A while ago I launched a search site called Counter Search which allowed people to search for a topic across a variety of high-quality right-of-center sites. I wanted to make it easy for people to get a counter take to the narratives pushed by NPR or the New York Times.

I have now added two new sections to the Counter Search site:

Book Pairings — On a large number of topics I have paired a quality left-of-center book with a quality right-of-center book. I want to make it easier for people to engage with the perspectives they are missing. If you have only read books from the left side, if you cannot even accurately describe the arguments in the books on the right side, you probably should broaden your reading. The list of books was put together via my own personal reading and recommendations from others.

Article Pairings — On a variety of topics I have compiled collections of articles representing the most compelling left-of-center arguments and the most compelling right-of-center arguments. Again, I want to make it easy for people to at least be aware of the evidence and arguments produced by the other side. The article pairings section covers fewer topics right now, but I may continue to add topics over time.

I hope that you find these new sections both useful and worth sharing.

Crime rates in many northern and western American cities skyrocketed during the middle of the 20th century. Here is a table showing the change in homicide rates. Keep in mind, the low homicide rates of the 1910s were before the invention of antibiotics, modern surgery, or wound sterilization techniques!

In addition to rising crime, these cities suffered from an increase in single parent families, joblessness, drug abuse, riots, disorderly schools, and boarded up buildings. You can read narrative descriptions of the situation in books such as American Millstone, Ghettoside, or The Corner. When comparing these modern descriptions of the the ghetto to the muckracking accounts of early 1900s such as How the Other Half Lives or Land of the Dollar, the modern ghettos seem to have much more social dysfunction.

For a video portrayal of the decline, here is Detroit before:

And after:

For a quick narrative account of urban decay, here is an exceprt from an interview of two young Mormon missionaries living in Detroit:

“Nothing surprises us anymore,” Porter [one of the Mormon missionaries] says, smiling. “Back where I’m from, you didn’t get a lot of the things that go on here — gunshots a lot, peeing in public, you see fights, drug deals go down. I remember back home I never saw that. I don’t know; it’s pretty funny.” Moments later, six quick gunshots pop off a block or two away. His face lights up. “There you go!” he says excitedly.

Walking through blown-out neighborhoods has its perils. “The other day we got robbed,” Sturzenegger says. “A guy came up with a gun, actually pointed it to us, but you know it’s funny ’cause we’ve heard other things happen to just regular people around here, they get shot afterwards, but to us that didn’t happen; the guy just took the money, just four bucks, so it was cool.”

“Yeah, we’re poor anyways,” Elder Porter adds, laughing.

They and their fellow elders in Detroit have been attacked by wild dogs, shot at and robbed. They’ve developed a calm fearlessness, earned by time on the streets and emboldened by the conviction that they are being protected from above. During the spring, someone stole their bikes right in front of them. Porter gave chase, found out where the thieves lived from an elderly neighborhood snoop who tipped him off, went to that house and personally took the bikes back. “It was amazing,” he says, grinning.

Our question is thus: what caused this rise in crime and urban decay?

The most upvoted answer on the /r/AskHistorians thread blames deindustrialization, surbanization, and racial segregation:

Deindustrialization and Suburbanization. …As Asia and Europe rebuilt from the war, technology advanced, and America suburbanized, factory jobs moved out of major cities…. As the jobs evaporated, tensions rose. People had left their lives behind in pursuit of jobs which no longer existed, and now they had nothing to do to provide for themselves or their families. They also had nowhere to go. Even blue-collar, affordable suburbs were off-limits due to persistent racism both on the part of real estate developers and neighbors, who would sometimes violently convince African-Americans trying to move in that they weren’t going to stand for it…People with nothing to do and nowhere to go tend to turn to crime. The race riots, crime wave, huge growth of gangs, crack epidemic–I would argue they all had the same root cause, which was the economic desolation of the inner city.

Another commenter adds in:

Don’t forget to mention the practice of blockbusting. Real estate agents would scare whites in urban neighborhoods into thinking that the neighborhood was “becoming black.” Sometimes, they would accomplish this by actually selling a house in the neighborhood to a black family. Sufficiently scared, the white families would sell their houses for below-market prices and move to the suburbs.

The answer given by these two commenters is the answer I was taught when I was in university. My college was in an old American industrial city afflicted with urban decay. Understanding the decline of the city was a keen interest of mine. I took several classes on the subject, did much independent reading, interned at city hall working on economic development, and volunteered in local non-profits.

But since I graduated, I have done more reading and research, and was exposed to viewpoints that were never included in my class reading lists. And as I have read, it became more and more obvious that the standard academic narrative was simply wrong. Statistics, memoirs, and ethnography all contradicted the mainstream view. The problem with blaming the rise on crime as being caused by middle-class people leaving, is that the crime came first. While there was a gradual move of whites from the city to the suburbs starting the 1950s, this flow turned into a flood only after rising violence.

Let us start with the statistics first.

From the 1940s to the 1980s, two trends occurred. The demographics of major northern cities such as Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia, St. Louis, etc, went from 5-20% black to 40-80% black. At the same time, homicide rates rose by an order of magnitude – from around 5 per 100,000 to 20-80 per 100,000.

If job loss and deindustrialization caused the homicide spike, we should expect black populations in these cities to have a low homicide rate in the 1940s and 1950s and then a ten-times higher homicide rate in the 1980s, after the job loss.

But that is not the case – the homicide rates in black populations were high all along. At least half of the 1,000% increase in crime can be explained purely by the statistics of composition. If you have group A that commits crime at 35 per 100,000, and group B that commits crime at 2 per 100,000, and if your population goes from 10% to 60% A, then homicide rates will go from ~5 to ~20.

The problem of high homicide rates among black Americans did not start only after they moved to the city and white people left the city. The problem goes back all the way to the years after the Civil War. Nor are the high crime-rates among black people in the south a myth of neo-Confederate historians – it is documented and undisputed by many liberal and African-American historians.

Nicholas Lemann wrote in his award winning book The Promised Land:

It is clear that whatever the cause of its differentness, black sharecropper society on the eve of the introduction of the mechanical cotton picker was the equivalent of big-city ghetto society today in many ways. It was the national center of illegitimate childbearing and of the female-headed family. It had the worst public education system in the country, the one whose students were most likely to leave school before finishing and most likely to be illiterate even if they did finish. It had an extemely high rate of violent crime: in 1933, the six states with the highest murder rates were all in the South, and most of the murders were black-on-black. Sexually transmitted disease and substance abuse were nationally known as special problems of the black rural South; home-brew whiskey was much more physically perilous than crack cocaine is today, if less addictive, and David Cohn reported that blacks were using cocaine in the towns of the Delta before World War II.

In the 1910s, Raymond Fosdick, a Princeton graduate and city investigator, was hired by John Rockefeller Jr to study both European and American police systems. He wrote a report Crime in America and the Police which is very much worth reading today. In every city where he looked up the statistics – Chicago, Washington DC, Memphis, St. Louis – the rate of felony homicide arrests for blacks was 5 to 20 times greater for blacks than for whites.

In 1904, WEB Du Bois sat as secretary at conference in Atlanta about crime in Georgia. The conference resolved:

The Ninth Atlanta Conference, after a study of crime among Negroes in Georgia, has come to these conclusions: 1. The amount of crime among Negroes in this state is very great. This is a dangerous and threatening phenomenon. It means that large numbers of the freedmen’s sons have not yet learned to be law-abiding citizens and steady workers, and until they do so the progress of the race, of the South, and of the nation will be retarded….

One of the conference goers made a statement:

That crime and vagrancy should follow emancipation was inevitable. A nation cannot systematically degrade labor without in some degree debauching the laborer. But there can be no doubt that the indiscriminate method by which Southern courts dealt with the freedmen after the war increased crime and vagabondage to an enormous extent. There are no reliable statistics to which one can safely appeal to measure exactly the growth of crime among the emancipated slaves. About seventy percent of all prisoners in the South are black; this, however, is in part explained by the fact that accused Negroes are still easily convicted and get long sentences, while whites still continue to escape the penalty of many crimes even among themselves. And yet, allowing for all this there can be no reasonable doubt but that there has arisen in the South since the war a class of black criminals, loafers and ne’er-do-wells who are a menace to their fellows, both black and white.

Another Southern writer described his own perceptions, also in 1904:

Twenty five years ago women went unaccompanied and unafraid throughout the South as they still go throughout the North. Today no white woman or girl or female child goes alone out of sight of the house except on necessity, and no man leaves his wife alone in his house if he can help it. Cases have occurred of assault and murder in broad day within sight and sound of the victim’s home.

W.E.B. Du Bois himself acknowledged the problem of crime in his 1899 book The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study:

In the city of Philadelphia the increasing number of bold and daring crimes committed by Negroes in the last ten years has focused the attention of the city on this subject. There is a widespread feeling that something is wrong with a race that is responsible for so much crime, and that strong remedies are called for. One has but to visit the corridors of the public buildings, when the courts are in session, to realize the part played in law-breaking by the Negro population. The various slum centres of the colored criminal population have lately been the objects of much philanthropic effort, and the work there has aroused discussion. Judges on the bench have discussed the matter. Indeed, to the minds of many, this is the real Negro problem…

That it is a vast problem a glance at statistics will show; and since 1880 it has been steadily growing….It seems plain in the first place that the 4 percent of the population of Philadelphia having Negro blood furnished from 1885 to 1889, 14 per cent of the serious crimes, and from 1890 to 1895, 22.5 percent….It has been charged by some Negroes that color prejudice plays some part, but there is no tangible proof of this, save perhaps that there is apt to be a certain presumption of guilt when a Negro is accused, on the part of police, public and judge. All these considerations somewhat modify our judgment of the moral status of the mass of Negroes. And yet, with all allowances, there remains a vast problem of crime.

In the Philadelphia of 1950, before white flight and employer flight, the black homicide rate was around 23 per 100,000 while for whites it was around 2 per 100,000.

Overall, here is a plot of the homicide rate versus the percentage black population of the city, using cities across the country, sampled at many points of time over the 20th century (from William Stuntz’s The Collapse of American Criminal Justice):

So what actually happened to transform these cities?

In the middle of the 20th century there was the Great Migration of blacks from the south to take advantage of manufacturing jobs. As manufacturing employment saturated, the northern cities continued to attract migrants by offering very generous welfare payments. Black people often moved north and then soon went on public assistance, and were converted into a voting block for the local politicians. Lait and Mortimer wrote in their 1950 book Chicago Confidential (their ‘Confidential’ series of books were sort of 1950s equivalent of the today’s Vice Travel guides. The books are more salacious, but often more honest and accurate, than the more mainstream press):

One of the greatest mass movements of humanity in the history of our country took place during the last war, when some 2,000,000 rural Negroes left the South to glean the swollen wages of the war plants in the industrial North. Chicago was the nearest Golconda, easiest to reach. It got the biggest share in the scramble. How many is not known and may never be known.

That many of these were proselyted, much like the Puerto Ricans were induced to flock to Manhatttan is definite. Democrats below the Mason and Dixon Line were a dime a dozen. Chicago often went Republican and Illinois generally did. The New Deal needed Illinois. It turned the tide in Chicago with new Negro votes and in time Chicago turned the state, took it away from the G.O.P..

…

Into mansions and terrace apartment buildings, on boulevards, parkways, and leafy avenues, flooded the thousands whose backs were weary of picking cotton and herding hogs, of being an inferior people often by law as well as social and financial opportunity. Bronzeville became a Negro heaven. Nowhere in the nation were Negroes so well off, so well treated and so well housed.

…

During the war, when the Chicago labor shortage was more severe than in most places because of the diversity of her plants and her unequaled transportation setup, it was not unique for a farmhand who had never owned $10 at one time to earn $200 a week with overtime. This started the Bronzeville boom, with its drinking and doping and the resultant laxities that blossomed into flagrant vice.

Most of these people had left behind them the influences which they had come to respect, in entirely different conditions. The problems attending migration from rural areas proved particularly acute with the youth. To get the swollen ages, the parents left their children largely to themselves, and they went wild. When the layoffs came, the children had been up North long enough to refuse the conditions of ordinary living, such as most Negroes in this country are accustomed to. Vice and crime were easy money. Politicians had discovered that they could remain in office indefinitely by buying the votes of entire large segments of the population. Newly arrived Negroes, not allowed to vote where they were born and raised, were easily organized by astute professionals, black and white, and bribed, with money and immunity, to ballot in blocs. They were encouraged to send for more of their people and special cheap rates were procured to bring them on. As the voters began to realize what was being done with them, they held out somewhat and new consideration was flaunted to them: jobs. Government, state, county, city jobs, and when these began to run out, private jobs. Whereas in New York the social do-gooders and the radical newspapers have fought long and with little effect to open the doors for other than menial work to Negroes, in Chicago the politicians themselves took up the causes, and they didn’t plead, they demanded.

Employers need licenses, signs, porticos, immunity for petty violations, and what not, for which they must get their alderman’s say so. They can be ruined with high assessments (in Illinois there is a personal property as well as real estate and business tax, which is juggled and is brought very close to individuals)….Word was brought impressively to employers in wholesale, retail, public utility, and other institutions of trade that they had better take on Negroes, and not only as porters and elevator operators. This was exercised not only by the Negro politicians. They had become a major factor in the election of higher white candidates. These orders came from up above.

The economic need for more Negroes in Chicago had passed. The stockyards, common labor, house servants, and restaurant workers were in competitive fields. But there was a desparate political need. As more Negroes were colonized from the South, more were placed on relief immediately – often illegally – and the trickle of employment by persuasive blackmail never stopped. The Negroes began to enter the underworld life, not in a spirit of mischief and high binges but for direct financial results.

…

Many of the liquor joints are owned by white outsiders who pay Negro managers to front and represent themselves as owners. In that way, when a license is revoked, the ostensible Negro owner can have it restored where a white man wouldn’t have a chance. This sets up again the phenomenon of the Negro in the political position of the “master race.”

There are many instances, not surreptitious, which can prove this. Chicago’s tax ordinances, like New York’s, forbid more than one party riding in a cab. This is enforced except as to cabs owned by Negroes and driven by Negroes, who many carry as many riders as they wish and pick them up when their cabs are not filled. Many act as jitneys, cruising boulevards and taking fares at 15 cents, also forbidden by law. Cops have learned not to bother Negro cab drivers on these or other traffic violations. They don’t want to tangle with Dawson.

At the same time government efforts worked to break down segregation and move blacks into white neighborhoods and schools. This may sound contradictory to the standard history, in which we learn that red-lining and housing project selection was used to keep blacks out of the white suburbs. But there is no contradiction. Both happened. Before World War II, virtually all neighborhoods were segregated by ethnicity. Whether it be due to laws, convenants, informal violence, or personal cultural affinity – in most cities blacks, Irish, Poles, Jews, Italians, all lived in their own neighorhoods, rarely stepping foot in the turf of another ethnicity. After World War II, blacks were integrated into white neighborhoods in the city, and kept out of white neighborhoods in the suburbs.

As Michael Jones notes in his book Slaughter of the Cities, much is written about the FHA and red-lining, while the USHA efforts to integrate are forgotten:

The FHA was every bit as much a part of the federal government as the USHA, but they pursued diametrically opposed policies when it came to race. Whereas the USHA was adamant in pursuing an aggressive policy of integration in every project it funded in every city where they got built, the FHA pursued an equally aggressive policy of racial segregation, refusing to guarantee loans in areas where there was even a threat of racial mixing, no matter how high the quality of the housing stock.

By the early 1970s the FHA changed policy and lavished loans on black people moving into white neighborhoods in Chicago and other American cities:

“In 1972, in Chicago and in every other city in the nation, almost anyone could get a home mortgage, including borrowers who didn’t earn enough to pay them off, on just about any house, for any reason. … And just like the recent adventure in lending beyond any rational limits, the mortgage disaster of the early 1970s was born from a lofty ideological conviction that enabled the basest of crimes and most foolish of gambles under its cover, insulated from almost any scrutiny until the damage was already done.” …Across the country, neighborhood destruction became a booming business, financed by the federal government. In Chicago they called it ‘panic peddling.’ In New York, it was ‘blockbusting.’ … The FHA-insured loans threw gasoline on that smoldering fire. … Indeed, the insurance made it profitable to seek out the most impoverished and unreliable borrowers, since the sooner a borrower defaulted on a loan, the more quickly the lender would get paid back in full by FHA. (Our Lot , Katz)

Other integration efforts included: the 1948 Shelley v. Kraemer case banning the enforcement of racial covenents; 1954 Brown decision banning school segregation; the Green v. New Kent decision requiring cities to take affirmative measures to racially balance schools; the many local court orders forcing school busing; the 1968 Fair Housing act; and the various acts in the 1970s that tried to ban formal and informal red-lining.

There were also many local efforts to move blacks into white neighborhoods. Chicago’s infamous Cabrini Green project was built in an Italian neighborhood. As Michael Jones notes: “The Defender [a black newspaper] hailed the rapid integration of the area and proclaimed, over optimistically that Little Hell was become a ‘seventh Heaven’ for blacks.” The Philadelphia Housing Authority built the Raymond Rosen Homes and Schuylkill Falls as mixed-race housing projects, one in a black neighborhood, one in a white neighborhood. In Boston, the B-Burg lending program gave subsidized mortgages to black families from Roxbury to move into Jewish/white Dorchester.

It is not entirely clear what the motives were of the political leaders pushing these projects. Certainly, some earnestly believed in the idea of integration being good for all. But Michael Jones argues in his Slaughter of the Cities that the WASP elite at the time had more cynical reasons. In his account the elite feared the political, social, and demographic power of the ethnic, Catholic Poles and Irish. The W.A.S.P.’s elite wanted to obliterate the ethnic white tribal identity by breaking up their neighborhoods.

