buying them.

Then I said:

Frankly, I don't even understand the point Beano is trying to make here. Are you really trying to take the issue that's probably the blackest mark on American conservatism and flip it on us? Yeah, sure, Democrats used to own a lot of slaves- back when they were conservatives and the Republican party was made up of radical liberals. What the hell is your point?

Now look at how you responded, only replace my generic “conservatives” with your shameless “Democrats” from above. See a contradiction?

What is especially alarming, is that based upon your flip statement above, it seems you look upon the conservatives of today as the very people that owned slaves and lynched people, you should be embarrassed with your juvenile understanding of history, and ashamed of yourself. You really make me sick.

I am the second stupidest person in this thread for even trying to argue with you. Really it’s time for both of us to STFU. This thread has been a much better read when you aren’t tripping all over your own arguments and I’m not taking the bait.
(EDIT: typo)

When's the last time you've been to Birmingham? Or Memphis? Or New Orleans?

Birmingham, last year. Memphis, in 2 weeks. I was in Durham last month.

Daryn, I think what has happened here is what always happens here. A combustible issue ignited and the original points being complex morphed into something more simple, points that became basic. The entire debate soon became South=more racist North=less racist. Or in Mushroys case, Republican=pro slavery Democrat=anti-slavery. When arguments get boiled down to such simplistic terms, there is really not room for debate anymore is there? Mushroy seemed more concerned with trying to keep "red states" on the hook for all of the racial problems of America, than actually contribution to the conversation. He perceived that my motive was to flip the legacy of slavery on him and his liberal brethren. Give me a break. There is real paranoia I've found in keeping stereotypes living apparently and I have to credit the left, they realize that defining history is no small thing and rewriting history is key to their ability to sell in their ideology, because the left usually has a history of failures they need to rewrite.---anyway

My goal was not to discuss slavery or legacy at all, but to make a commentary of my observations of the acceptance of black culture in the south in 2008 vs acceptance of black culture in the north in 2008. Black cultural integration is much, much greater in the south than in the north. In 2008, blacks and whites are more likely to be living on the same block than blacks and whites in the north.

Ranking of Integration.

I'll try to wind this down here by saying this. Segregation is not really a part of my main points. that being said, I happen to find in my reading/research few people know how segregation is measured, how it should be measured, if at all, and how is it defined anymore. City/community rankings of segregation are highly dubious.

UW-Milwaukee released a study, a new methodology on integration/segregation in 2003. I found it very interesting and it highlighted the almost crude nature of the old segregation index.

if any rankings on black-white integration are to be done, they should be based on measuring individual blocks.

"Within a census tract, you can have very different neighborhoods," said Lois Quinn, the institute's senior research scientist.

Individual blocks, the study argues, are "more sensitive to whether interaction is occurring between the races."

Quinn and fellow researcher John Pawasarat, the institute's director, also criticize the traditional segregation index for measuring one-way movement of blacks rather than the dynamic movement of many races found in a diversified metro area. And they charge that the "implicit goal" of the old index is to disperse African-Americans as widely as possible, a development that would rob blacks of political power.

If that were accomplished, Taeuber said: "There's no ability of a tiny population to take over an area. And it doesn't develop the infrastructure of an ethnic specific neighborhood, like the old Chinese laundries and Chinese restaurants."

"I think the index has really survived on its name," Quinn said. "Because it's called a segregation index, all of us have assumed that's what it measures. It never had the strength to measure integration. It never even defined integration."

At issue is how the United States sees and measures its progress on black-white residential integration.

The UWM researchers offer a definition that measures the percentage of residents in a metro area who live on blocks that are at least 20% black and 20% white - with the remaining 60% made up of any combination of black, white or other ethnicity.

Using that approach, Detroit rises from 100th, the least integrated of the 100 largest areas in the old index, to 57th, and Cleveland jumps from 94th to 36th. No city gets a bigger boost than Memphis, Tenn., which rises from 76th on the traditional index to fifth.

In contrast to this "20/20" approach, the traditional segregation index takes a metro area such as Milwaukee, which is 16% African-American, and computes how many blacks would have to move to disperse them evenly in each census tract of Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties. By that standard, both a census tract with a 15% black population and one with a 20% black population would be rated as segregated - one too white, the other too black.

"Milwaukee's metro ranking on the index is based on the 'ideal' of moving 197,890 blacks of the total 240,859 black population, or 82.16%, out of their 'too black' census tracts and into the remaining 'whiter' tracts,' " the UWM study notes.

By contrast, because Salt Lake City has so few African-Americans, proportionately few would have to move to disperse them evenly. As a result, that city rated fifth on the traditional index.

Of the top 10 metro areas on the old ranking, nine are Western cities and eight have a population that is less than 4% African-American. That percentage is less than one-third of the average for the entire country, which is 13% black.

I doubt anyone really has a clue how segregation rankings of cities/metro areas are determined. If they knew they would likely agree with me that the old methods and definitions were implicitly racist themselves. Read the article above. For example, why is the goal to have 1 black family on each block (of 10 houses for example) in an entire metro area? That would be "perfect" integration right? But you would destroy the black neighborhood, black culture and political power. So I think people need to rethink how to define segregation.

In the UWM study, the 20 most integrated metro areas all are Southern, with the exception of border areas Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. Besides Memphis, Tenn., the metro areas that jump the most in the rankings include New Orleans, which rises from 80th in the traditional index to 15th, and Birmingham, Ala., which jumps from 87th to 22nd.

"I like that approach," said Memphis Mayor Willie W. Herenton, when told of the UWM methods. "That's a broader, more inclusive measurement of racial integration."

The cities that drop the most in the UWM study are Western metro areas. Albuquerque, N.M., drops from first place to 95th, Salt Lake City drops from fifth to 98th and Orange County, Calif., drops from fourth to 97th.

Josh Ewing, a spokesman for Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, said the low ranking for his city made sense, given the standard used in the new study.

"I would imagine there are very few blocks in the city that are 20% black. Probably zero. It's definitely a sign that there aren't many blacks here," Ewing said.

Read this study on INTEGRATION, from UW-Milwaukee. It is one of the most cited, most recent comprehensives studies on the subject of integration. I linked you with the Milwaukee Journal section that wrote up the study. There is a lot there, obviously, but all of it is good stuff.

I hope you can see past this "red/blue" shallowness that Mushroy tried to impart here. I am merely trying to discuss cultural difference between the south and north and address stereotypes that the south is still racially broken and the north is some racial safehaven--for lack of a better term.

In 1994, Strayhorn managed to get elected, becoming only the second black council member to serve in the last 40 years. But she lasted only one term. Although the council race is non-partisan, Strayhorn was seen as a Democrat and alienated the white Republicans who dominate the city.

"We had taken dead aim on Louisa," Republican Virginia legislator Leo Waldrup told a local newspaper. She was a rising Democrat, he added, "and that's clearly enough for us to lock and load."

For Strayhorn, her 1998 re-election effort is a painful memory.

"I had phone calls saying, 'We're going to make sure that ###### doesn't get elected.' After the election, people would drive by and say, 'See, ######, we said we'd get you,' " she recalled.

Armed with new census data, local black leaders worked with Norfolk State University political science professor Rudolph Wilson to pressure the City Council to drop the at-large system and redistrict, in order to increase minority representation.

Oberndorf said redistricting was useless. "We tried to find a specifically minority area but we couldn't, because everybody is so well distributed," she said.

Wilson did provide different redistricting plans, including one with two districts that were heavily (40%) minority. But Oberndorf contended that it was accomplished by gerrymandering.

Anita Hodgkiss, a lawyer for the Washington, D.C.-based Lawyers Commission for Civil Right Under Law, believes the proposed districts were not unusually shaped.

But the mayor and council rejected any changes proposed by the advocates of increased black representation.

Hodgkiss, who has argued voting rights cases for 17 years, was ready to launch a court battle. But in the 2002 election, Ronald Villanueva won office.

The fact that he was a minority whom many African-Americans supported would make it harder to win the case, Hodgkiss said.

Georgia Allen, president of the local NAACP, thinks the city's business leaders handpicked Villanueva.

Still, she remains committed to working for change.

Even Strayhorn, despite her bitter defeat, remains committed to Virginia Beach, where she has now lived for 20 years.

"I came here from Boston," she noted. "This is heaven compared to Boston."

I'm gonna be obvious, I'm gonna ramble, and I'm gonna be anecdotal - please indulge and forgive me...