When the black population moved into white areas, whites noticed a stark rise in crime and disorder. In response, numerous whites would fight back and shout slurs. This lead to a hardening of feelings on both sides. At the same time, both white leftist elites and black leaders started pushing black power. This era saw the rise of Malcolm X preaching about “white devils.” It saw the rise of the Black Panthers, Nation of Islam, the Black Liberation Army, the Family, and the Symbionese Liberation Army.

One white civil rights activist recounts going to racial justice meetings in 1967:

In those terrible days of open conflict, I was being taken into the inner cities, usually by black militants, as an observer. I hardly ever opened my mouth. The day was past when black people wanted any advice from white men. I was taken in simply to view it from the inside, so that in the event we did come to open genocidal conflict, there would be someone to give another view of history. And another view I got. I attended enraged meetings where black men, women, children, students discussed their experiences. Everyone was saying the turmoil was the work of young blacks. That was not true. Middle-aged and elderly black people attended those meetings everywhere, and burned with rage. In Wichita, Kansas, I heard a young college student say the kinds of things that were being said in all the cities. He recounted an injustice done him in that community. He showed wounds where he had been beaten by white men.

“We’ve tried everything decent,” he said loudly.

“Yes,” the audience responded. “Yes. Who can doubt that?”

“We asked for justice and they fed us committees,” he shouted.

“Yes.”

“They’ve even got committees to decide how much self- determination we’re going to have.”

“Take ten!” someone shouted from the back of the room.

“Take ten!” a few responded.

After he had spoken, the young man came over to my chair, almost sobbing with frustration. He looked into my eyes with eyes that were wild with anguish and whispered while we shook hands, “When you go back, will you do me a favor?”

“Yes, if I can,” I said. “When you go back out there, will you tell your friend, Jesus Christ, and your friend, Martin Luther King - ‘shit!’” He spat out the word with the deepest despair I have ever heard in a human voice.

On the streets, young black men would call out, “Take ten!” to one another. Whites thought they were talking about a ten- minute coffee break. What they were really saying was that this country was moving toward the destruction of black people, and since the proportion was ten whites to every black, then black men should take ten white lives for every black life taken by white men. ( John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me)

In this atmosphere, some young black men started deliberately preying upon the white folks who lived near by. Those whites who could afford to, fled to the suburbs to escape the violence. As the numbers turned, the remaining whites were outnumbered, and they too eventually fled, often at great financial loss.

The above story is repeated over-and-over again, in memoirs and ethnographies.

Jonathan Reider, a Yale educated liberal sociology professor, did an ethnography of Canarsie, Brooklyn to try and understand why the working class residents had started voting Republican. He found that the residents were terrified of (black) crime:

Canarsie suffered a rise in burglaries and muggings in the late 1970s, but most local police considered the neighborhood relatively safe. However, the residents could not sequester themselves away from the rest of the metropolis. They lived next door to some of the highest crime areas in the entire city. To work, to visit, and to shop, they had to travel back and forth through the city, and their mobility made them vulnerable to attack.

I met few residents who were strangers to street crime. If they had not been victimized, usually only one link in the chain of intimacy separated them from the victims-kin, neighbors, and friends. Canarsians spoke about crime with more unanimity than they achieved on any other subject, and they spoke often and forcefully. Most had a favorite story of horror. A trucker remembered defecating in his pants a few years earlier when five black youths cornered him in an elevator and placed a knifeblade against his throat. “They got two hundred dollars and a gold watch. They told me, `Listen you white motherfucker, you ain’t calling the law.’ I ran and got in my car and set off the alarm. A group of blacks got around the car. If anybody made a move, I’d have run them over. The police came and we caught one of them. The judge gave them a fucking two-year probation.” The experience left an indelible imprint. He still relived the humiliation of soiling himself.

…

In Canarsie High School, violence between the races had broken the peace recurrently since the school was completed in the 1960s. By 1977 the student population was 27 percent black. The school was not a wildly dangerous place, nor did antagonism prevent friendships from forming across the barrier of race, and students were not all equally likely to become embroiled in disputes. Yet the mixing of adolescent boys from different economic and racial backgrounds grounds created a tinderbox in which a simple dispute could turn into full-fledged racial war. In the absence of agreement on territorial rights, hostile factions vied for primacy in hallways, classrooms, stairwells, bathrooms, the lunchroom, playgrounds, and exits. Italian boys often inveighed against the incursion of blacks, and their gait and mien….

Nodding off in a drug-induced haze, one youth slurred:

The blacks are trying to take over Canarsie High School. The teachers are afraid of them. That’s why the whites get blamed for every little thing. I seen Roots, man, you know, I say it’s not really our fault in a way, ’cause it was really the English who tortured them. The nig*ers hint it to you, like you’re responsible. In history class we talked about it. They just look at you and start talking about Roots, “these honkies this” and “these honkies that.” They shouldn’t have put the blacks in slavery then. They should do it now! Keep ’em in hand!

…

After a flurry of muggings by black youths around the subway station near the low-income project, the residents were especially unnerved…One evening dozens of people crowded into a synagogue basement to discuss the muggins. The rabbi sermonized, "…Five blacks broke the ribs and shoulder bone of the last person who was attacked. The entire perimeter of the proejct has become hazardous….

…

Many Canarsian’s, concluding that vast stretches of Brooklyn had become dangerous places, nervously shifted their patterns of movement through the city or retreated into protective asylums…Whites ceded many areas of the city, but crime followed them into Canarsie. Social policy and administrative decisions, such as housing for the poor in middle income neighborhoods, school zoning and busing schemes, and inadaquate screening of public housing, increased the permeability of the community."

…

One police officer explained that he earned his living by getting mugged. On his roving beat he had been mugged hundreds of times in five years. “I only been mugged by a white buy one time. All right, one instance, I went to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. They got a huge mugging rate there. I was dressed like an old man, a scar on my face, a little blood dripping like I was just anaccident, a cast on my arm, wearing old clothes.” He had been out on the street for barely five or ten minutes when a band of black youths approached him. “First words I heard were, ‘Get the old white man.’ Somebody got around me, I got kicked, I got punched, one guy says, ‘Grab him, let’s take his wallet,’ I got stabbed in the hand. It was a savage thing. I also found that it was because I was white. ‘Look at the old white guy’, ‘Let’s get the old white guy,’ ‘Get the fucking white scumbag.’ What the hell does ‘white’ mean?”

Moving on to Baltimore, one man who grew up there during the 1960’s describes his own experience of “white flight”:

An urban myth tries to explain what happened when the black families moved into those newly emptied houses. The following description also from BlackPast.org describes the currently accepted “truth”:

[The inflated cost of the suddenly available houses] placed an onerous burden on black homeowners. Already facing steep housing payments, they often found it difficult to get bank loans to make needed repairs on their new homes. Renters in these integrated enclaves faced similar difficulties, notably substandard living conditions imposed by slumlords who viewed these properties as expendable commodities ripe for exploitation. These problems exacerbated declining housing prices and equity loss.

That is exactly what everyone believes is an irrefutable truth, but I witnessed something different. Before the riots, my grandmother’s well-maintained neighborhood was a neighborhood of rose gardens and neighbors talking over the back fence, of bakeries and a walk to the local church on Sundays, of kids playing baseball in the side streets and the local family dog getting scraps from everyone up and down the block.

In less than a year, it no longer looked familiar. There were boarded-up windows and scary guys hanging on corners, trash in the alleys and chained dogs surrounded by piles of excrement in backyards, loud porch parties and screeching children fighting on the front street.

My parents watched a young teen take a baseball bat to the uprights on the railing of the front porch across the street, a bat he used to systematically smash each upright until the porch looked like a mouth of broken and twisted teeth. This was not slumlord neglect, but purposeful destruction of a recently beautiful neighborhood.

Then the bullets came through my grandparents’ front bedroom window one night, hitting the wall just above their bed. Fear made my grandparents flee, too. The agent who bought the house for far less than it was worth advised my father to take the newel post statuette and the stained glass over the front door and windows, because they would be destroyed shortly after the house was occupied. Destruction of those beautiful Art Deco architectural elements is exactly what happened not much later.

…

Students from poor black schools were bused to white, middle-class schools miles away from their neighborhoods, homes, and experiences. White middle-class students were bused to poor black schools also miles away from their neighborhoods, homes, and experiences.

This was supposed to equalize everything, but you cannot force people from either neighborhood to change overnight. The clashes were inevitable. Tough kids from poor neighborhoods used to the life on the streets bullied and beat up the middle-class kids who had no idea how to respond, at least at the junior high level.

After months of my brothers and sister getting attacked, the final straw for my parents came one day when my little brother, a sweet, rather sickly little boy, was playing in the alley where we all played. He was riding his Big Wheel up and down behind the house. My mother periodically checked on him from the kitchen window. Then he didn’t pass by for a bit, and she went looking for him.

They kept poking him with sticks and shoving his Big Wheel with their foot, saying, ‘What you gonna do, white boy?’

She found him surrounded by several junior-high-age students who had been bused to the neighborhood school but were playing hooky. They would not let him go home. They kept poking him with sticks and shoving his Big Wheel with their foot, saying, “What you gonna do, white boy?” My mother found him choking in tears and now utterly afraid of a neighborhood that until that day had been utterly safe.

In Philadelphia, one man (Kevin Purcell) wrote a memoir of his time growing up, as the neighborhood turned from white to black. There are many comments in the Amazon reviews, saying, “I grew up near by, I had the same experiences.”

Early in the book, Purcell describes his first experience being accosted when traveling through a neighborhood block that was becoming black:

When we walked past the supermarket, I saw a few black people mixed in with all the white people who were shopping. I never used to see black people in this area. But now the area near 54th Street was one of the first parts of our neighborhood where a lot of white families were moving out, and a lot of black families were moving in. Two of my friends from Most Blessed Sacrament School (MBS) who lived in this area moved out last year. Both of their families moved to the suburbs. And both of their houses were bought by black families.

Once in a while, I’d hear about fights breaking out in the 54th Street area between black kids and white kids. But all the stories I heard involved older teenagers. I figured kids our age had nothing to worry about. So as we made our way to Tip O’Leary’s, our only care in the world was hoping we could find John Smith sneaks in our size.

The second we set foot outside Tip O’Leary’s store, we were surrounded by six or seven black kids who were a lot bigger and older than we were. A couple of them looked about 13 or 14 years old.

The biggest kid said, “Hand over your sneaks, all y’all.”

I was stunned. We were actually being robbed. I had no idea what to do. I looked over at my brother Joe, who was definitely a lot crazier than me and Larry. Joe lifted his bag up toward the kids as if he was going to hand his sneaks over. Then he swung the bag toward the faces of two of the black kids and yelled, “Run!”

And run we did. The three of us sprinted down Chester Avenue toward 55th Street. As we were running, I could see there were still lots of people out shopping up ahead. If we can make it to 55th Street, I thought to myself, we’ll be safe. When we got to 55th Street, I looked back. Sure enough, the kids had stopped chasing us.

I decided right then and there I was not going back to the 54th Street area any time soon. When we got home, we told Mom what happened. She wanted to call the cops. We tried to convince her not to. She finally agreed, saying, “Okay, but you’re not going over to 54th Street again without me or Dad.”

The situation gradually escalated. Some white teenagers chased away some black teens who were trying to play at “their” playground. And then the blacks came back a few weeks later to counter-attack:

The next day, the same six black kids came back to Myers playground. They played basketball for about an hour, and then they left. After they left, I could tell some of the older white guys were getting pissed off that these black kids were playing basketball in Myers playground.

“Why the fuck they have to come here?” I overheard one of the older guys say.

Then another one said, “This is our playground. They got their own fucking playground down on 49th Street.”

He was talking about the playground on 49th and Kingsessing Avenue. I was never in that playground. But every time I’d ride by it on the “13” trolley, most of the people hanging out there were black. So I guess he was right, there was a playground for blacks at 49th Street. Still, it would be a long walk from 58th Street all the way to 49th Street just to play some basketball, especially when there were some empty courts during the day right here at Myers playground.

The following day, the same six black kids came back to Myers playground again….All of a sudden, I heard four or five bursts of glass shattering behind me in the basketball courts. I quickly turned around and saw about 10 older white kids chasing after the six black kids. At first, the black kids looked stunned. Then they took off running, jumped over the short fence, and continued out onto Kingsessing Avenue toward 58th Street. They even left their basketball behind.

After the black kids were out of sight, one of the older guys yelled, “This is our playground. We don’t want no fucking nig*ers around here.”

I didn’t like seeing those black kids getting chased away like that. Just three weeks earlier, at Tip O’Leary’s, it was me and my brothers who were outnumbered and being chased. I didn’t like that feeling. And I didn’t like seeing anybody, black or white, have to feel the same way.

I was glad none of the black kids got hurt. But I had a feeling they wouldn’t be coming back. And they didn’t come back the next day, or the next, or the next. Little did I know that, when they would return, they’d return with a vengeance.

…

Our team was playing the late game on the baseball field closest to 59th and Chester Avenue, farthest away from the basketball courts. I forget what inning it was, probably the sixth or seventh because the sky was starting to get dark. Our team was up to bat. I wasn’t scheduled to bat that inning, so I was sitting on the team bench. Suddenly, I heard loud screams coming from the other baseball field, the one closest to the basketball courts. I looked up and saw about 20 black people, both teenagers and adults, swinging belts and broom handles and throwing bottles and rocks at the mostly white people who had been watching the game from the metal bleachers, but were now running for cover.

Within minutes, cop cars with sirens blaring raced into Myers playground through both the Kingsessing Avenue and Chester Avenue entrances. The black guys tried to get away, and most of them did. Two were caught and arrested. Later, when things had settled down, I overheard two older white kids talking:

“Some of those younger nig*ers looked like the kids we chased off the basketball courts last week,” one older white kid said.

“Yeah, I think it was them,” said the other, “they looked real familiar.”

…

Before that fight at Myers playground, there were already a lot of “For Sale” signs on most streets in the area. After the fight, it seemed like there were twice as many. I guess a lot of people decided they’d seen enough. They were moving out.

As soon as I walked through the alley to Alden Street, I couldn’t miss the huge moving van parked outside the Jordon’s house, completely blocking the narrow, When I walked to the Jordon’s house to say goodbye, both parents had a redness around their eyes. It looked like they’d both been crying. The Jordons were the third family in the Cecil Street area who’d moved out in the past couple of months. All three times, I noticed that the parents seemed to be upset about leaving. And their kids were usually even more upset. About a month earlier, I saw two of the McSorley brothers crying on the day they were moving out. They were about eight and nine years old, and they obviously didn’t want to move. No kid in his right mind would want to move out of this neighborhood. Each time I saw a family moving out, I thought to myself, If they’re that upset about moving out, then why are they moving in the first place? After all, things still weren’t too bad in our section of the neighborhood. I was glad we weren’t moving.

As more white families moved out, the situation became much worse for Purcell and other whites who remained:

Our little corner of Myers playground, near 59th and Chester Avenue, was the only part of the playground where we could still hang out. Black kids were now hanging out on the basketball courts and every other part of the playground, even near the Old House. We were more outnumbered than ever before, especially now that more white kids than ever had gone down to the Jersey shore for the summer….And this year, a few of the guys, including my friend Chris, were sent away for the summer to live with relatives. Chris was spending the summer with his cousins down the shore. A lot of parents were trying to find any way possible to get their kids out of this neighborhood that was getting more and more dangerous by the day. Because so few of us were hanging out in our little corner of Myers playground, we would often get attacked by black kids throwing rocks and bottles. We’d fight back for a while. But we were usually so outnumbered we’d have to retreat down Chester Avenue toward 60th Street, which was still a mostly white area. It was easy to see that Myers playground was not going to be a safe place to hang out that summer.

During that summer, there were times I found myself thinking about our situation compared to what I used to think our lives would be like as 12-year-olds. I expected we’d all be playing in summer baseball and basketball leagues at Myers playground every night. I expected we’d all be hanging out in the playground with a big group of guys and girls, flirting with each other and doing other normal stuff most kids our age were doing. I never expected this. I never expected that all the baseball and basketball summer leagues at Myers playground would be cancelled because of all the racial trouble. I never expected that we’d have nowhere to even play basketball anymore. Every time we tried to play on the outside courts at Myers, we’d get attacked. So we didn’t even bother trying. Man, did I miss playing basketball.

A few years later Kevin’s friend Doug was set upon and murdered while walking home from playing basketball:

What made Doug’s death even harder to accept was this: Doug and Tommy never hung out with us on weekends, or were part of our so-called “gang.” Doug worked a lot of hours at the beer distributor. I think Tommy had a job, too. They were just two nice kids who loved to play basketball with the boys in MBS gym. Nobody deserved to die that way. But Doug was probably the least deserving of all.

And I never saw Tommy again after the night Doug was killed. No one did. I heard his family moved him out of the neighborhood the very next day. In fact, after Doug’s death, there were four or five white kids from the neighborhood I never saw again.

My thoughts ranged from seeking revenge to a desire to get the hell out of this neighborhood. My anger grew deeper on the night of Doug’s viewing. His viewing was at a popular funeral home near 53rd and Chester Avenue. Nearly all the families living in that area now were black. Dozens of us lined the sidewalk outside the funeral home as we waited to say our final goodbyes.

All of a sudden, we heard the voices of a group of black kids from a half-block away. They were laughing and yelling at us.

One yelled, “Y’all goin’ to see the dead honky!”