As to how integrated a city is or feels, it depends on what part of the city you're referring to. I live in Durham, a few blocks from the Lowes Grove middle school referenced earlier, in a middle to slightly upper-middle class integrated neighborhood, on an integrated block. I'm not aware of an substantial issues of race relations therein. I go to the "new" mall in town and see kids of different races, sometimes mixed together, sometimes not, and different subcultural needs attended to (whatever that means).
If I drive down Fayetteville through Hayti, the area becomes almost entirely black, largely poor, and somewhat angry. I was at a Chick-Fil-A in the town's "old" mall (Northgate, not in Hayti, but the other side of town regardless) and a little old lady was going from table to table, skipping some, warning people that they should leave the mall by 6 PM because of the "trouble with the blacks" (half-whispered a la Stormy from Sealab). She then begged us not to tell anyone she said that, went to the next table and did it again. [This was the most overtly racist thing I've seen in years.] Related, I grew up (largely) in a poor to lower-middle class neighborhood in Raleigh, majority black, and there was some definite racial tension.
The real issue in each case is economic class and resource allocation, but you can't extricate it from race and racial history. The Duke LAX case is no different in this regard.

As for north vs. south, my family is from Milwaukee (where I was born) and I have been less than impressed with the racial attitudes I've seen up there in my limited trips - more overt racism per capita then in, say, the Triangle. Then again, that may say more about my extended family's status (and, no, I don't mean my family in the above statement) than anything else (not that Milwaukee's rep is great). In my travels, Jackson MS stood out to me for the incredibly limited interactions I saw between whites and blacks - they weren't mixing very much at all - it was something you SAW rather than looked for, if that makes sense.

I linked you with the Milwaukee Journal section that wrote up the study.

Without having seen the study itself, only the articles, it appears from the ranking table to reward cities that have high African American populations, and punish those that have low ones. Possibly, instead of 20/20, one should relate that split to the percentage of African Americans in the city - eg, in Salt Lake City one would look for blocks with 2/2, whereas the 20/20 would work for Virginia Beach. But in Norfolk you'd be looking for 44/44. In the City of Detroit, you'd have to reverse it, looking for 12/12 on the basis of the white population.

But surely the real question is whether the census tract or the block system is more effective at measuring the actual integration of a community's population. I'd be inclined to look at the relationship between racial mixes at local public schools compared to the area from which the students are drawn. But even that's not very good in my experience. My daughters go to a very mixed school (but one, interestingly, where the Afro-Caribbean population is declining noticeably), but there is little interaction between the families outside of school events. The Portuguese stick together, the Hispanics stick together, the Ghanaians and Nigerians avoid each other, the Poles and the Irish keep to themselves, and my poor daughters are too mixed up for us to fit in anywhere.

Beano, I agree with you that it's futile to try to rank cities by any sort of "segregation" or "integration" indices. I'd only add to Der Kommink-sar's point that often it depends of what part of a city or town that you're in. And it's impossible to make any significant comparison between cities with tiny black populations and cities with large black populations.

But what I still don't see in all this is your point about "liberals." I addressed this question to you earlier in #119, but you must have missed it. One the one hand you call for seeing the complexity of the race issue, but then OTOH you want to ascribe nearly all of the blame on "liberals," while ignoring much of history of "conservatism" in practice. IOW it seems as if you're being kind of selective in your reading of history. Maybe you might want to get more specific about which "liberal" or "conservative" individuals you're referring to, and just how representative they are of their respective groups, and what periods of history you're talking about. These are all questions of particularity that fairly cry out to be answered.

it appears from the ranking table to reward cities that have high African American populations, and punish those that have low ones.

yes. but if you immersed yourself in the history of segregation indicies, you will find the exact opposite was true, where cities like Salt Lake City were considered to have no segregation and a city with a massive black population was considered segregated.

The 20/20 approach is considered to be a much better measure to determine integration. the old methods were flawed and said nothing of integration, but of segregation.

The 20/20 approach is considered to be a much better measure to determine integration.

By what authorities? If you know of one, I'd be interested to see a link where there is some debate between proponents of the two methods.

But what I still don't see in all this is your point about "liberals." I addressed this question to you earlier in #119, but you must have missed it. One the one hand you call for seeing the complexity of the race issue, but then OTOH you want to ascribe nearly all of the blame on "liberals,"

Not at all. My original point was my observations of race in the south and north (in 2008). Not once did I bring up liberal or conservative.