A couple others kept chanting, “Dead honky! Dead honky!”

A bunch of us tried to go after them, but the cops held us back as the black kids scattered.

After Doug’s death, Mom and Dad were more determined than ever to move us out of the neighborhood. But they still couldn’t sell our house. And if they couldn’t sell our house, we couldn’t move. It was that simple. In the seven months our house had been up for sale, no one had come to look at it. Mom was so frustrated. To make matters even worse, Mom told me the realtor gave her some bad news. The realtor told Mom that, even if he found a buyer, our house was now only worth about $3,500. Mom was hoping she could get $6,000, which was still less than the $7,000 Mom and Dad paid for the house back in 1956. right a few years earlier when they kept calling Mom, warning her that if she didn’t sell her house soon, she wouldn’t get much money for it later.

Purcell’s story contradicts the narrative that white people were primarily enticed out of the city by government subdized mortgages. Many of the people did not want to leave and suffered considerable financial losses when they did leave. Nor is blaming the block busting real estate agents sufficient – block busting only worked because the threats were backed by real violence. Blame the block busters, but also blame the people perpertrating and enabling the violence.

Norman Podhoretz grew up in a Jewish family in Brownsville, Brooklyn. His “family was leftist, with his elder sister joining a socialist youth movement.” He later went to Columbia and became a leading neo-conservative thinker. His experiences growing up were central to his rejection of the leftist worldview. He wrote about these experiences in a 1963 essay My Negro Problem and Ours:

Two ideas puzzled me deeply as a child growing up in Brooklyn during the 1930’s in what today would be called an integrated neighborhood. One of them was that all Jews were rich; the other was that all Negroes were persecuted. These ideas had appeared in print; therefore they must be true.

And so for a long time I was puzzled to think that Jews were supposed to be rich when the only Jews I knew were poor, and that Negroes were supposed to be persecuted when it was the Negroes who were doing the only persecuting I knew about—and doing it, moreover, to me. During the early years of the war, when my older sister joined a left-wing youth organization, I remember my astonishment at hearing her passionately denounce my father for thinking that Jews were worse off than Negroes. To me, at the age of twelve, it seemed very clear that Negroes were better off than Jews—indeed, than all whites. A city boy’s world is contained within three or four square blocks, and in my world it was the whites, the Italians and Jews, who feared the Negroes, not the other way around. The Negroes were tougher than we were, more ruthless, and on the whole they were better athletes.

The orphanage across the street is torn down, a city housing project begins to rise in its place, and on the marvelous vacant lot next to the old orphanage they are building a playground. Much excitement and anticipation as Opening Day draws near. Mayor LaGuardia himself comes to dedicate this great gesture of public benevolence. He speaks of neighborliness and borrowing cups of sugar, and of the playground he says that children of all races, colors, and creeds will learn to live together in harmony. A week later, some of us are swatting flies on the playground’s inadequate little ball field. A gang of Negro kids, pretty much our own age, enter from the other side and order us out of the park. We refuse, proudly and indignantly, with superb masculine fervor. There is a fight, they win, and we retreat, half whimpering, half with bravado. My first nauseating experience of cowardice. And my first appalled realization that there are people in the world who do not seem to be afraid of anything, who act as though they have nothing to lose. Thereafter the playground becomes a battleground, sometimes quiet, sometimes the scene of athletic competition between Them and Us. But rocks are thrown as often as baseballs. Gradually we abandon the place and use the streets instead. The streets are safer, though we do not admit this to ourselves. We are not, after all, sissies—that most dreaded epithet of an American boyhood.

Item: I am standing alone in front of the building in which I live. It is late afternoon and getting dark. That day in school the teacher had asked a surly Negro boy named Quentin a question he was unable to answer. As usual I had waved my arm eagerly (“Be a good boy, get good marks, be smart, go to college, become a doctor”) and, the right answer bursting from my lips, I was held up lovingly by the teacher as an example to the class. I had seen Quentin’s face—a very dark, very cruel, very Oriental-looking face—harden, and there had been enough threat in his eyes to make me run all the way home for fear that he might catch me outside.

Now, standing idly in front of my own house, I see him approaching from the project accompanied by his little brother who is carrying a baseball bat and wearing a grin of malicious anticipation. As in a nightmare, I am trapped. The surroundings are secure and familiar, but terror is suddenly present and there is no one around to help. I am locked to the spot. I will not cry out or run away like a sissy, and I stand there, my heart wild, my throat clogged. He walks up, hurls the familiar epithet (“Hey, mo’f—r”), and to my surprise only pushes me. It is a violent push, but not a punch. A push is not as serious as a punch. Maybe I can still back out without entirely losing my dignity. Maybe I can still say, “Hey, c’mon Quentin, whaddya wanna do that for. I dint do nothin’ to you,” and walk away, not too rapidly. Instead, before I can stop myself, I push him back—a token gesture—and I say, “Cut that out, I don’t wanna fight, I ain’t got nothin’ to fight about.” As I turn to walk back into the building, the corner of my eye catches the motion of the bat his little brother has handed him. I try to duck, but the bat crashes colored lights into my head.

Moving on to the Dorchester neighborhood in Boston, Boston University professor Hillel Levine and Boston Globe journalist Lawrence Harmon, did a detailed history, based on hundreds of newspaper articles and interviews, on how that neighborhood went from all Jewish to all black in only a few years. A city initiative to increase mortgage access to blacks, lead to thousands of black families moving into Dorchester. Some residents fled immediately, others tried to be welcoming. But overall, there was an incredible amount of violence. Here are some excerpts from their book The Death of a Jewish Community:

Back in 1963 the Bernsteins and their two young children had outgrown their small North Dorchester apartment. It seemed logical to move a few blocks south to more expansive but still familiar Mattapan. Their two-family home on Ormond Street, near the top of the hill, provided a perfect balance between urban life and more pastoral pleasures. From the sun porch on the second floor, the couple could watch the bustle of Blue Hill Avenue. The pressures of the city, however, were easily forgotten when they retreated to their ample backyard for pleasant hours digging earth, spreading fertilizer, and planting grass seed. The Bernsteins thought they had it all. While just a stone’s throw from the Jewish shops and meeting places along the Avenue, they could still walk out their front door and be greeted by the lovely fragrance of their lilac bushes. Sumner Bernstein, a longtime city worker, had never put much stock in suburban master plans. For Bernstein, like thousands of other Mattapan residents, it was more important to have a ground floor apartment available for the comfort and security of aging parents.

On warm evenings the Bernsteins could be found sitting in their walkways on chaise lounges, nursing drinks and gossiping with friends. Janice Bernstein was a classic balabuste, a heavyset, energetic housewife with seemingly endless warmth and energy for her own family and the scores of neighborhood youngsters who passed through her kitchen.

…

It was while hanging out her laundry on a balmy summer day in 1967 that Bernstein overheard a neighbor, Jack Vetstein, discussing the formation of a new community group, the Mattapan Organization. Street crime had been increasing in recent months. Neighbors attributed the rise in purse snatchings and housebreaks to the movement of poor black families out of renewal areas in Roxbury into North Dorchester. Bernstein was discomforted by the conversation. She had lived on an integrated street in Dorchester and had little patience for those who sought to lay the world’s problems at the doorsteps of blacks. Like many of Boston’s Jews, she was familiar with the sting of antisemitism; it required only a small leap of her imagination to put herself in the place of an average black working family. She was wary, therefore, when her neighbor spoke of the need to prevent panic sales as blacks continued to seek housing further south down the Avenue. She felt more optimistic on learning that newly arriving black families also had shown interest in the fledgling Mattapan Organization and that the group was sponsored by religious groups in the area.

Unfortunately, as the neighborhood and the local school continued to transition, problems of crime and disorder became worse. The children her school went to – the Lewenberg – became infamous throughout the city for its disturbances. Janice Bernstein went from “baking cakes for her new black neighbors” to chasing their children with bats:

Throughout 1969 a school day [at the Lewenberg] rarely passed without violence or mayhem. City editors hungry to fill gaping holes in the newspaper knew that they could always pick up a story at the Lewenberg. On average, a reporter’s two-hour-long meandering in the Lewenberg revealed three fist-fights, a cafeteria food fight, a superficial injury to a teacher, and a host of exasperated quotes from shell-shocked administrators. None, however, ever reported that most rumored Lewenberg event: the sight of students hanging upside down from windows twenty feet above the schoolyard.

…

The mayhem was not confined to school grounds. At the end of the school day, the Lewenberg open-enrollment students burst down Wellington Hill toward Blue Hill Avenue. Nothing, it seemed, was safe along their path — tricycles were smashed and carefully planted rows of flowers were tramped upon; those unlucky enough to get caught in their path were fortunate to escape with just a shower of verbal abuse. Along the Avenue, vendors scurried to remove their goods from sidewalk stalls and dropped their iron grates before the Lewenberg wave broke over them. Those who moved too slow could expect to spend the next few hours salvaging fruit from overturned carts or trying to match left shoes with right.

…

Throughout 1969 the blockbusting of Mattapan and the crisis at the Lewenberg were taking their toll on Janice Bernstein. Once the first to arrive at the door of new neighbors with a platter of fruit, she had recently taken to walking the streets of her own neighborhood with her son’s Louisville Slugger baseball bat. Bernstein was particularly enraged by the school dropouts who had taken to lounging on the lawns in front of homes on Ormond Street and Outlook Road. The loud radios and litter were a constant annoyance to the homeowners. Requests to move off their property were generally met with profanity and insults. Calls to police assured nothing more than window breaking and increased harassment.

Like many white parents with children still at the Lewenberg School, Bernstein had taken to carpooling with friends: extortion and assaults had become too common to allow children to walk home from school. When it was Bernstein’s turn to drive, she frequently pulled up at a popular hamburger joint on Blue Hill Avenue at the foot of the hill where the kids could grab an afternoon snack. While waiting in the car for her son on a spring day in 1969, Bernstein noticed that he was being jostled as he stood in line for his milk shake. Three black youths, only a year or two older, bumped Bernstein’s son from side to side as he walked out to the parking lot. One assailant kicked the boy in the buttocks; amused, the other two quickly joined in. Bernstein had tried to teach her children self-reliance, but she was suddenly seized with a terrible fear that the incident would escalate beyond a schoolboy fight. Instinctively, she grabbed for the baseball bat at her feet and dashed toward the youths; they were at first startled and then amused by the large, red-faced woman, bat at the ready, who jumped from her car swearing and sputtering. Bernstein slowed her pace a few yards from the youths and raised the bat above her head. She remembers seeing red, literally: the three taunting youths appeared to be standing in a strange crimson glare. She was swearing heavily but felt a strange calm. “Come over here, you,” she called to each in turn. “Come over here.” The youths stood their ground, smiling inanely. “Stay there, then,” she said softly. “Just stay there.” Bernstein edged forward. She knew that the moment she was in reach of the first youth who had kicked her son she would take a full swing at him. Although the bat was still above her head, she could see the swing, could feel it connect. At that moment her gaze locked with that of one of the youths. The sight of the overweight housewife with the Louisville Slugger was no longer amusing — she had murder in her eye. The youth broke the spell and fled out of the parking lot onto Blue Hill Avenue, his companions right behind. Bernstein gave chase, sweat soaking through her dress. Long after the youths were out of reach, she continued the chase; Janice Bernstein, the welcome wagon lady on Wellington Hill, wanted to hurt someone.

…

If the blacks came to generalize Jews as slumlords, the Jews, particularly the elderly, perceived the black newcomers as violent criminals. Unsupervised youths cut a swath through the neighborhood and stunned the elderly Jews with the callousness of their crimes. A purse snatching on the Avenue was regularly followed with a knockdown and a sharp kick to the face. With the growing demands for black power and community control, many young black hoodlums fancied themselves as freedom fighters. An assault on an elderly pensioner was elevated to an attack on capitalism itself. Beating an old man on his way to an evening service at one of the Woodrow Avenue shuls and then yanking his pants down around his ankles translated as payback for hundreds of years of humiliating servitude. By 1966 the conversation at the G& G [Deli] was slowly turning from local politics to hospital updates for the latest mugging victim.

…

Stone listed crimes against Jewish residents and business owners, including the recent shootings of two drugstore owners and a fellow dentist. “The elderly Jews live in fear for their lives and they are not wrong,” Stone wrote. “I know because my office is in Dorchester and I have to repair their broken teeth. I see the closing of the drugstores because of firebombings and severe beatings of the owners… When I see these bumper stickers ‘Save Soviet Jewry,’ I can’t see why we don’t give out stickers to ‘help Mattapan Jewry.’ I feel they are just as bad off and a lot closer to home.”

…

In recent weeks scores of elderly Jews had been beaten and one had been shot. Each week an average of thirty elderly Jews in the neighborhood suffered assaults or robberies. Many knew of neighbors who no longer left their homes, not even to attend the morning or evening services required of the observant.

Moving on to Chicago, a writer describes how his wife’s family once tried to make a stand for integration – and failed:

As late as 1966, Austin [a working class neighborhood of Chicago] was all-white, with so little crime that my future wife walked a mile to first grade with her third grade sister every day. After school, the sidewalks of this neighborhood of three story condominiums were packed with children out playing while their mothers made dinner. (These days, when kids are chauffeured everywhere by their parents, the old Austin sounds like it was a paradise for both children and parents.)

After World War One, most blacks in Chicago had been restricted by chicanery and violence to living in a small, densely populated district on the South Side. This complete segregation broke down in the late 1950s. And then the increase in welfare payments in the progressive Illinois of the 1960s brought up from the rural South a lower class of blacks.

When Austin started to integrate around 1966, many of my in-laws` friends told them to sell out as soon as possible, before the neighborhood went all black.

But, as good liberals, my in-laws stood up for integration. And the first blacks moving in were middle class. So, they joined an anti-tipping liberal group of neighborhood home-owners started by fellow musician Father Edward McKenna—a composer who has written a couple of Irish-themed operas with librettos by Father Andrew Greeley. Members swore to each other they wouldn’t sell no matter how black the neighborhood got.

Well, the crime rate, which had been non-existent when the neighborhood was all white, started to soar. Housing prices fell, and soon the middle class blacks were selling out because underclass blacks were moving in. The members of the pro-integration group started to break their promises and move out. My in-laws stuck with their vows. But, then in 1968, rioters looted all the stores in the neighborhood after Martin Luther King was murdered. (My future wife called her mother to the window: “Hey, Mom! Look—free TVs! Let`s get some!” Her mother sent her to her room). And their small children, my future wife included, were mugged three times on their street.

So, my in-laws finally sold, losing about half of their life savings. They bought a farm 65 miles out of town, where they didn`t have indoor plumbing for their first two years of fixing it up.

Moving on to Detroit, journalist Ze’Ev Chafets, who grew up in Detroit and wrote the excellent first-hand account Devil’s Night, reports that the riots of 1967 destroyed a Jewish community of 80,000 people almost overnight:

When I left for Israel in the summer of 1967, the majority of Detroit’s eighty thousand Jews were clustered in the northwest corner of the city. Dozens of synagogues, religious schools, community centers and delis dotted the areas’s main commercial avenues, and families lived in spacious brick homes built along quiet, tree-lined streets. But the riot touched off a mass exodus; six months later, when I came home for a visit, I literally didn’t recognize the place. Not a single one of my friends’ families was still there.

More would exodus in the next year. The white population fell from 1,182,970 in 1960 to 413,730 in 1980. The number homicides rose from 125 in 1964 to 389 the year after the riots to 714 in 1973.

Moving on to Washington DC, in 1954 the Supreme Court’s Bolling decision forced the school system to adopt a desgregation program. The result was a tremendous amount of friction in the schools – friction based on behavior, norms, language, and due to gaps in where the students were academically. As a result of the friction, many of the white familes of means withdrew their kids from the DC school system. This is a pattern that would repeat across the country. Historian Raymond Wolters recounts the story in The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation:

Desegregation got off to a good start in Washington, although its first days were not without incident. There was a two-day student strike at McKinley High School, where whites complained about blacks cursing and requesting the telephone numbers of white girls….

Beneath the general tranquility all was not well. Many of the problems that beset the District’s desegregated schools were brought to general attention in 1956 when a congressional subcommittee, a majority of whose members were southerners, investigated the situation. Spokesmen for the NAACP warned that there was “a real danger” of “a scurrilous attack … on Negroes of Washington and the process of desegregation”; they characterized the inquiry as a “preconceived” sally by men who believed from the start that desegregation was a catastrophe.

The investigators’ motives may have been questionable, but testimony given by more than fifty Washington teachers and school administrators nevertheless pointed to grave problems. The investigators may have run advance checks to find witnesses who would confirm the case against desegregation, but, as even the liberal New Republic acknowledged, the disturbing evidence that came out during the hearings is not made less disturbing merely because of the prejudice and ulterior motive of … Southerners."

The black students’ use of vulgar language bothered many whites. John Paul collins, who had worked in the District’s schools for thirty-four years and had been principal of Anacostia and Eastern high schools, declared that he “heard colored girls at the school use language that was far worse than I have ever heard, even in the Marine Corps.” Eva Wells, the principal of Theodore Roosevelt High School, believed vulgar language was the greatest cause“ of fights at her school. She said that ”so many remarks" had been made to Roosevelt’s girl cheerleaders during the basketball season of 1954 that it had been necessary to switch to boy cheerleaders the next year.

Nor was vulgarity confined to language. Arthur Storey, the principal at McFarland Junior High school, testified that in crowded corridors “boys would bump against girls” and “put their hands upon them but discipline was difficult to administer because ”a boy could say, ‘I was pushed.’ White girls at Anacostia High School complained about “being touched by colored boys in a suggestive manner when passing … in the halls,’, and the situation at Wilson High School got to the point where the student newspaper, The Easterner, published an editorial under the title ”Hands Off."

Admitting that the decorum of students left something to be desired even before desegregation, Dorothy Denton, a teacher at Barnard Elementary School, said that behavior was “going from good, or medium-good, to bad, in my opinion.” John Paul Collins said there had been “more thefts at Eastern [High School] in the last two years than I had known in all my thirty-odd years in the school system.”

When it came to disciplinary policies, many teachers believed they faced a difficult transition. Hugh Stewart Smith of Jefferson Junior High School said that before desegregation white teachers expected students to “do the right thing because it was the right thing to do.” Most black teachers, on the other hand, were said to insist on “rigid discipline,” for they had more experience dealing with children who thought that you got what you wanted by fighting.“ Katherine Reid, a veteran white teacher at the Tyler School, admitted that she initially found it ”very hard to make colored children do what I told them.“ One day when she was having trouble with a black girl, ’one of the colored boys said, ‘Miss Reid, why don’t you stop talking to her and bat her over the head the way her last teacher did?’”

Some teachers said their authority had been undermined. Katherine Fowler, who taught at McKinley High School, had an unpleasant experience after she scolded black students who were singing in the hall and disturbing others. The students said she was picking on them because of their race. An official of the NAACP discussed the matter with Fowler’s principal, who warned the teacher to “be careful” in disciplining black students.

One teacher expressed the view of many of her colleagues when she said she was “shocked at the low achievement of the Negro children who have been in the schools of Washington.” In twenty-two pre- dominantly white elementary schools the average I.Q. was 105, while the average in predominantly black schools was 87.

Whatever the cause of the low scores, classroom teachers clearly were confronted with serious problems associated with teaching students of varying abilities in the same class. Ruth Davis, a veteran teacher with 41 years’ experience in the classroom, said it was difficult to teach when students of widely varying abilities were placed in the same classes. “It was hard on everyone concerned. It was hard on the boys and girls who needed the special help. It was hard on the ones who could have gone ahead. And it was very discouraging for the teacher who had no means of serving every one.” Helen Ingrick of the Emery School also found teaching “very difficult, because you had to have so many groups and so many age levels and so much preparation for the different range of abilities.” Dorothy Denton of the Barnard School thought that her better studenrs were suffering educationally because she had “to put so much time on discipline and on low ability that I haven’t the time to give to the children who are able to go on.” After nine days of testimony, the congressional subcommittee concluded, “The evidence, taken as a whole, points to a definite impairment of educational opportunities for members of both white and Negro races as a result of integration, with little prospect of remedy in the future.” The subcommittee recommended that the schools be formally resegregated, but its chairman, James C. Davis of Georgia, predicted that even if this were not done the departure of whites and the immigration of blacks would accomplish the same end – segregated schools.

…

After the Bolling decision, the rate of white withdrawal from the public schools tripled. Between 1949 and 1953 white enrollments had declined by about 4,000 students; between 1954 and 1958, white enrollments declined by almost 12,000 students. The District abandoned segregation, but white parents and students then abandoned the District.

In Boston in 1974 a federal judge ordered busing to fix racial imbalances in the school system. There was terrible violence on both sides, with many of the whites leaving the district. Ultimately, the schools were more racially imbalanced than they ever were before the court order:

Many parents, and a few students, also wrote to Judge Garrity telling him of assaults or harassment: the fifteen-year-old junior on her own attending classes at Roslindale and South Boston who found it difficult to pay attention because of constant tension, who did not regard herself as prejudiced, and who found it trying “when I’m told (in exact words) ‘I’m gonna’ kick your ass, bitch,’ when I’m just minding my own business” and racially motivated harassment kept on; the Roslindale father who described the Philbrick School as racially imbalanced with more blacks than whites, with blacks given preferred treatment (“ let’s keep peace”) while white children were unsafe going to restrooms and in the school yard, with blacks not allowing whites to participate in games, white children ganged up on, in his view the “school totally taken over by blacks”; the Hyde Park antibusers and parents who lamented the racial attack on seven “of the outstanding 10th graders” at Rogers Hyde Park Annex who had now left the school; the West Roxbury mother of a fourteen-year-old boy beaten by two blacks wanting a quarter, the day after he missed school because the bus did not show up, “no explanation, therefore no school”; the Hyde Park mother whose daughter’s bus was stoned by blacks and who now suffered from nightmares and other emotional upsets; the West Roxbury parent whose five children had already attended the Shaw School, now majority black, whose sixth, an eleven-year-old, had known many anxious mornings and had now been assaulted twice; the Dorchester father whose boy was attending Dorchester High, which instead of being 52 percent white was 65 percent black, and which would soon be 70 to 80 percent black, where a black “in jest” pulled a knife on his son and was told to put it away by a black aide, where his son and two others had their pockets emptied by blacks during a fire drill; and the Boston father whose daughter came home needing three stitches in the back of her head.

Several parents repeated the theme that “it’s common knowledge that the lavatories in some of these schools are manned by young toughs who demand money from kids that have to use them.” “I don’t care what color my kid is sitting next to,” wrote one Roslindale mother, “as long as he gets the education … . I’m willing to work at living together in peace and harmony but I don’t want my kids hurt in the process.”

…

[From another letter to Judge Garrity:] “I was borned [sic] in Roxbury on Blue Hill Avenue 40 years ago. A person would either happen to be insane or want to commit suicide to travel in that area today. I moved to Mission Hill… when I started High School. To me, that was God’s little acre until the projects, two (2) behind the church and one (1) in Jamaica Plain, became non-white. When I was living there, there was no such thing as locked doors or being afraid to walk the streets at night … . Now the priests are warning the old people not to come to daily mass because of rampant crime … i.e., muggings, stabbings, etc. My parents still live in fear with double and triple locks on their doors.” (Boston Against Busing, p. 183)

In city after city the firsthand accounts show that the violence came first. It was the violence that caused white people to leave the city so rapidly.

On White Violence and Urban Decay

In recounting the above stories of black-on-white violence I do not mean to deny the existence of white-on-black violence. The stories you have heard in the mainstream histories almost all happened. In Boston the people of Southie violently resisted integration in schools and housing:

The first day of school in September brought scattered violence that continued throughout the week…a black reporter from out of town drove into Southie and was assaulted. Throughout the city buses were stoned, cars overturned, and in the worst incident, seventy-five white youths stormed into Bunker Hill Community College in Charlestown, trashed the lobby, and sent a black student to the hospital. (Boston Against Busing)

Distressed by the refusal of white working-class Bostonians to support its challenge of de facto segregation, the NAACP, for the first time, entered the South Boston parade. Its float bore a large portrait of the recently assassinated John Kennedy and beside it, in bold green letters: “From the Fight for Irish Freedom to the Fight for U.S. Equality.” As it lumbered onto Dorchester Street near St. Augustine’s Church, four teenagers leaped into the street brandishing their own homemade banner, decorated with shamrocks and reading: “Go home, nigger. Long live the spirit of independence in segregated Boston.” Tomatoes, eggs, cherry bombs, bottles, and beer cans rained down on the float. A brick shattered the windshield and broke the driver’s glasses. Police moved in, escorting the float to safety. The next day, the NAACP likened the incident to “the viciousness you would expect in New Orleans and the backwoods of Mississippi.” (Lucas, Common Ground)

When a black family moved into the edge of white Southie, there was a series of fights, and attacks on the house:

Over the next two months, Olbrys and Kennealey made more than a dozen arrests around the house. On one occasion, lurking behind a tree, Kennealey saw a youth cock his arm as if to throw. The detective seized the kid’s hand, extracted a rock, and placed him under arrest. Some nights later, after a black Plymouth circled the Debnams’ house with three youths shouting, “No more fucking nig*ers!” Olbrys stopped the car and arrested its occupants. That weekend, he apprehended four kids who had thrown beer bottles against the front porch.

But despite the detectives’ diligence, the culprits rarely received much of a sentence. None of them ever spent a night in jail. The most celebrated incident occurred on September 10, a lively night around the Debnams’ home. Shortly before 1: 00 a.m., a firebomb exploded in the driveway, scorching the family car. Three hours later, two figures were seen prowling the yard with a pistol, shouting racial epithets and ultimately firing one shot toward the house. The detectives arrested Fred Gavin, nineteen, and his brother John, eighteen. Originally, both boys were charged with assault with a deadly weapon, and Fred with illegal possession of a gun. But the assault charges were quickly reduced to disorderly conduct. Finding John guilty, Judge Dolan gave him a three-month suspended sentence. He found Fred Gavin guilty of disorderly conduct and illegal possession, which carried a mandatory sentence of one year in prison. But on appeal in Superior Court he was acquitted of both. (Lucas Common Ground)

And here is a story from Boston’s Charlestown:

After slavery was abolished, their descendants stayed on, settling near the Town wharves. As late as 1930, some two hundred Negroes remained, living in relative peace and security. Then, in October 1931, a longshoreman’s strike threatened to paralyze the port. The shipping companies responded by trucking hundreds of black strikebreakers in from the South End. Charlestown’s dockers responded with fury, showering the interlopers with bricks, stones, and two-by-fours. In the hostile racial climate that followed, most of Charlestown’s own blacks fled across the river. (Lucas, Common Ground)

And from Detroit:

Demonstrations followed a predictable pattern. Early in the evening, community members would drive slowly in the vicinity of a newly purchased black home, beckoning neighbors to join the protest. Crowds gathered after the dinner hour, drawing men who had just returned home from work, and school-age children, especially teenagers, who played in the streets in the evening. Often outdoor protests followed emergency improvement association meetings. Mob activity ranged from milling about in front of targeted houses, to shouting racial epithets, to throwing stones and bricks. The intensity of violence in the early stages depended on the presence of the police. Frequently, officers were slow to respond to housing incidents, and residents had ample time to hurl objects at the offending houses. After police arrived they often passively watched crowds gather, without dispersing them for parading without a permit, disorderly conduct, or riot. When the police broke up crowds for obstructing traffic or for crowding the sidewalk, smaller groups usually reconstituted themselves on neighbors’ lawns and porches, safe havens from the police who did not venture onto private property to control crowds. From the sanctuary of nearby yards, enraged neighbors continued to taunt their new black neighbors, to shout their disapproval at the police, and to throw cans, stones, or bottles toward the targeted house. (Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis)

In Kevin Purcell’s history of Philadelhia a white Irish-American gang – the Dirty Annie’s – was responsible for starting numerous fights with the black young men.

And of course, there is the very long history of racial violence in the American South, which innumberable histories have been written about.

However – while any predatory violence is a terrible thing, this white-on-black violence was not a direct cause of the blight of the cities, which is the topic of this post. The uncomfortable truth might be that this violence in some cases prevented “white flight” and urban decay. Southie and Charlestown are both flourishing neighborhoods in 2017. One thesis is that it was the ethnocentric, “stick together, fight together” militancy of the Irish in these neighborhoods that prevented an exodus, whereas the Jews in Dorchester were more used to moving on in response to trouble, and thus left rather than fight. (See the books Urban Exodus and Chapter 6 of Boston Against Busing for more on this thesis). However, in other accounts, such as Kevin Purcell’s accounts, white violence seemed to lead to cycles of retaliatory violence with ultimately the white people leaving.

It is also fair to say that the motivation for the worst black-on-white violence originated in part from a history of white-on-black violence that generated a general anti-white animus among some black people. However this history neither explains nor justifies the black-on-white violence. A large number of the targets of the black-on-white violence in northern cities (the elderly Jewish men in Dorchester, an Italian truck driver in Carnasie, a Kevin’s childhood friend Doug in Philadelphia) had no conceivable moral blame for the history of white-on-black violence in the American South.

There is a habit among many historians where if there is a negative pattern in behavior in the black population, the historian goes back in time a little bit before to find examples of bad white behavior, and then posit that bad white behavior is the ultimate cause. But in many cases, this just does not make logical sense. Again, it simply does not follow that white-on-black violence in the American south, or that white-on-black race in Chicago in 1919, would inherently cause violence against white people in 1970 in Chicago or Carnasie or Boston or elsewhere. Nor can white violence logically explain the high levels of black on black violence or the dramatic rise of illegitimacy in the black population. We have plenty of examples from history of oppression and grevience that did not result in violence against the oppressors, much less against violence against people who were not oppressors but happened to share the same race as the oppressors. I have argued before that in general, it is not the oppression that triggers a violent response, but it is people with megaphones fanning the flames of grievance that causes the violent response.

General observations about the “lack of jobs causes crime” theory

In the original Reddit comment, the author proposes the thesis that joblessness causes crime:

As the jobs evaporated, tensions rose…People with nothing to do and nowhere to go tend to turn to crime.

I have previously argued that poverty and inequality are not central determinants of crime.

That “joblessness” causes crime is a slightly different claim, and so I will address it here.

The “lack of jobs causes crime” thesis was most famously argued by the sociologists William Julius Wilson and Thomas Segue. I certainly agree that there exists some correlation – the neighborhoods with the highest crime tend to have high rates of joblessness among the young men who live there.

But which way lies the causation?

It could be that government welfare both causes crime and joblessness – welfare allows men to mooch off their woman and it obviates the need for woman to withold sex until a man can prove that he is a provider. If a man can mooch off his girl, and loaf around at the street corner, that’s a lot more fun than getting a job as a line cook at the local restaurant.

Or it could be that institutional breakdown (the decline of churches, the decline of the authority of the police and school teacher, the decline of authority of fathers) causes both crime and unemployment.

Or it could be that a deficit of “human capital” and a prevalence of anti-social attitudes causes both crime also cause unemployment. If a population lacks the ambitious people able to start and operate businesses and has too many of the people who are anti-social, violent, and distrusting of authority, then it’s going to both lack employers and employable people.

The most obvious problem with the “lack of jobs causes crime theory” is that the crime came first. The crime came before the white people moved out and took their jobs and money with them. Now it could be argued that that the black population already suffered from joblessness due to discrimination. But if we trace back the history of the higher black crime rates, it dates back to times after the Civil War in which black laborers were very highly in demand.

Overall, there are many reasons why I do not think that joblessness causes higher violent high crime (and in particular – joblessness does not cause homicides and predatory assaults):

1. There was no great rise in homicide during the Great Depression. In fact, violent crime went down. In general, there is no correlation between violent crimes and the unemployment rate in the history of the United States.
2. Poor, rural white areas have much of the same problems of joblessness and drug abuse, but without the homicide. Peter Moskos writes about one such county in Ohio: “But here’s the thing. No matter how hopeless and messed up things might be in East Liverpool and Columbiana County, Ohio; no matter how the jobs are gone; no matter how loose the gun laws are; no matter where junkies are shooting up; no matter how much crime there is; no matter how forgotten by the government and mocked by east-coast elites they might be, the good folks of Columbiana County somehow manage not to murder each other. Best I can tell, this entire county of about 100,000 has maybe one homicide a year. Some years there seems to be none. Other years maybe two. (I’m basing this on Columbiana County, East Liverpool, and Salem City police departments). This homicide rate, 1 per 100,000, is about 1/4th the national average. Meanwhile, Baltimore City has a poverty rate lower than East Liverpool. Baltimore’s median household income is higher than East Liverpool.” And Baltimore has a murder rate 55-times as high.
3. Much of the crime and violence noted in the accounts I have cited were committed by teenagers. Much of the violence that drove people away and made these ghettos notorious happened in the schools. Joblessness doesn’t explain why in some places bored teenagers without jobs play sports and horseplay among themselves, while in other places teenagers prey upon innocent people and commit crimes.
4. Cities and regions that did not face economic hardship had similar rises in crime. The ghettos in Washington DC, Oakland, Boston, or South Central LA were every bit as bad as those in Detroit. Yet those regions were the great economic winners of the last fifty years. A liberal professor at CUNY recently performed a few regressions and found: “The data suggest that violent crime rates in American cities primarily reflects a subculture embraced by a small core of black men and has little to do with employment opportunities. For 34 of the largest cities, the figure below indicates the relationship between each city’s share of black men, 20 to 34 years old, and its 2014 violent crime rate. Using multiple regressions, the correlation is highly statistically significant, while the citywide jobless rate is not. These findings indicate that the racial composition of young men is a strong predictor of a city’s violent crime rate than labor market conditions.”
5. Even in a region that did lose jobs – such as Detroit – the job loss was gradual from 1945 to 2010, whereas the murder rates exploded in a very short time period. Homicides rose from 125 to 714 in nine years.
6. How does deindusrialization explain why poor Asian immigrants in the Bay Area have none of the social problems of blacks in Oakland? How does it explain why employment rates are so much higher among Hispanic immigrants than blacks, when looking at the same cities?
7. Deindustrialization doesn’t explain why 60% of convenience stores in Detroit are owned by Middle Eastern immigrants. It doesn’t explain why in several of these ethnographies you read statements like, “The Jewish stores owners tried to transfer their businesses to blacks as they moved out, but for various reasons these efforts failed.” These stories are more consistent with the idea that characteristics of the population cause both the lack of jobs and the crime.
8. In almost all these cities, even after the residents and factories moved out, the day time population was substantially higher than the night time population. That is, people were net commuting into the city for jobs. The notion that all the jobs were in the suburbs was simply false. Even after many jobs had moved out, the city homes were still on net more proximate to employers.
9. The descriptions of murder and violence in the ghetto do not really fit the joblessness thesis. Jill Levoy wrote a great study of homicides in LA in her recent book Ghettoside. She reports:

The fights might be spontaneous, part of some long-running feud, or the culmination of “some drama,” as Skaggs would put it. These male “dramas,” he observed, were not so different from those among quarreling women of the projects. In fact, they were often extensions of them. “Women work through men by agitating them to homicide,” observed an anthropologist studying Mayan villages in Mexico. The observation fit scores of killings in L.A. that cops chalked up to “female problems.”