That started when Mushroy felt paranoid that I was secretly trying to flip slavery on him (liberals). Apparently he was worried I was going to start a movement in this country where liberals of today would lose the ability to blame Republicans and conservatives of today for slavery, something of which they have managed to leverage to political gain for years. The discussion got sidetracked from there.

I just want to discuss the fact that most of the south today 2008 (at least in major cities) seems to be integrating black and white people, black and white culture as well as or even better than the north. My reasoning was that because people have lived the struggle in the south more so than in the north and there is a directness that lends itself to working things out.

By no means am I saying the south is without racism or tensions with whites in parts, but there are seemingly more places in the south, than ever before that feature forward looking cities with both large white and large black populations, my point is that there are more of these cities today in the south than in the north.

This change has been very rapid, very rapid. The black middle class boomed starting in the 90s, it continues today. There is even good data now showing that a lot of northern blacks have started to return to the south, partially because of better job prospects, business environments, etc... This new migration is a strong data point to show that life for a black person is getting better in the south, if not already better than in the north.

If people want to disagree with me on points, fine. But don't object merely because you are uncomfortable, or even panicked, with the new idea that the current south is no longer more hostile to blacks or backwards on race than the north is. I get the feeling that there is a lot to gain from people (politically) by maintaining the south as "the" place for hate and racists in the US and they will do what it takes to make sure that image does not change.

By what authorities? If you know of one, I'd be interested to see a link where there is some debate between proponents of the two methods.

The link I already posted contains commentary from several experts on this matter. They also measure two different things. One tries to measure segregation, the other integration. They are different.

Your angle of argument is exactly how this current study came about, the old methods were much much worse (punitive) to cites with lots of blacks.
--
But do you care to comment on anything else of substance here?

Beano, as I indicated before, I'm not arguing with your take about the 21st century South vs the 21st century North. There are many conflicting facts there that point in different directions, and trying to summarize them in some sort of index seems like a pretty futile effort.

What I was getting at was this exchange, which you began in #115:

Classical liberalism is the ideology that has driven Republican ideologies from the beginning. The modern day "conservatives" had not formed until around WWII in response to New Deal socialism. Republicans and many modern conservatives have a history of promoting individual freedom, individual liberties, individual property rights, natural rights, individual freedom from restraint, civil liberty protections, free markets, constitutional limitation of government.

and which I addressed in #119:

But the deeper problem is that your take on modern day conservatism is extremely selective. Not that liberals aren't often equally selective in their own memories, but take a look of the Godfather of modern conservatism, William F. Buckley, Jr.

While there were plenty of things to admire about Good Old Bill, the fact is that well into his prime of life, he defended:

segregation laws;

Orval Faubus, Ross Barnett, and George Wallace;

South Africa;

Joe McCarthy (even wrote a whole book on that subject);

state bans on contraceptive devices;

an aggressively expansive role for the U.S. military in the third world;....

I'll leave it at that. And I'll note that unlike many of his contemporaries, he backed off on lots of his earlier views, and in the googoo cliche, he "grew." But I don't see how you can disassociate either Buckley or his large number of followers from Conservatism as it was practiced for much of the 20th century.

And I don't see how any of the above positions have much to do with things like individual liberty---unless you restrict the concept of individual liberty to white people only. Which in fact, Buckley did, on the many occasions that he spoke on his belief in white superiority, which he used to justify his backing of southern state imposed segregation.

IOW you can't blame this all on the Dixiecrats. They had plenty of allies among northern conservatives.

This doesn't mean that there weren't plenty of hypocrital northern liberals who liked to confine the subject of civil rights to Alabama, and not to their own cities. But this idea that modern (i.e. post-Herbert Hoover) conservatives were ever some sort of reliable bastion of human liberty in practice is a stretch, to say the least.

You've addressed the North-South issue very well, but I'd like to know how you'd answer this other point that I raise. And note the underlined parts---I'm not trying to let liberals get off the hook.

Moscow, I posted Classical Liberalism as a way to show the foundation Republicanism from its birth. So those ideals, date back to then, 1860s or so, which was my key/main point. I think you make great points, I'd be happy to discuss those issues, but I don't think I meant to get into details or specifics of modern conservatives. It was more about the origins or ideological foundations of the party and "conservative".