The smallest ghettoside spat seemed to escalate to violence, as if absent law, people were left with no other means of bringing a dispute to a close. Debts and competition over goods and women— especially women— drove many killings. But insults, snitching, drunken antics, and the classic— unwanted party guests— also were common homicide motives. Small conflicts divided people into hostile camps and triggered lasting feuds. “Grudges!” Skaggs would exclaim: to him the word summed up scores of cases. Every grudge seemed to harbor explosive potential. It would ignite when antagonists met by chance in the streets or in liquor stores. Vengeance was a staple motive. In some circles, retaliation for murder was considered all but mandatory. It was striking how openly people discussed it, even debating the merits from the pulpit at funerals.

People, jobless or not, always seek enjoyable diversions. That is why we do sports, play cards, tend gardens, set off firecrackers, or go dancing. Testosterone fueled young men play football, wrestle, or other such sports. And yes, there can be a certain enjoyment to mayhem and violence. But for people to resort to violence as entertainment, requires far more than just some extra time on one’s hands. There has to be a complete breakdown in morals, attitudes, mores, community control, and law enforcement for predatory violence to become a recreation. Joblessness is not the primary cause of violence.

The “drug war” caused the crime theory

This theory has been popularized by The Wire creator David Simon, and it has a few variants: 1) drug prohibition gives incentives for a black market and these black markets tend to produce crime because participants cannot rely on the legal system to ajudicate disputes. 2) locking up black men for petty drug crimes creates fatherless communities, prevents them from re-entering the legitimate workforce, and thus creates more crime 3) police resources that could be spent tracking down killers and preventing violent crime are instead wasted on drug arrests.

The problem with these theories is that the crime came first. The drug war was a response to the rise in crime. As I wrote in another piece, it’s hard for the police to catch killers, so going after drug dealers is sometimes used as a proxy for getting the gangs and the criminal element off the street. This is not ideal, but this is hardly causing the crime. While Nixon first called for an offensive against drugs in the early 1970s, nothing much changed after that. Drug laws actually became slighly more lax and drug arrests did not rise. Yet crime was on an upward swing all through the 1960s and 1970s. Crime was approaching its apex before any real implementation of the drug war. The notorious crack cocaine laws were passed in 1986 as crime neared its peak. And then crime started falling around 1993, as incarceration rates rose.

Furthermore, through the early 1980s, drug prohibition was not more severe in the United States than in many other developed countries with much lower crime rates. And it is still less severe than in many countries with far less crime (such as Singapore). Nor was it more strict in the black ghettos than in parts of the country with far less crime and gang violence. If anything it is more lax – open-air drug dealing is permitted in the black ghettos in a way that it is not permitted elsewhere. Nor does black market activity inherently lead to crime – for instance in the book Dreamland about the opioid crisis the author documents how the Mexican heroin dealers shy away from crime because murders draw police heat and thus are bad for business. Nor are most crimes committed in the ghetto directly connected to black market drug selling.

The problem with drug incarceration causing fatherless families which begets crime is that again, the timeline does not match. Among blacks, the out-of-wedlock birthrate was 20% in 1955. It then skyrocketed toward about 56% by 1980. Again, this was before the “War on Drugs” really began. It continued to rise to about 67% by 1990, but since then has leveled off a bit, and has not risen as much (even as the number of incarcerated black men continued to rise). The other problem with variant #2 is that no one has produced a number telling me what percent of these imprisoned black men were actually living with the mother of their children before they were jailed. Based on my reading of ethnographies and memoirs, I suspect the proportion is very low.

Did the Warren court handcuff police?

The original question posed on Reddit asked if the decisions by the Supreme Court under Warren handcuffed the police and caused the rise in crime. The commenters are dismissive of the notion:

The police are hardly “handcuffed” today–vast numbers of inner city youths have their prospects destroyed by a trip through the justice system for nonviolent drug offenses–yet inner city crime and violence remains at shockingly high levels.

My take is that the bulk in the rise of crime in the northern cities can be explained by demographic changes, the breakdown in the family and traditional institutions, and attitudes produced by the rise of Black power and racial grievance ideologies.

However, I do think that restrictions on police played some role. And perhaps as important were restrictions on disciplining in the school.

Harvard Professor William J. Stuntz wrote about the Supreme Court rulings of the 1950s and 60s in his book The Collapse of American Criminal Justice:

In the short run, the Court’s rulings made criminal law enforcement and litigation more expensive, which meant even less criminal punishment … and (probably) still more crime [during a crime wave]…. Plus, the procedure-focused character of the Court’s decisions made them east to attack once voters demanded tougher law enforcement practices: it is one thing to overturn convictions of defendants who may well be innocent, quite another to reverse otherwise valid convictions based on one or another procedural error.

… The defense lawyers who enforced those rights were not bringing forward evidence of their clients’ innocence but [using the new procedural protections] suppressing evidence of their guilt. Whatever their other merits, such practices were bound to make the justice system do a worse job of separating those defendants who deserve punishment from those who don’t – it’s central task.

… Warren and his colleagues continued and exacerbated a long-term trend: they proceduralized criminal litigation, siphoning the time of attorneys and judges away from the question of the defendant’s guilt or innocence and towards the process by which the defendant was arrested, tried, and convicted.

Stuntz continues:

… northern and western prison populations fell while crime rose; the number of prison inmates per unit crime plummeted. In 1950, New York State housed 28 prisoners for every New York City homicide. By 1972, that number had fallen to 3. The figures for Chicago and Detroit, Los Angeles, and Boston are similar. If punishment deters crime, as a good deal of social science suggests, its absence must work in the opposite direction: collapsing punishment in the generation after 1950 surely contributed to skyrocketing crime in that same generations.

Nationwide, rates of robbery nearly, tripled, up 294% from 1963 to 1980. Rates of violent crime and property crime both shot up:

(Source, Losing Ground, citing the FBI)

Jill Leovy writes in Ghettoside:

During the 1960s, the number of people sent to prison for criminal homicide was less than half the number of homicides. The disparity grew more pronounced during the 1970s, when there were three times more people killed than killers convicted and imprisoned. There seems to be no other conclusion but that thousands of murders went unpunished.

…

Prison terms per unit of crime in the U.S. hit rock bottom in the 1960s and 1970s, making this country one of the world’s most lenient. Courts acquitted. Parole terms were generous. In the midseventies, only a third of California’s convicted homicide perpetrators remained in prison after seven years, and the rough streets of South Bureau teemed with murderers newly released. Reformers focused on the rights of defendants, seemingly blind to the ravages of underenforcement.

The low point for incarceration was 1970). And yet at that same time crime was out of control in the American cities. Charles Murray writes in Losing Ground:

At 1970 levels of homicide, a person who lived his life in a large American city ran a greater risk of being murdered than an American soldier in the Second World War ran of being killed in combat. If this analysis were restricted to the ghettos of large American cities, the risk would be some orders of magnitude larger yet, and larger than it had been ten years before.

In The Ungovernable City, Vincent Cannato writes about the urban upheaval in the 1960’s:

The main problem in inner-city ghettos was not too much law enforcement, but too little. Contrary to conventional wisdom, police in black neighborhoods were less interested in brutally enforcing middle-class morality than in avoiding the messy tangle of crime and pathology. As the Kerner Report port noted, “Police maintain a much less rigorous standard of law enforcement ment in the ghetto, tolerating there illegal activities … that they would not tolerate elsewhere.” There were many reasons for this attitude: an indifference to black victims, payoffs made to overlook illegal gambling and prostitution, and the desire of white cops to avoid dangerous, racially charged situations. The Kerner Report quoted studies of black residents in Harlem and Los Angeles in which inadequate police protection ranked higher than police brutality as the major reason for the lack of respect of black for police.

…

The effect of such a policy was already being felt on the street. In September, a writer studying Manhattan’s West Side testified before fore a U.S. Senate subcommittee that he found police were reducing their activity for fear of being charged with police brutality. Though Commissioner sioner Leary denied the accusation, the Times ran a front-page story with quotes from officers confirming the charges. One officer, who remained anonymous, said, “The cops learn early in life that if you make a mistake the department just won’t back you up.”

Here are some quotes from a news article about Detroit in 1965:

“Today a policeman doesn’t know where he stands. He has lost the ball. He has become defensive and he doesn’t do a good job when he is on the defensive.”

…

“A cop will give his life to catch a burglar, holdup man, or a purse snatcher, but he’ll wait for it to happen before he reacts.”

…

“So we don’t look for guns anymore. Within the past year I’ve made one arrest. All I do now is issue tickets.”

… “It’s a lousy job when you can’t be a cop and do your work.”

…

Police claim [black] groups are encouraging crime by offering blanket support to [black] felons who bring civil rights charges against arresting officers.

…

That the job does not have the attraction it once had is evident from the department’s recruitment problems. For the last eight years the personnel department has been unable to fill recruitment quotas.

Murders in Detroit jumped from 136 in 1963 to 331 in 1967.

While the perception is that police today are overzealous, there remains a big problem of over policing/under-policing – that is, police are bullies to young teenagers who have not committed an offense, while they fail to deal with real crime. They go around jacking up corners and making arrests, while everyone ends up right back on the street a few hours later. No violent criminals are put in jail, the police are just hassling people.

This too has been a long running problem. A graduate student Alex Belkins blogs about work on his dissertation:

The majority of young black men in poor urban neighborhoods in the 1960s saw the police as an illegitimate force — famously, in the words of James Baldwin, as an “occupying army.” They had good cause to see the police this way. In the 1960s, officers typically were openly racist, referring to black men as “boy,” or worse. Police were quick to use their nightstick or billy to force compliance with their commands.

Another way police were illegitimate was that they were slow to respond to reported crimes. In Cleveland, for example, federal investigators found that this was the chief complaint of black residents, who accused police of corruption and racism as reasons for their belated response or indifference to intra-racial crimes. Wayne R. LaFave, in his 1965 study of arrest law and practices, quotes a black assistant prosecutor summarizing this presumption: “There is too much of a tendency on the part of police officers, juries, and even judges to dismiss Negro crimes of violence with the saying,‘It’s only Negroes, and they’ve always been like that.’”

Under- and over-policing had a profound, tragic effect on black communities — as it does today. It both provoked resentment and hostility and discouraged residents from seeking out police as arbiters of conflicts, as peacekeepers. It created a world in which a kind of extralegal street justice could thrive — where people took matters into their own hands.

In recent years Baltimore’s murder clearance (arrest) rate has hovered at around 45%, while the conviction rate is around 30%. Multiply the two together and you get that only in ~15% of murder cases does a suspect end up getting caught and convicted.

Compare to Japan where the clearance rate was 96% and the conviction rate a disturbingly high 99.8%.

The murder rate in Japan was .3 per 100,000. The rate in Baltimore was 1,000 times higher, at 37 per 100,000.

Baltimore solves a pitifully small percentage of its murder cases, has a thousand times more murder, and thus multiple orders of magnitude more incarceration.

Jill Leovy reports in Ghettoside that most homicides and violent crimes in the LA area go unsolved:

The study, based on case-by-case analysis of 9,400 Los Angeles County cases in the early nineties, concluded suspects were convicted of manslaughter or murder in only about one in three killings. Clearance rates varied by race, with cases involving black and Hispanic victims somewhat less likely to be solved than those involving white victims.

Maiming people offered even better odds. There were about four or five injury shootings for every fatal one in South Los Angeles. A waggish colleague of Skaggs called these shootings— which injured but did not kill their victims— almocides, for “almost homicides.” High-crime precincts were racked by them. Some thirty almocides occurred each month in the nine square miles of the Southeast Division in the early 2000s, for instance. People— disproportionately black men— were left paralyzed, comatose, brain injured, or forced to spend the rest of their lives using colostomy bags. Officially, some 40 percent of these aggravated assaults were “cleared.” But half of those were not arrests. They were “cleared others,” usually because victims refused to testify. Among “category one” assaults in Watts in 2004, for example— serious injury cases— only about 17 percent ended with an assailant convicted.

David Simon in his ethnography The Corner reports that there is a lot of police harassment – but little actual punishment sufficient to deter future crime:

After so many police sweeps, it’s understood by all concerned that the crews will open shop a block or two away, just as it’s understood that the police sweeps must come to an end with the dealers returning to the usual terrain.

I could give more examples of under policing, but I would be repeating other posts (What does reduce crime? and The Other Side of the Drug Crime Incarceration Debate) so go read those posts if you are not yet convinced.

In addition to reduced policing, there was also reduced discipline in the schools. The book World We Created At Hamiliton High is a case study of one particular high school undergoing the changes on the late 1960s:

When the first black faculty member – a chemistry teacher – came to Hamilton in 1966, she found a school that was orderly and perceived by most whites as a model of integration. New housing patterns and revised school boundaries had caused black enrollment to creep up to 90 out of a total of 1,105 students. … When the commission published its report three years after desegregation had begun, it felt educational efforts had worked; Median was cited as a success story. The report claimed that “most parents had accepted integration. Virtually all of the mothers interviewed felt that children were doing better work.” The president of the Median school board said that by 1968 “the staff and the parents in the receiving schools [were] reasonably adjusted to the situation.”

Subsequent events would show that a number of these claims were premature, while others would be falsified.

Over the next few years the enrolllment of the school shifted from being middle class black and white, to a mix of working class whites with a tougher attitude, and blacks coming from nearby housing projects. There were increasing number of fights and even riots.

The disorder became much greater when court rulings, laws, and policy completely transformed the way discipline was meted out in schools. The school teacher would no longer be master of their domain, free to punish students based on personal judgement. But rather they would be tied up in process:

As tensions in the school mounted, the principal and vice principals (by now there were two) found that 90 percent of their time was absorbed by disciplinary issues. They had adopted a “get tough” policy, which resulted in higher rates of suspension and expulsion for blacks. Local civil rights organizations brought complaints, and a black as- sistant principal was singled out for criticism. Tighter safeguards on due process were demanded. Teachers cite the handling of the library trashing incident in January 1970 as a turning point in disciplinary policy. Several students were suspended that day, and action was initiated to have them expelled. At the Median school board meeting a few days later, civil rights leaders complained that the students had not been granted adequate due process and should be presumed in- nocent until proved guilty. In response, the school superintendent issued a statement assuring the students of their rights. He said parents had been notified by registered mail that students were entitled to a hearing under the provisions of the new state education law; if re- quested, the hearing would be behind closed doors with students having the right to counsel (to be paid for by the school district) and to call witnesses.

…The students obtained their hearing with the superintendent, which lasted two days. In the end, charges were dropped and a few students were transferred to another school….

This was the first stage in a change of consciousness that in the 1970s was to contribute in a major way to a reshaping of the rela- tionship between teachers and students. Teachers began to feel on the defensive, unsure of themselves or that their reprimands following even blatant misbehavior would be supported. Many began to look the other way, to shrink from a challenge, and to avoid bringing a charge because they might not only lose the legal battle, but wind up having to defend themselves

Increasingly, there was a feeling that no one was certain of the ules, that change had come so rapidly that the old understandings, built on years of informal consensus with a steady middle-class group of families, had been swept away. “We assumed through the fifties and the sixties that we had a set of rules that applied to everyone when in fact they didn’t,” said Principal Massucco.

In June Massucco heard rumors that another major riot was brewing. He met with students who told him they could do nothing to stop it. Then the appointed day came, Massucco remembered, a police lieutenant on duty in the school was shaking like a leaf. A helmeted riot squad was stationed outside. They swept the school when the fight broke out. Principal Massucco resigned soon afterward: “That day I went home to my wife and I said, look, that’s it. I can’t deal with this anymore. I realized that whatever the problems were, they were bigger than me”

…

Although curriculum reforms were closest to his heart, [the new Principal] Cunneen poured most of his energy into regaining control of the school. The academic year t970-71 was to be the worst yet. “The school was in chaos … and riots in that time were a way of life unfortunately.” Instead of breaking up fights, whenever teachers heard a ruckus in the hall, they would automatically lock their door for fear the dispute would spill into their classroom. “There was a true physical feeling of being afraid of the black kids. ” There were “rurf wars over control of the school not only between blacks and whites but also berween blacks.” Weapons were brought into the school; knife and razor fights were not uncommon. “ln an average week I’d probably take away a couple of knives and half a dozen clubs. No guns or explosives, but chains, yes, and lead pipes.” Student shakedowns of younger pupils, demanding money or a pen or a bicycle, were common. A few pimps were known to be operating in the school. When his life was threatened, Cunneen had a bodyguard assigned to him. He had a heart seizure and fell unconscious after one particularly stressful period. That was the closest he came to quitting.

[Cunneen] sounded a theme that came up frequently in teacher interviews, the notion that there was “no book” to go by anymore: “That does not say the book was always right, the trouble is no one had written a new one yet. We didn’t know a lot of times how to act and we did anything to keep the peace-Don’t do anyrhing that’s going to cause those three bells to go off.” Massucco expressed feelings like this as well. No one seemed to know what rules applied; the old world had fallen apart.

…

[New, younger] teachers differed markedly from more traditional faculty in their expectations for achievement, their grading policies, and their tolerance for missed deadlines. They were likely to be lenient with black students, out of what other faculty members felt was misguided and guilty liberalism. They angered older male reachers when they supported protests by female students about sexual inequality in the athletic programs and facilities. One outcome of such differences was that teachers perceived, quite correctly, that they could no longer be sure that another faculty member shared their views about a basic matter of discipline or would support them if they challenged a student misbehaving in the hall. Faculty tended more and more to withdraw from such encounters or not to see them. Hence a car approaching the school was stoned by a group of students in full view of a number of faculty members, and no one attempted to stop the incident.

The administration gave confused signals about discipline to both students and faculty. A vice principal of this era later explained that it was the period when the school had different standards of discipline for blacks and whites:

A white and [a] black kid might do rhe same thing-say walking around the halls cutting classes. The white kid might get a waming and the black kid suspended. And after that it went the other way . . because all these advocacy groups came in and then the blacks seemed to get a little better of the deal from the standpoint of the rules and regulations of the institution and that’s what I’m referring to – one set of rules being applied in two different manners … The central office was softpedalling, they were pushing down directives to us at the building level to handle things in this manner or [telling us] don’t get too upset over this and so forth … and then later we tried to change the system again so that we could encompass all the kids [under one standard] and we weren’t very successful and we’re still working on it.

In this climate the Median school board adopted sweeping new due process requirements in November 1971. Many matters once left to the discretion of the school principals or teachers now were subject to grievance and courtroom like review. This, of course, was not merely a local matter, but a result also of broad cultural changesz redefining relations between children and adult guardians, which culminated in the Supreme Court decision in the Gault case in 1967 and the Winship case in 1970. In Gault the Supreme Court established a new standard that juvenile court proceedings “must measure up to the essentials of due process and fair treatment.” The Gault decision was later extended, in the Winship case, to insist that juvenile courts also meet the standard of proving guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

In these two decisions the Supreme Court undid the work of compassionate children’s rights advocates who established the juvenile’ court system at the turn of the century when ten-year-olds were still tried and sentenced along with hardened criminals. The intention was that a wise and kindly judge would consider a wide variety of evidence in sentencing juveniles who might be straightened out with a stem admonition, referral to a foster home, or attendance at a state reform school. Justice Abe Fortas turned aside this view of a court “in which a fatherly judge touched heart and conscience of the erring youth-talking over his problems, by patemal advice and admonition, and in which, in extreme situations, benevolent and wise institutions of the state provided guidance and help.” Fortas tumed to sociological evidence to argue that “the essentials of due process may be a more impressive and more therapeutic attitude insofar as a juvenile is concerned.” In sum, the Supreme Court was no longer willing to trust the discretion and judgment of the juvenile-court judges. Little time was lost in applying this reasoning to attack the “paternalism” of the school principal. It was not long before all of the tests of due process enumerated in Gault were applied to schools, namely: notice of the charges, right to counsel, right to confrontation and cross-examination, privilege against self-incrimination, right to a transcript of the proceedings, and right to appellate review.

In the year following Gault, the American Civil Liberties Union published a widely influential document, Academic Freedom in the Secondary Schools. The ACLU statement laid down three principles, the first of which pushed academic freedom to a new limit by arguing that freedom implies the right to make mistakes and that therefore students must sometimes “be permitted to act in ways which are predictably unwise so long as the consequences of their acts are not dangerous to life and property, and do not seriously disrupt the academic process.,’ The second principle blurred the line between speech and action, arguing for ”a recognition that deviation from the opinions and standards deemed desirable by the faculty is not ipso-facto a danger to the educational process.“ These statements put many teachers on the defensive. Insofar as these principles were restricted to free-speech issues, most school officials and most parents would probably agree with them – although they might not be happy with its relatively strong dismissal of ”standards“ of the adults in the schools. It was the third ACLU principle that bluntly warned school officials to pay close attention to the Gault decision: ”Students and their schools should have the right to live under the principle of ‘rule by law’ as opposed to ’rule by personality. ’To protect this right, rules and regulations should be in writing. Students have the right to know the extent and limits of the faculty’s authority and, therefore, the powers that are reserved for the students and the responsibilities that they should accept." In every area of discipline the ACLU statement took a lawyerly view of the need to reduce adult latitude and discretion in favor of specific definitions and rules.

…Along with the adoption of similar regulations, in l971-72 the Median superintendent’s Student Cabinet, itself a new body composed of students from all high schools in the city, met and proposed a new grievance procedure. It outlined a five ‘step process’ similar to labor negotiations, in which students could bring a wide range of grievances to arbitration….

One of the most admired teachers in the English department, who came to the school in the mid-1970s, is quite liberal in her views. She told of her shock when she first pressed a case of cheating by a neurosurgeon’s son:

The truth is I saw the kid cheating. I saw him with his open book on his lap during a test and by the time I got back to him to get his paper the book was back on the floor. They wanted documentation. “How can you prove it? How did he cheat?” I said I am telling you that he was cheating. But the question now is, “We’ve heard John’s side of the story, what’s yoursl” As much as I believe in giving due process to kids something grates when I hear, “What’s your side of the story?” Somehow it felt like I’m part of the crime … The issue is the boy’s cheating and now two hours later I’m in the principal’s office discussing due process. And that’s not the only incident I’ve had.

The same teacher failed a boy who handed in a term paper he had not written. She had to appear before her supervisor and defend herself repeatedly because “that parent called every day, hired a lawyer, made my life absolutely miserable for four and a half months.” The lawyer reviewed all her papers for the whole terrn to see if the mother’s charge that the teacher had shown prejudice toward her son could be substantiated. Finally the boy was transferred to another class.

…With other teachers, however, there was a tendency to withdraw. A science teacher expressed an attitude we heard in many interviews: “You know what’s going to happen. The parents are going to get a lawyer, the kid’s going to get off, and you’re going to look like a fool.”

…

Cited repeatedly by teachers in recounting the history of these times was the fact that students who smashed tables and windows in the school library were let off after lengthy hearings with only a school transfer. Concluding that it was fruitless to act, teachers censored themselves. During our observations in the school later that decade, a teacher was visibly upset about a group of students who had verbally assaulted her and made sexually degrading comments in the hall. Asked why she didn’t report the episode, she responded, “Well, it wouldn’t have done any good.” “Why not?” we pressed. “l didn’t have any witnesses,” she replied. Adult authority was increasingly defined by what would stand up in court. Students were quick to tell teachers, “You can’t suspend me.” Behavior was regarded as tolerable unless it was specifically declared illegal. Jurisdiction was so narrowly defined in a legal sense that when a student told the principal after lunch that he had been beaten up, the principal asked which side of the street he had been standing on. If he had been across the street, that would be out of the school’s jurisdiction and presumably beyond redress by the principal.

…Teachers joked that corporal punishment was a relic of the past – except for students who beat up on them. Not so much of a joke, however, was the school board’s new regulation that stripped teachers of the power to keep students after school unless the pupil was allowed to call his or her parents: “lf parents object to detaining their child after school hours, the pupil may not be kept after school.” The school board lawyers cited the case of Pierce vs. The Society of Sisters, a 1925 Supreme Court case which struck down the power of the state to prohibit private schooling, saying the state must not maintain a monopoly in education. It essentially gave parents the right to choose the form of schooling they wished for their child. But it had nothing to do with the age-old teacher’s punishment of keeping children after school. While the new regulation more directly affected teachers in elementary schools than in high schools, it changed the climate in which all worked and was typical of the series of “shall nots” the teachers felt as a rebuff.

The stories from Hamilton High are similar to stories told from other schools around the country. And these stories are still so frequent there is practically a genre of writing – the urban teacher’s confessional about how their students are unruly and they lack the tools to discipline them. See for instance “How My School and District Failed its Students”, “How I Joined Teach for America—and Got Sued for $20 Million”, “I Quit Teach for America.” “My year of terror and abuse teaching at a NYC high school” or “Young and Violent, Even Kindergartners” One of these teachers writes:

When people ask me what I believe was the number one barrier to student achievement at my school, I always offer the same answer: the failure of the school and district to address chronically disruptive students. It was a problem created by negligent leaders who willingly allowed a free-for-all environment that was conducive to chaos instead of learning…This wasn’t just a problem at my school. When I spoke with other teachers throughout the district, they told me that the situation at their school was nearly identical to mine. Some of their stories are just as outrageous.

Overall, I think the evidence is very strong that there was a decline in discipline and punishment during the 1960s and 1970s at all levels – from school to the streets to the courts. And that decline lead to a substantial rise in disorder and bad behavior.

There since has been some reaction, with more strict policing. But unfortunately the problems in the school have not been addressed. Thus often students go through the school system, committing bad deeds without serious punishment, only to reach adulthood, commit the same deeds and end up in prison. The “school to prison” pipeline is almost certainly due to a lack of punishment in the schools, rather than there being too much punishment in the schools.

Closing Thoughts

It may make readers uncomfortable that this essay has put so much emphasis on violence committed by black people. People who focus too much on selecting anectdotes of black crime are often accused of cherry-picking facts to further a racist narrative. I can only hope you believe me when I say that when I first started reseaching the problem of urban decay over a decade ago, the analysis in this post was not something I set out to prove. Rather, I set out to find as many first-hand, narratives accounts of urban decay and “white flight” as I could. I wanted to learn the story from the people who were actually there, or from the people who interviewed the people who were actually there. And these are the stories I found, over and over again. And these were the stories that were almost completely ommitted from my college courses – we only ever heard that white people left because the suburbs were so much better – without hearing why people thought the suburbs were better. We heard about block busters promoting fear – without learning that the fears were justified, not irrational.

It should also be pointed out that it is erroneous to single out violent young black men as the villains in this story. I think a lot of American politics is basically manipulating enforcement of the law in order to steal turf from other people. A fair amount of blame goes to the liberal WASP establisment, who in their battle with the ethnic white political power, relaxed enforcement of the law in black areas, hooked them on welfare, and used black people as a tool for claiming political power.

Right now we are in a vicious cycle. In academic and policy wonk circles, any criticism of “black crime” is considered victim blaming and possibly racist. The problems of the black community are instead pinned on segregation and racist policing. Yet it is not segregation that causes the crime. And every time we try to integrate, without fixing the crime problem, integration fails because white people flee the violence. And while police misbehavior is a problem, under-policing is also a big problem. When we cannot honestly describe the problem, when we cannot propose proper solutions, the problem only becomes worse.

So how do we solve these problems? For further thoughts on the actual “root” causes of crime, and how to fix crime, see my very long blog post here on the causes and cures of crime.

Finally, I recommend reading the full ethnographies and memoirs that I cited in this post. I have learned to never trust someone excerpting primary sources, as it is very easy to select anectdotes in a way to create misleading narratives. And you should not trust my selective excerpting, read the material for yourself. Here are some recommendations:

• Carnasie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn Against Liberalism
• Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America
• Death of a Jewish Community
• Devil’s Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit
• Philly War Zone: Growing Up in a Racial Battleground
• The World We Created At Hamilton High
• The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• American Millstone: An Examination of the Nation’s Permanent Underclass
• The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century by Robert Roberts
• All Soul’s: A Family Story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald
• How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob A. Riis
• Crime in America and the Police by Raymond Blaine Fosdick
• Following the color line; an account of Negro citizenship in the American democracy by Ray Stannard Baker
• The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation by Raymond Wolters
• The Corner and Homicide by David Simon

The true story of what happened in the American city is much more interesting than the standard narrative. And it is essential that more people know the true narrative, so that we can really fix these problems.

Sources for historical American city homicide rates:

1910s homicide rate data comes from Raymond Fosdick’s Crime, America, and the Police and from the New York Times article “1,910 MURDERS DONE IN 28 CITIES IN 1921”. The Detroit murder rate is an estimate for 1915-1917, based on the number of homicides reported by Fosdick and using the average of the population between the 1910 and 1920 census. The Atlanta number is for 1911 and comes from Spectator [Philadelphia]. An American Review of Insurance, Volumes 88-89

Most 1950 homicide rate data comes from Patterns in criminal homicide by Marvin E Wolfgang. The rates are an average of 1948 to 1952. For Detroit and St. Louis the data comes from page 20 of Homicides in a southern metropolis, Atlanta, Georgia 1950-1954. Cleveland data for 1947 to 1953 comes from Book Review of Homicide in An Urban Community by Bensing and Schroeder. New Orleans homicide rate comes from NOLA Crime News. For San Francisco the homicide count comes from Annual report of the Police Department of the City and County of San Francisco, California 1951

The 1980 and some of the 1991 data comes from Marshall Project Crime in Context trend tool.

The rest of the 1991 homicide data comes from this Heritage Foundation report: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1998/09/what-to-do-about-the-cities

The 2015 homicide rate comes from Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate ) and is based on the 2015 FBI crime report

I am very skeptical of this point of view. In a previous post, I argued that many professional jobs (architect, manager, lawyer) have no natural need to require three to seven years of tertiary schooling. Rather, the strict requirements are due to credentialing laws that restrict entry into the profession and prop up wages.

For this post, I decided to go through a master spreadsheet of employment in the United States and make my own assessment of what percent of jobs truly require college. I sorted each occupation in one of the following buckets:

1. Grade School or Less Needed – Beyond reading, writing and basic math, no education is needed for this job. Any job specific training takes less than six months. Examples: truck driver, cook, massage therapist, hair stylist, or orderly.
2. Trade Training needed – This job requires grade school plus one to four years of job specific training. This training could come via vocational school, community college, or apprenticeship. Examples: plumber, carpenter, social worker, auto mechanic, musician, machinist, x-ray technician, or vocational nurse.
3. General Secondary Education Helpful These are white-collar, leadership or professional jobs, that benefit from the classic general high school education. The classic high school education covers: writing well, a survey of literature and history, logic, rhetoric, general science, and math sufficient to do bookkeeping, etc. The job may also require up to two years of job specific training, which could be taught at a community college, trade school, online classes, or during an apprenticeship. Examples include: financial adviser, executive, teacher, or a marketing manager.
4. Tertiary Study Necessary. Beyond the classic secondary education, these professions require one to three years of specialized study and practice before a person can be profitably employed at an entry level. But, this study does not need to be done at school. The study could be self-directed and certified by exams. Or a young trainee could work part-time at an office and self-study part time. Examples of this are: computer programming, architect, lawyer, or accountant. The traditional path into law used to be via “reading law” in the offices of an existing lawyer. Once upon a time, architects started working as teenagers as entry-level drafters. Only in modern times have the laws been changed to require the study to occur in school, rather than in the workplace.
5. Tertiary School Necessary. These professions require years of supervised training that cannot occur on the job. The prime example of this is being doctor. A trainee must spend time dissecting cadavers and doing labs before they can be employed in treating real patients.

I categorized the jobs based on my own subjective assessment, not based on what HR departments and laws require. If you think I am off, here is the spreadsheet with my work. Create your own copy, make your own changes, and share it in the comments section. Explain why you think a given job really requires more or less education.

Here is table with my results , compared to what the actual attendance rates are:

There you have it – according to my own subjective categorizations, I am right, and Bill Gates is wrong :-) We have way too much schooling, not too little. If someone has Bill Gate’s email address, please send him this post, link him to the occupation spreadsheet, and tell him he is completely crazy. There is no plausible way that 60% of jobs will innately require a degree in ten years. If 60% of jobs require a college degree on paper, that requirement will be entirely artificial (due to credentialing laws and competitive signaling spiral/degree inflation – see for example DC’s new regulation that childcare workers must have college degrees).

The most surprising thing I noticed was how many jobs require almost no specialized study or training. Even in contrarian, anti-college intellectual circles, it is popular to say we need more vocational education and apprenticeships. But skilled trades are only around 15% of jobs. The majority of jobs require no special training. They are jobs like cashier, driver, orderly, real estate agent, customer service agent, store clerk, house painter, or laborer.

Less than 15% of jobs can be plausibly said to need more study than the classic high school education. And a only a portion of those jobs require that the tertiary come via formal schooling, as opposed to self-study.

There is the argument that college is where people grapple with new ideas and “learn how to think” – it is not the direct skills that matter, but rather, college provides an intellectual base that is useful in all sorts of jobs.

I think this argument fails in four ways:

1. People confuse cause and effect. College graduates are more likely to be smart and thoughtful, but college did not make them this way – it was a requirement for getting in to college in the first place. 2.. College actually teaching people how to think is increasingly rare. Only a small percentage of students actually read the classics, get exposed to a variety of ideas, or are actually challenged to think in section or seminar. And more and more, college has become an environment hostile to free inquiry. Even fifteen years ago at an Ivy League school I did not like to say things too far outside the zeitgeist in section, because it just wasn’t worth the risk of making someone in class angry. And I hear the problem is even worse now.
2. “Learning how to think” is what grade school and high school should be for. The problem is that we started sending everyone to high school, and so we watered down the high school curriculum. Now we are sending more and more youth to college, and watering down the college curriculum…
3. Most people won’t have a knowledge worker career path in which extensive training in learning how to think is useful. Nor do they have the natural aptitude for such a career path.

(I wrote more about the “learn how to think” argument in my previous piece)

Want “good” jobs? Subsidize wages directly

The a common assumption is that since college educated professionals make good wages, if we want everyone to have a “good job”, we need to send everyone to college.

This is obviously fallacious. How can everyone be an engineer or a lawyer or other professional? Are we to have no truck drivers and HVAC installers? How is that possible?

Even if software developers could invent robotics to replace HVAC installers and truck drivers, that would not result in employing 100 million software developers. There would still only be a few million software developers while everyone else would need to scramble for an alternative job.

When more people are pushed into college, it rarely expands the supply of jobs. Rather, wages for that profession get driven down and the marginal students end up unable to break into the field. Being a lawyer was once an attractive career path. But far too many students went to law school, so for all but the top students wages cratered and jobs became scarce. Similarly, too many students went to grad school, and the wages and job prospects for young post-grads became dire.