I then mentioned that the modern conservative of today shares a lot of these ideals. Of course there are always factions within a group, as there were in the 1860s then, there are today. So I wasn't attempting to define conservatives of today, if I was I would suggest they again share many of the ideals of classical liberalism which the Republican party was founded on. Sure, as was true then, there are factions with differing interests and policy goals. I really didn't attempt to get into much more detail than that.

You called out a lot of the factions that exist within a party. William Buckley supported segregation policy in the 1950s (his 30s) and renounced it in the 60s and for the rest of his life. This is similar to Democrat George Wallace, who fought very hard for segregationist policy as governor and then later as presidential candidate into the mid 1970s even. By the late 1970s, after becoming a born again, he renounced his old views, endorsed Jimmy Carter, later went on to win a 3rd stint as Alabama governor, this time he added blacks to government.

I think it is folly, yet many try, to attempt to pin down one party or the other as the "owners" of promoting segregation policy. Most of Bill Clinton's political heroes were segregationists, Al Gore's dad was one. Everyone lived during a time, where most of America changed its mind about race. It is probably hard to imagine, but most people changed their minds on race, once supported it, then later were against it (segregation). It is amazing that it happened so quickly too, but it did.

My point of sharing the definition of Classical Liberalism, was to share what the foundation of the Republican party was built on, and how that foundation remains today, regardless of how many factions within the Republican party there are from time to time. Those come and go. The foundation is at the core, even if not every party member believes that. That being said, I really couldn't give a rip about a political party, as they are prone to the many radical movements, or populist moments of the time.

I don't carry the flag of the Republican Party, it just happens to carry my flag most of the time.

Der Komminsk-sar

I grew up in Milwaukee, lived in Durham for a year. Interesting.

But do you care to comment on anything else of substance here?

Well, I am. I'm suggesting that if the new study simply reverses the old study, maybe it isn't an improvement. That's why I'd be interested in seeing more commentary on the merits of one method versus the other. But if I'm too lazy to do Google searches or look on Jstor for stuff, there's no reason for you to do it for me, and I'm happy to leave it at that.

This new migration is a strong data point to show that life for a black person is getting better in the south, if not already better than in the north.

But is it? Isn't the migration southwards as true of the white and the general population in the United States?

Moving on to Andy:

There are many conflicting facts there that point in different directions, and trying to summarize them in some sort of index seems like a pretty futile effort.

On the contrary, trying to resolve the apparent contradictions is probably of vital importance to advance the debate closer towards understanding. It's not so much that it's futile, but on our particular part here at Primer we might have more urgent demands on our time.

Well, I am. I'm suggesting that if the new study simply reverses the old study, maybe it isn't an improvement.

That is not what it does. Take the time to read up on the information I linked, you are going over ground that is covered detail there. The two are even trying to measure different things. One tried to measure segregation, the other integration. They are different.

But is it? Isn't the migration southwards as true of the white and the general population in the United States?

Not when the rate of black migration outpaces white migration to the south.

You called out a lot of the factions that exist within a party. William Buckley supported segregation policy in the 1950s (his 30s) and renounced it in the 60s and for the rest of his life. This is similar to Democrat George Wallace, who fought very hard for segregationist policy as governor and then later as presidential candidate into the mid 1970s even. By the late 1970s, after becoming a born again, he renounced his old views, endorsed Jimmy Carter, later went on to win a 3rd stint as Alabama governor, this time he added blacks to government.

I think it is folly, yet many try, to attempt to pin down one party or the other as the "owners" of promoting segregation policy. Most of Bill Clinton's political heroes were segregationists, Al Gore's dad was one. Everyone lived during a time, where most of America changed its mind about race. It is probably hard to imagine, but most people changed their minds on race, once supported it, then later were against it (segregation). It is amazing that it happened so quickly too, but it did.

This is a very clearheaded take. And certainly even in the 1950's and 1960's there were more than a few conservatives who disagreed strongly with Buckley. My gripe against modern conservatives (to the extent that I have a gripe) isn't for what they may have believed in a different time; it's what they say and do today, and how what they say and do affects the racial dynamic. And I'd apply the same standard to liberals.

(One minor factual point: Al Gore Sr., along with LBJ and Estes Kefauver, was one of only three Southern Senators who did NOT sign the infamous "Southern Manifesto." It's not fair to lump Gore's dad into the same category as others like J. William Fulbright and Sam Ervin, who did sign the Manifesto, and who often got a pass on this. Gore voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but immediately regretted it, and voted for the voting rights bill a year later. In 1970 he lost his Senate seat in great part due to his perceived racial liberalism.)