Across the board, the marginal college graduate increasingly find their degrees unwanted and useless. Nobody needs another international relations major from Southern Ohio State College. He graduates and ends up tending bar or doing equipment sales or doing one of a million other jobs that he could have done without a degree. We also see this in other countries – such as Egypt – where the push to educate young adults far outstripped the economy’s ability to provide professional jobs.

Sending more people to college does not fundamentally alter the number of jobs and their salaries. If we want the working class to be better off, there are only two possibilities: One, subsidize the wages directly. I wrote previously about how this could be done. Two, change the culture to make such jobs higher status. A job as a claims adjuster or marketing manager is neither more noble or nor psychologically superior than a job as a truck driver or line cook. It is silly that we consider one a “good job” while the other is a “dead-end” job. It used to be pop culture celebrated the ordinary working-class job – but during the second half of the 20th century this shifted, and a college education became the sole track to having status.

The Real Skills Deficit

Consider the goods and services that make up a good and comfortable life: high-tech gizmos, gas heating, indoor plumbing, a well-built home, access to a skilled doctor, good restaurants, good beer, parks, well-built infrastructure, a stroll down a street with pretty buildings, etc. If you look at the production process for those goods and services, only a small percent of the workers involved need a college degree. And most degrees granted do not improve the production process – how does granting millions of degrees in “business”, “communications” or “social science” lead to more and better of these products? It doesn’t. And in fact, by channeling so many people into the college pipeline, we have lost out on the skills that did make for the good life. We have lost the artisans that once created beautiful streetscapes and ornate architectural detailing. We have less money to spend on infrastructure. We have more debt, and more stress.

Furthermore, even in the engineering fields, much of the know-how exists exclusively inside the productive organization – not inside the textbooks. Every engineer, when getting a job, has a big adjustment period as they learn how things are actually done. They learn why the schoolbook version was simplified or out-dated, and they learn the real techniques and tricks and tooling that they actually need to know to make things work.

In the past few decades, America has become more educated in terms of degrees. But in reality, people like my dad were training Chinese engineers to replace them, as the boomers retired and the high-tech job moved overseas. And now Forbes tells us that the Kindle cannot be made in America, because the essential technological production no longer exists here. According to policy wonks – who measure skills and education by number of years people spend sitting in chair – we have become more educated. But if you look at the actual knowledge needed to build high-tech goods, the issue is a lot more murky.

What should a sane education system look like?

If Mr. Gates were to put me in charge of his policy recommendation operation, here are some fixes I would push for:

• Separate schooling from credentialing. All jobs that currently require a degree, should instead require a knowledge test. The employer should not care how the knowledge was obtained, just that the applicant has the knowledge. Perhaps even go so far as to make it illegal to ask for college degree information, just as it is illegal to ask for race or sex. You can ask for the knowledge but the not the degree, as asking for the degree is discriminatory against people who could not afford the time or money for college.
• Create a set of free, online high school and college degree programs that any American could enroll in, and pursue at their own pace. Free college for everyone! Since the courses are online, the cost to the government could be quite small.
• At age 13, give everyone a $100k education voucher. They can spend it on trade school, high school, or professional school. If they do not spend the voucher by age 30, they can put it directly in a retirement account or use it to pay down a mortgage. If someone does not have the natural aptitude to take advantage of schooling, wouldn’t it make more sense to just give them $100k, rather than spend waste the money on a high school or college program that is not useful to them? And if someone can be efficient and teach themselves out of books, why not let them keep some of the money that would have been spent on their schooling?
• Legalize and normalize apprenticeship contracts. Even better – require all profitable companies to take on 1 apprentice for every 7 employees. Once a person finishes grade school, high school, or professional school, they apply directly for one of these apprenticeships. An apprenticeship is often superior to votech school, because 1) votech schools have to replicate expensive equipment that already exists anyways on the job site and 2 ) in an apprenticeship, you learn from actual practitioners, not from teachers who may have been out of the field for a while. The first job is always the hardest, and mandatory apprenticeships could directly solve the problem colleges pretend to solve – that of integrating the next generation into the workforce.

If these reforms were passed, the average professional would be earning money at an earlier age and with less debt. The average laborer would be given a hand-up in life, to the tune of $100k. Financial stress across the population would be immensely reduced.

But instead, we keep funneling more and more people to more and more years of expensive schooling, to the greater detriment of all.

Equally decisive in determining crime rates are the more invisible barriers to crime set up by social norms and social cohesion. Indeed, one of the most robust statistical patterns known is that crime rates tend to go up with rising economic inequality, which itself tends to go along with erosion of social trust….In a brilliant 2009 book titled “The Spirit Level,” researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett reviewed hundreds of earlier studies and presented overwhelming evidence that economic inequality correlates directly with levels of crime and many other measures of social dysfunction. Nations with lower inequality have higher life expectancies, fewer homicides, lower infant mortality, higher levels of trust, and less obesity and addiction.

We can find similar writings in the NY Times, The Atlantic, World Bank, etc.

But as we know from Statistics 101, correlation does not prove causation. There are numerous variables that differ between countries or states that can have a correlated impact on inequality and crime: governance, ethnicity, culture, institutions, traditions, etc.

To avoid these confounders, another way to test the link between inequality and crime is to examine the treatment effect. If public policy choices increase inequality, does crime go up? If public policy choices decrease inequality, does crime go down?

From 1910 until the late 1970s, both England and America undertook concerted programs to reduce inequality. Both introduced progressive income taxes. Both changed laws to support unionization. And then in the 1980s both countries reversed course. Britain elected Thatcher, the U.S. elected Reagan. They lowered tax rates, made life more difficult for unions, and promoted business. Inequality rose in both countries for the next few decades.

I’m going to restrict the analysis to the largest cities in England and America as of 1910, in order to help isolate confounding changes such as changes in urbanization, (and also because I don’t trust homicide numbers from rural areas from the 1910s). My measure of inequality will be the GINI coeffecient at the national level (since we do not have the GINI coefficient broken down at a local level). A higher GINI coefficient means more inequality.

Here is a plot of the change in homicide from the initial time period (the 1910s), to the peak of equality (~1980) and then to a new high in inequality (~2008):

Turns out that inequality reduces crime, and equality increases crime. For every 10% decline in inequality according GINI coeffecient, homicide nearly doubles! That is a very strong correlation. (You can download my spreadsheet here).

We should cut the data another way in order to confirm these findings. My measure of inequality for cities was crude because I used a single American number for all American cities, since that is all the data I had for 1910 and 1980. But in recent years we have data that allows us to breakdown inequality by individual city in America. Here are the same four cities, showing inequality to homicide in 2012. Again, more inequality means less homicide:

Clearly this is an open and shut case. Inequality reduces homicide. We should give more tax cuts for the rich and cut the minimum wage.

Now…do I actually believe this? No. My results above are due to tricks and confounding factors.

First, I cherry-picked my data set. I left out the 1920s (which in America had rising inequality due to the roaring 20s and rising homicide due to prohibition). I omitted the 1950s which had low inequality and low crime.

Second, with regards to the United States, I chose specific cities that were impacted by the Great Migration. The homicide increase in Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia were in part a straightforward result of demographic changes. An ethnic group with historically much higher crime rates moved into those cities. If more of a city is composed from a higher crime rate population, then mathematically, the homicide rate of the whole goes up, even if there has been no behavioral change within each group.

Third, another confounder is correlated public policy. When liberals were in power, they enacted policies that both reduced inequality and relaxed law enforcement (in the U.S. for instance, imprisonment per buglarly offence dropped by 75% during the 1960s). Then in the 1980s there was a backlash and we had multiple decades of pro-capitalism, tough-on-crime leaders: Thatcher, Reagan, Clinton, Blair. It likely wasn’t the equality that caused the crime – it was the other policies that went into effect at the same time.

Fourth, with regards to the city level data, there is a composition effect. Upper classes commit less crime, the underclass commits more crime. If in a particular city underclass violence causes the upper class to move out, overall equality within the city limits will rise. The violence will have caused equality. Or, if a city has an influx of wealth, the newly enriched upper class can price out the underclass. An economic boom can thus cause more inequality and less homicide within the city limits.¹

Note that these confounding variables can cause correlations in the opposite direction based on circumstances. For instance, with regards to public policy, corrupt, incompetent governance can cause both higher crime and more inequality. And with regards to demographic composition, if a nation has an influx of an underclass population, that can also cause a correlated increase in crime and inequality.

In total, the statisical analysis above does not prove causation. But – all those studies using correlations to show the opposite, that inequality causes crime, are also bogus. They are also cherry-picked, confounded, and intellectually dishonest. With so many interlocking causal factors, anyone who calculates a correlation with regards to inequality and crime and tells you this proves X causes Y is either appallingly stupid or utterly mendacious.

So now that I have muddied the waters so much – what do I actually think about the link between inequality or poverty and crime?

The idea that a nation’s level of statistical inequality, in and of itself, causes homicide, stikes me as absurd from a common sense standpoint. If there is a boom in Silicon Valley and tech entrepreneurs make billions, driving up inequality, then people in Boston or Detroit or Baltimore are more likely to shoot each other? That does not make sense.

At a local or personal level, I am also dubious of the idea that inequality causes crime. There are countless examples of people living just peacefully in the face of massive inequality, for example: Microsoft interns attending a party at Bill Gate’s house; the broke college athletes playing hard for millionaire coaches; the low-paid janitors and dishwashers of every rich American city who don’t kill their rich clientele; the working class deferring to the upper classes in Edwardian England; all the slaves who did not kill their master’s wife when their husbands were away fighting the Civil War. Furthermore, when we look at high-crime areas, very little of the crime is committed by the poor against the rich. Most of it is beefs and vendettas against equals. Perceived unfair inequality can cause resentment, but even this rarely leads to crime, and certainly does not explain crime committed within a community of equally poor people.

And while statistical correlations cannot prove causation, the data does show that these confounding variables are far, far, far more important than inequality. If one of the most unequal societies (1910’s England) had one of the lowest crime rates in Anglo-American history, then clearly inequality is not determinative. Clearly, we can solve the problem of crime without solving the problem of inequality, because we have done so before. And on the flip side, there is no evidence that we can solve crime by reducing inequality, because we have never done so before.

The link between poverty and crime is a bit more complicated. Within a given time and place, it is clear that poverty is correlated with crime. On the other hand, London of the 1910s or Philadelphia of the 1910s was not only more unequal, but much poorer. The lower classes suffered a level of material deprivation and hunger that is very rare even in the poorest modern American ghettos². If poverty is a definitive, “root cause” of crime, the crime rates should have been much higher then, not much lower. Worldwide, there are many places much poorer in the material sense than American ghettos, while having much lower crime rates. Clearly then, poverty does not inevitably lead to crime. Rather, I think the obvious explanation is that other factors cause both crime and poverty:

First, the inherent personality qualities that make one more likely to commit homicide (impulsiveness, prone to rage, not thinking about long term consequences, disobedience to authority) also make it harder for that person to hold down a good job. Poor personal character can cause both crime and poverty.

Second, the qualities that make a community more violent also make it poorer (break down in law and order, bad government, brain drain, lack of strong competent authority figures, a population that doesn’t plan for the future). So again, societal breakdown can cause both crime and poverty.

Third, underclass populations are often stuck in an equilibrium where “respectability” is not needed. Or they are stuck in a “vendetta” or “honor culture” equiilbrium where a reputation for violence is actively cultivated. This classic essay on riots phrases things well:

Respectability—a reputation for behaving in a predictable, socially benign manner—is an extremely valuable asset for most people who live in the middle class world. It is one of the key ingredients in career and personal success, and the need for it serves as a sort of performance bond to keep middle class people in line. A person to whom respectability matters much should demand better odds before risking arrest and disgrace than would a football hooligan or a member of the American urban underclass or any other socially marginal character to whom respectability is of relatively little value. Such a person has something that a middle class person lacks—a great deal of nihilistic freedom of the “nothing to lose” variety. Such freedom, experience suggests, is a perplexing and often malignant possession. Any social policy that would materially improve the life chances of a potential rioter would concurrently raise the value of respectability to such a person, and thus dampen the incentive to participate in civil disorders.

This is not to suggest that reputation matters less to a hooligan than it does to an orthodontist. The question is, reputation for what. A valuable reputation among the thugs is a reputation for hard partying, physical toughness, “sticking by your mates,” and above all an ability to engage in predatory behavior without being arrested.

….Reducing these individuals’ disposition to violence would seem, therefore, to involve getting them to identify with the larger community—making them middle class, in other words. Alas, that is easier said than done.

Note that this lack of care about “respectability” is not an inevitable aspect of poor communities. From my reading of history, many of our grand-parents cared more about respectability despite being materially worse off. Compare this depression-era bread-line to the dress of a modern IT professional. The poor often rely more on charity from neighbors and on credit from the local shopkeeper. This can mean they have an extra incentive to maintain good behavior. They are often one slip-up away from losing a job and going hungry, which means extra incentive to be well-behaved at work.

In some times and places the peasant poor are the most respectable, and it is the nobles who are the worst behaved (because their status makes them immune to censure and punishment). As historian Peter Turchin noted:

A murder was followed by revenge in a cycle of violence familiar to fans of Mafia crime stories. Moreover, frequent and brutal assaults and homicides undermined the social and psychological barriers against interpersonal violence. It was really the nobles who were the “criminal underclass” during the late Middle Ages.

Similar stories of violent upper classes can be told elsewhere. Historian William Durant writes that in the 1560’s Germany people used to fear the (higher class) college students: “In most university towns the citizens hesitated to go out at night for fear of the students, who on some occasions attacked them with open knives.” British aristocrats had the Hellfire Club. In modern America we have our rowdy and decadent frat bros. In pre-modern Japan, Fukuzawa writes of the young samurai students in Osaka scaring the townspeople off the street for fun (there were no police at the time holding the samurai accountable to the law).

The only plausible theory for a causal relationship between reducing poverty and reducing crime is that poor people have nothing to lose. If you give them money, they will have something to lose, and thus will be less willing to take risks and commit crime. However this logic ignores that even very poor people can be incentivized not to take risks – even a poor person does not want to have their freedom taken away or to face corporal punishment. And giving poor people money so that “they have something to lose” only works in reducing crime if you actually take away the money if they misbehave – which is something the American welfare state has routinely failed to do. If you simply give the poor money and housing, without any strings attached, you will essentially turn them into a sort of debased nobility. Bad behavior will not result in consequences, and so behavior will become worse.

Social Differences between High-Crime Poor Communities and Low-Crime Poor Communities

To learn about the actual causes and cures for crime, we must go beyond statistics and read actual accounts of high-crime and low-crime poor communities.

For the low-crime community, we’ll turn to Robert Roberts’ book The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century . He describes growing up in one of the poorest sections of England around 1910. In his account we see great material hardship, great inequality, but none of the problems of homicide, predatory assault, robbery, or single motherhood that plague the modern American ghetto and the council housing in Britain. While there had been problems of gangs of “scuttlers” and highway men in the 1800s, those problems had been largely surpressed by 1910. The homicide rate for London was around .5 per 100,000 – ten times less than the homicide rate in modern America. I cannot find the murder rate for Salford or Manchester specifically back then, but Roberts never mentions any murders or predatory crimes in his book, nor even the fear of such crime, so we have no reason to think that his slum is more dangerous than the statistics indicate. If poverty or inequality causes crime – why does one of the poorest and most unequal slums in Anglo-American history exhibit the lowest levels of crime in Anglo-American history?

The community faced a high degree of poverty and hunger, to a degree much worse than is found in the poor areas of modern cities:

One saw a quarter of a class sixty ‘strong’ come to school barefoot. Many had rickets, bow legs or suffered from open sores….

…What ‘luxuries’ people bought at a corner shop often figured only in the father’s diet, and his alone. ‘Relishes’ consisted of brawn, corned beef, boiled mutton, cheese, bacon (as little as two ounces of all these), eggs, saveloys, tripe, pigs’ trotters, sausage, cow heels, herrings, bloaters and kippers or ‘digbies’ and finnan haddock. Most could be bought from the corner shop. These were the protein foods vital to sustain a man arriving home at night, worked often to near-exhaustion. When funds were low a pennyworth of ‘parings’, bits from a tripe shop (sold by the handful in newspaper), staved off hunger in many a family. Another meal in such times, long known and appreciated, was ‘brewis’. It consisted merely of a ‘shive’ of bread and salted dripping broken up and covered with boiling water.

…

… Dining precedence in the homes of the poor had its roots in household economics: a mother needed to exercise strict control over who got which foods and in what quantity. Father ate his fill first, to ‘keep his strength up’, though naturally the cost of protein limited his intake of meats. He dined in single state or perhaps with his wife. Wage-earning youth might take the next sitting, while the younger end watched, anxious that any titbit should not have disappeared before their turn came. Sometimes all the children ate together: a basic ration of, say, two slices (and no more) of bread and margarine being doled out.

Because of the lack of class mobility, people of ambition character and intelligence tended to remain in the community:

Before 1914 the proletariat contained, far more than it does today, many men and women of personality, character and high intelligence, who were chained socially and economically within their own society. Such people in a more equitable system would, of course, have found a place far more fitted to their abilities: but only a very few, aided by luck and determination, succeeded in breaking through their environment. The vast majority, half conscious often of talents wasted, felt a frustration they could hardly have explained.