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There are many conflicting facts there that point in different directions, and trying to summarize them in some sort of index seems like a pretty futile effort.

On the contrary, trying to resolve the apparent contradictions is probably of vital importance to advance the debate closer towards understanding. It's not so much that it's futile, but on our particular part here at Primer we might have more urgent demands on our time.

I don't have anything against these various indices per se, fra paolo. And I'm certainly not trying to suppress understanding. What I object to is trying to reduce the racial dynamics of any given city to a one-size-fits-all number. As Der-Kommink-sar says, it's often a case of what part of a city you're talking about, not to mention that racial dynamics are amazingly fluid in cities with rapidly changing neighborhoods and large influxes of immigrants.

I doubt anyone really has a clue how segregation rankings of cities/metro areas are determined. If they knew they would likely agree with me that the old methods and definitions were implicitly racist themselves. Read the article above. For example, why is the goal to have 1 black family on each block (of 10 houses for example) in an entire metro area? That would be "perfect" integration right? But you would destroy the black neighborhood, black culture and political power. So I think people need to rethink how to define segregation.

Why? Yes, true integration means that there are no "black neighborhoods" and "black political power." That's not a bug; that's a feature.

That depends on your definition of true "integration", of course. And just to put the inevitable argument to rest, I'm sure that the dictionary definition of the word does imply that. Personally I have little dog in this fight, but I could see my way to believing that an end goal of integration meaning something like "Different cultures are treated equally and intermingle amicably" being more favorable than "different cultures are subsumed into a monoculture".

Jeff, you seem to be conflating the three things Beanocook listed -- black neighborhood, black culture, and black political power. I was careful to only talk about the first and third, whereas you're talking about the second.

But, it's very doubtful (to me) you're going to have black culture (in the sense I took it to be meant) without having black neighborhoods and black political power. The same as you don't really have "Irish culture" (outside a parade once a year in a few cities) or "Polish culture", because there aren't Irish neighborhoods and Polish neighborhoods anymore. You could argue it's been subsumed and melting-potted in, I suppose, but outside St. Patty's Day? I don't think too much of black culture would survive, either.

So I am conflating them, but intentionally.

I certainly agree with both points, Jeff, David, in that the ideal of America is one where all people can come together as one (melting pot) to become American, which would mean the idea that black neighborhoods are better than just neighborhoods falls short of this ideal. Yet, black culture is something that is unique in that blacks, African American blacks (were shipped here as property), thus were obviously not willing immigrants, like the Italians, Irish, polish for example. I think this should be noted.

I can however understand the deep desire to self segregate among blacks to preserve their culture, however at this point, it strikes me, obviously many others as well, as more of a protest which has slowed their own ability to advance in America.

I honestly think that trying to envision what the state of race relations is going to be like 30 or 40 years from now is about as easy as it would have been to predict today's state of race relations in 1968 or 1978. There are just way too many unknowable factors. And with the possible combination of a black president and a severe recession, I'm not even sure you can predict what the racial dynamic of this country is going to be like even a year from now. It might easily change dramatically either for the worse or for the better.

I also think that the best long run solution to the "race question" is for all of us to take a deep breath and try, if only as a mental exercise, to imagine the world through the other man's perspective, which is bound to differ among individuals but is always going to include at least some collective sense of racial or national identity---even if those of us in the majority aren't always conscious of it in our daily lives, unless we find ourselves overseas and surrounded by what we think are strange customs and outlooks. If nothing else, it might cut out our tendency to take offense at every little thing, while at the same time it might sometimes get us to think before we start running our mouths. [/preacherman]

I can however understand the deep desire to self segregate among blacks to preserve their culture, however at this point, it strikes me, obviously many others as well, as more of a protest which has slowed their own ability to advance in America.

Because a culture has been bred which for generations if a black man wanted to be treated in a color-blind fashion he couldn't be. Even post slavery the black man's options were to be subservient in the white culture or live within the black culture where despite what struggles may occur perhaps more of a sense of pride and wholeness may be felt. Now in Generation #14 or whatever the white culture finally feels it's ready to START melding with the black culture. Now you're expecting everyone to just forget the generations that lived in and created the American black culture. Can't unring the bell. The American black culture is likely different than had Africans emigrated to America and had to deal with a "normal" amount of race/class predjudice. While I understand the goal of a more melded society and it seems we're continuing to progress to that goal, the culture we had is always going to be part of this country's history as long as it's a country. Can't go back.

Can't really have it both ways. You can't say that you are going to self-segregate and then demand that the wider culture embrace you. It's either one or the other.

because there aren't Irish neighborhoods and Polish neighborhoods anymore.

About 10 years I walked into a bodega in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and the cashier spoke to me in Polish (before english)

To respond to the two people who responded to me above:

So at this stage you are basically arguing against Democracy? Because this is exactly what democracies do, albeit through the back door. People stand for election based on a certain platform, which includes (or at least should) the specific public goods that they are going to pursue should they be elected. The voters then decide based on their own individual preferences on what public goods are (more) desireable.

I've made no secret here in the past of my disapproval of democracy. Democracy still has as its root "-cracy," and 50.1% isn't a magic word that makes bad things good.

What it comes down to, of course, is that you do not believe that people should be taxed to pay for things that voters decide are for the public good. Rather, people should be taxed to pay for things that you personally decide are for the public good.

As I alluded to earlier in the thread, this statement rests on confusion between the phrases "public good" and "public goods." "Public goods" does not mean "things that are good for the public."

I've made no secret here in the past of my disapproval of democracy. Democracy still has as its root "-cracy," and 50.1% isn't a magic word that makes bad things good.

I wouldn't argue with this. I myself have some reservations towards democracy, both in principle as well as in some specific incarnations. However, the point is that a system where 50.1% of people deceide that something is good, it generally leads to more good things and less bad things, than when it is a very small percentile of the poplation making that decision.

It's rather telling that you chose to ignore the second part of my post. You still have offered no substanive arguments that your system would increase public good for anything but a select few. In fact, you haven't offered any substance regarding your system at all. All you offer is ideology.

As I alluded to earlier in the thread, this statement rests on confusion between the phrases "public good" and "public goods." "Public goods" does not mean "things that are good for the public."

Well I can't speak for the poster in question, but I see no confusion is his post. He doesn't evan use the phrase "public goods".
As for the use of "public goods" in my post, I was using it as the collective form of individual views of what "public good" consists of. A distinction you insited on making. It seemed easier than writing it out every time, and I thought it was clear from the context. I should have known better though. Everybody around here knows by now, that when you can't offer any substantive arguments, you will try and turn it into a lawyerly battle of semantics.

It's rather telling that you chose to ignore the second part of my post.

Stick around a few years, brother. You'll get used to it. David's a master at choosing only to respond to the parts of an argument that he thinks that he can carcicature.

You still have offered no substanive arguments that your system would increase public good for anything but a select few. In fact, you haven't offered any substance regarding your system at all.

You'll also notice after a few times around the block that David's version of libertarianism is a lot more attractive in theory than in practice.

All you offer is ideology.

An ideology which is about as subtle as its left wing counterpart. And at times every bit as amusing.

I think all this half-hearted defense of democracy, bureaucracy and liberalism is turning me into an anarchist.

I think all this half-hearted defense of democracy, bureaucracy and liberalism is turning me into an anarchist.

I hear you, brother.

Just don't get too gay about it.

Andy, those are teh awesomes!

Thanks, zenbitz. Yeah, I had a lot of fun coming up with all that stuff. There are many hundreds of others at least as good. Here's one of my all-time favorites, though on some browsers you may have to scroll down an inch or two to see why.

need move soviet war posters!

Paul Krugman just won the Nobel Prize for Economics. David's head just blew up.

Andy, fyi, on your homepage on my IE browser, the illustrations change every second and a half, not nearly long enough to enjoy them.

I wouldn't argue with this. I myself have some reservations towards democracy, both in principle as well as in some specific incarnations. However, the point is that a system where 50.1% of people deceide that something is good, it generally leads to more good things and less bad things, than when it is a very small percentile of the poplation making that decision.

And my point is that a system where 100% of people decide for themselves, rather than 50.1% of people decide for everyone, is even better.

It's rather telling that you chose to ignore the second part of my post. You still have offered no substanive arguments that your system would increase public good for anything but a select few. In fact, you haven't offered any substance regarding your system at all. All you offer is ideology.

Do you think that utilitarianism, or for that matter pragmatism, isn't an