The community was tight-knit, with knowledge of deeds and misdeeds spreading quickly:

OVER our community the matriarchs stood guardians, but not creators, of the group conscience and as such possessed a sense of social propriety as developed and unerring as any clique of Edwardian dowagers….Over a period the health, honesty, conduct, history and connections of everyone in the neighbourhood would be examined. Each would be criticized, praised, censured openly or by hint and finally allotted by tacit consent a position on the social scale. Misdeeds of mean, cruel or dissolute neighbours were mulled over and penalties unconsciously fixed. These could range from the matronly snub to the smashing of the guilty party’s windows, or even a public beating. The plight of the aged, those without shelter or reaching near-starvation would be considered and their travail eased at least temporarily by some individual or combined act of charity.

The poor certainly helped the poor. Many kindly families little better off than most came to the aid of neighbours in need without thought of reward, here or hereafter. They were the salt of the earth. We knew others, too, who in return for help exacted payment in fulsome gratitude. Again, not all assistance sprang from the heart: in a hard world one never knew what blows fate would deal; a little generosity among the distressed now could act as a form of social insurance against the future.

…

Drunkenness, rowing or fighting in the streets, except perhaps at weddings and funerals (when old scores were often paid off), Christmas or bank holidays could leave a stigma on a family already registered as ‘decent’ for a long time afterwards. Another household, for all its clean curtains and impeccable conduct, would remain uneasily aware that its rating had slumped since Grandma died in the workhouse or Cousin Alf did time. Still another family would be scorned loudly in a drunken tiff for marrying off its daughter to some ‘low Mick from the Bog’.

On the whole, though, most families were well aware of their position within the community, and that without any explicit analyses. Many households strove by word, conduct and the acquisition of objects to enhance the family image and in so doing often overgraded themselves. Meanwhile their neighbours (acting in the same manner on their own behalf) tended to depreciate the pretensions of families around, allotting them a place in the register lower than that which, their rivals felt, connections, calling or possessions merited.

Reputation and the fear of losing status had a great impact on behavior:

Mothers round washing lines or going to the shop half a dozen times a day would inevitably hear of the peccadilloes of their offspring. Punishment followed, often unjustly, since the word of an adult was accepted almost always against that of a child. With some people a child had no ‘word’; only too often he was looked upon as an incomplete human being whose opinions and feelings were of little or no account – until he began to earn money! It is true that a much more indulgent attitude towards the young had already developed among the middle classes, but it had not yet spread far down the social scale. In the lower working class ‘manners’ were imposed upon children with the firmest hand: adults recognized that if anything was to be got from ‘above’ one should learn early to ask for it with a proper measure of humble politeness. There was besides, of course, the desire to imitate one’s betters.

…

If a single girl had a baby she lowered of course not only the social standing of her family but, in some degree, that of all her relations, in a chain reaction of shame. Strangely enough, those who dwelt together unmarried – ‘livin’ tally’ or ‘over t’ brush’, as the sayings went – came in for little criticism, though naturally everybody knew who was or who was not legitimate.

One of the reasons reputation mattered, was because if a family had trouble making ends meet, the first recourse was to seek credit from the shopkeeper. The credit given would depend on the person’s reputation:

And through those years (so beloved now by the elderly middle classes), and for long after, my mother kept shop among it all, noting what passed with a mixture of shrewdness and sardonic compassion. ‘In the hardest times’, she said, ‘it was often for me to decide who ate and who didn’t.’ If bankruptcy, always close in a slum corner shop, was to be avoided, one had to assess with careful judgement the honesty, class standing and financial resources of all tick customers. Not one but scores of families could lie in a poverty that left them with hardly any food at all. They appealed for credit. Then a shopkeeper’s generosity and humanity fought with his fears for self-preservation – to trust, or not to trust?

After closing time at 11 p.m. shop windows were covered with wooden shutters bolted together from within, this to discourage dangerous thoughts among those who stared in hungrily during the day. A wife (never a husband) would apply humbly for tick on behalf of her family. ‘Then, in our shop, my mother would make an anxious appraisal, economic and social – how many mouths had the woman to feed? Was the husband ailing? Tuberculosis in the house, perhaps. If TB took one it always claimed others; the breadwinner next time, maybe. Did the male partner drink heavily? Was he a bad time keeper at work? Did they patronize the pawnshop? If so, how far were they committed? Were their relations known good payers? And last, had they already ‘blued’ some other shop in the district, and for how much? After assessment credit would be granted and a credit limit fixed, at not more perhaps than five shillings’ worth of foodstuffs in any one week, with all ‘fancy’ provisions such as biscuits and boiled ham proscribed.

People worked hard because losing a job had very serious consequences:

So our neighbours, and many like them, in this ‘thrice happy first decade’ fought on grimly, certainly not to rise, but to stave off that dreaded descent into the social and economic depths. Under the common bustle crouched fear. In children – fear of parents, teachers, the Church, the police and authority of any sort; in adults – fear of petty chargehands, foremen, managers and employers of labour. Men harboured a dread of sickness, debt, loss of status; above all, of losing a job, which could bring all other evils fast in train. Most people in the undermass worked not, as is fondly asserted now, because they possessed an antique integrity which compelled ‘a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay’ (whatever that means); they toiled on through mortal fear of getting the sack. Fear was the leitmotif of their lives, dulled only now and then by the Dutch courage gained from drunkenness.

A craftsman thrown out of work sought another job at his ‘trades club’ or in a certain public house. If these failed him he began the weary round from firm to firm or from town to town, a journeyman in reality, asking for work. Building labourers I have seen as a child follow a wagon laden with bricks from the kilns, hoping to find a job where the load was tipped. For the same reason, too, they would send a wife or child trailing behind a lime cart. On some building sites a foreman might find fifty labourers pleading for a mere half-dozen jobs. It was not unknown for him to place six spades against a wall at one hundred yards’ distance. A wild, humiliating race followed; work went to those who succeeded in grabbing a spade.

In many firms and industries the battle for social justice still remained unjoined. There it was perilous for employees even to mention trade unionism. At the local dyeworks, in a meeting between masters and workers, one man had the temerity to say that since the employers had ‘combinations’ he saw no reason why workers should not have them too. The manager sacked him on the instant, in spite of his thirty years’ service, together with another who had called ‘Hear! Hear!’, and refused to pay them anything in lieu of a week’s notice.

If all else failed, a man would have to submit to the authority of a workhouse, where his life would be under tight control:

Seventy years before, when workhouses were established, it had been emphasized in a Bill which Parliament welcomed with enthusiasm that conditions of living in the ‘unions’ must deliberately be made ‘less eligible’ – that is, more wretched – than those suffered by the lowest-paid worker outside. As conscious policy, any entrant to the workhouse had to be openly humiliated, and this was done with such thorough, cold-hearted effect that it cowed the undermass for the better part of a century. The workhouse system meant, said one of its inspirers,

having all relief through the workhouse, making the workhouse an uninviting place of wholesome restraint, preventing any of its inmates from going out, or receiving visitors without a written note to that effect from one of the overseers, disallowing beer and tobacco and finding them work according to their ability: thus making the parish fund the last resource of a pauper, and rendering the person who administers the relief the hardest taskmaster and the worst paymaster that the idle and dissolute can apply to.

Parents were very authoritarian over their households:

In his book Exploring English Character Geoffrey Gorer shows with an abundance of statistical detail how, even in the 1950s, the corporal punishment of children still figured largely in English working-class homes. It seems certain that during the early years of this century the practice was much more widespread and severe. Because of it many children went in awe and fear, first of their parents, then of adults generally. Naturally, across the gulf, even in the strictest households, there could be much love and understanding for the young, and parents who rejected beating altogether. But no one who spent his childhood in the slums during those years will easily forget the regular and often brutal assaults on some children perpetrated in the name of discipline and often for the most venial offences.

…

Round parents the household revolved, and little could be done without their approval. Especially was paternal consent needed. In compensation, perhaps, for the slights of the outside world, a labourer often played king at home. Parents decreed on both one’s work and leisure and set standards of conduct, taste and culture even if they didn’t follow them. ‘As long as you have your feet under my table,’ a father would announce to one of his offspring, ‘it’s not do as I do, it’s do as I say!’ There were, of course, many working-class homes where music and literature had long held honoured place, but at the lower levels reading of any kind was often considered a frivolous occupation. ‘Put that book down!’ a mother would command her child, even in his free time, ‘and do something useful.’ Teenagers, especially girls, were kept on a very tight rein. Father fixed the number of evenings on which they could go out and required to know precisely where and with whom they had spent their leisure. He set, too, the exact hour of their return; few dared break the rule. One neighbour’s daughter, a girl of nineteen, was beaten for coming home ten minutes late after choir practice. Control could go on in some families for years after daughters had come of age. Such narrow prohibitions naturally led to much misery and frustration in the home, though there was a deal of conniving among the members of some families to help the young dodge the great man’s strictures.

And how effective were his vetoes? The number of illegitimate births in the period 1900– 10 was very small.

‘Dancing rooms’ being often taboo and visits to each other’s crowded kitchens impossible, youthful couples walked the streets or stood in dark doorways, often to be duly marked and reported on. One moralist in our neighbourhood with half a dozen convenient courting recesses round his warehouse, in order to forestall sin, kept them permanently daubed with sticky tar.

The class divisions in England of that time were stark and massive inequality was obvious. Roberts accounts a story that sounds like a scene from a Dicken’s novel:

Our school, lowest scholastically and socially of the three attached to its parish church, was ruled by the rector, a large man of infinite condescension. Once a week he called upon us, booming; the Head at sight of him seemed to shrink into a stoop of deference….

One bitterly cold autumn day we had no heat in school. As one of the more presentable boys in the class, I was dispatched by our headmaster with a letter to authority requesting that fires be lighted before the allotted date. Away I trotted in mid-morning across town to ring at the Rectory, a double-fronted villa deep in a garden. The maid let me in, took my note away and returned, beckoning across carpets – ‘The Breakfast Room!’ Awed, I followed a second servant bearing a tray into the aroma of coffee and cooked meats. The rector, wearing a red dressing gown, slouched side-on to a table, a newspaper spread, in an apartment warm, and dark with mahogany. He was holding my letter in his hand and looked at me over his glasses. Then he crumpled it and tossed it a yard across a thicket of fire-irons into blazing coals. ‘Very well!’ he grunted. ‘Just for the cold snap, tell him!’

I left overwhelmed. Such grandeur!

…

Nowhere, of course, stood class division more marked than in a full house at the theatre, with shopkeepers and publicans in the orchestra stalls and dress circle, artisans and regular workers in the pit stalls, and the low class and no class on the ‘top shelf’ or balcony. There in the gods hung a permanent smell of smoke from ‘thick twist’, oranges and unwashed humanity. Gazing happily down on their betters the mob sat once a week and took culture in the shape of ‘East Lynne’, ‘The Silver King’, ‘Pride of the Prairie’, ‘A Girl’s Crossroads’, ‘The Female Swindler’, ‘A Sister’s Sacrifice’ and the first rag-time shows.

The upper-classes condescended to the lower-classes, and this was met with a combination of deference, respect, and anger:

Parents saw their children’s teacher passing through the streets with a proper awe – a tribute which doubtless gave pleasure to the recipient and all his working-class relations. The school staff patronizing their flock were condescended to in turn by the rector, visiting clergy and His Majesty’s inspectors. Our headmaster, ever conscious of his standing, spoke politely to the mothers of his pupils whenever they called, timid and deferential, at the school. He cared about them and their children, ‘but’, complained the women in the shop, ‘he speaks to you like you was half-witted!’ In this the headmaster merely followed common practice. Many in the working class talking to their betters used their normal speech but aspirated most words beginning with a vowel in an effort to ‘talk proper’. This habit Punch found extremely funny. As a whole, the middle and upper classes, self-confident to arrogance, kept two modes of address for use among the poor: the first was a kindly, de haut en bas form in which each word, of usually one syllable, was clearly enunciated; the second had a loud, self-assured, hectoring note. Both seemed devised to ensure that though the hearer might be stupid he would know enough in general to defer at once to breeding and superiority. Hospital staff, doctors, judges, magistrates, officials and the clergy were experts at this kind of social intimidation; the trade unionist in his apron facing a well-dressed employer knew it only too well. It was a tactic, conscious or not, that confused and ‘overfaced’ the simple and drove intelligent men and women in the working class to fury. Some middle-class women, impudent magistrates, prison governors, military and small public school types still exploit it.

The only hint of criminality in Roberts’ account of Salford is in his stories of street gangs. But by the 1900s these gangs had been tamed by ruthless police action. The remaining brawls was amongst themselves, and more equivalent to the a hard-fought, Friday night, tackle football game than the general predation of modern ghetto violence:

The groups of young men and youths who gathered at the end of most slum streets on fine evenings earned the condemnation of all respectable citizens. They were damned every summer by city magistrates and unceasingly harried by the police. In the late nineteenth century the Northern scuttler and his ‘moll’ had achieved a notoriety as widespread as that of any gangs in modern times. He too had his own style of dress – the union shirt, bell-bottomed trousers, the heavy leather belt, pricked out in fancy designs with the large steel buckle and the thick, iron-shod clogs. His girl friend commonly wore clogs and shawl and a skirt with vertical stripes. That fraternity of some thirty to forty teenagers who lived in the street where our Church of England school stood achieved such a fearsome reputation for gang battle that they were remembered by name in The Times seventy years after. By my youth most of these were married and worthy householders in the district. In many industrial cities of the late Victorian era and after, such groups became a minor menace. Deprived of all decent ways of spending their little leisure, they sought escape from tedium in bloody battles with belt and clog – street against street. The spectacle of two mobs rushing with wild howls into combat added still another horror to the ways of slumdom. Scuttlers appeared in droves before the courts, often to receive savage sentences. In the new century this mass brutality diminished somewhat, but street battles on a smaller scale continued to recur spasmodically in our district and in others similar until the early days of the first world war….All the warring gangs were known by a street name and fought, usually, by appointment – Next Friday, 8 p.m.: Hope Street v. Adelphi!

Now let us us compare Robert’s Classic Slum to the modern American ghetto. We’ll focus on the book American Millstone which is a compendium of Chicago Tribune articles written in the early 1980s about the Chicago ghetto. The story it relates is similar to other personal accounts, such as Gang Leader for a Day, David Simon’s The Corner, or Jill Levoy’s Ghettoside.

The neighborhood of interest in American Millstone – North Lawndale – had a homicide rate of 55 per 100,000. That is 100 times higher than the homicide rate in rate in London or of England of 1910s.

In recent years, the robbery rate in Chicago as a whole has been around 500-600 per 100,000. The robbery rate in London and Liverpool around 1915 was around 0.25. That is not a typo. Modern Chicago has 2,000 times as much robbery. The .25 per 100,000 figure for 1915s London was very low even compared to American cities during that time period. When the American social science Raymond Fosdick was compiling this data, he was so suprised by the robbery statistics that he added a footnote. “The astonishing discrepancy in these statistics led to a careful investigation….The fact remains that highway robberies or ”hold-ups“ do not occur in Great Britain with anything like the frequency they do in America.”

This is also corroborated by first hand accounts. For instance in the 1870s Luke Owen Pike wrote:

Meanwhile, it may with little fear of contradiction be asserted that there never was, in any nation of which we have a history, a time in which life and property were so secure as they are at present England. The sense of security is almost everywhere diffused, in town and country alike, and it is in marked contrast to the sense of insecurity which prevailed even at the beginning of the present century. There are, of course, in most great cities some quarters of evil repute, in which assault and robbery are now and again committed. There is, perhaps, to be found alingering and flickering tradition of the old sanctuaries and similar resorts. But any man of average stature and strength may wander about on foot and alone, at any hour of the day or the night, through the greatest of all cities and its suburbs, along the high roads, and through unfrequented country lanes, and never have so much as the thought of danger thrust upon him, unless he goes out of his way to court it.

I think we can say with confidence then, that the homicide and robbery rates in modern Chicago are multiple orders of magnitudes higher than those found in London during the 1910s.

Let us excerpt from American Millstone to see how their lived experience compares. We start with the account of Dorthy, a single-mom, the middle of three generations living on welfare:

But when she was 15, the same thing happened to her that had happened to her mother at the same early age: She became pregnant, her sexual interlude the product of a schoolgirl’s crush. “I was tired of taking care of children,” Dorothy remembers. “I didn’t want a child.” When her mother found out, she did not hit her daughter, as Dorothy had feared she might. She cried.

Dorothy dropped out of school to have her first baby, Barbara. Like her mother, she signed up for public aid. Her first check, she remembers clearly, was for $23.

Dorothy began taking birth-control pills, not wanting more children. But she did not understand how they worked, swallowing one before each act of intercourse. After the birth of her second daughter, Dorothy asked doctors to tie her tubes. They refused, saying they could not perform such an operation because she was not married and not yet 21. (page 22)

…

[Dorthy met a carpenter who became a live-in boyfriend] With Little in the home, some of the burden was taken off Dorothy. He liked to roughhouse with the children and watched them from time to time. But the environment was tumultuous. Like her mother, who now is dead, Dorthy put up with a lot from her man-drinking, beatings and philandering. One night after he came home drunk and began pummeling her face, she considered leaving. Instead, she grabbed a telephone and slammed it against his head and decided to stay.

Whatever stability the family had when Little was alive seemed to disintegrate when he died. The children became hard to handle. Nothing seemed to get done unless Domthy yelled and “whupped” and yelled again. She married a man “just because he asked me,” only to separate five months later. There was so much chaos in the household that Dorothy’s oldest daughter, Barbara, was seven months along before Dorothy noticed that she, just like her mother and her grandmother before, was pregnant at 15.

When he heads off for school in the morning, [her son] William says, he sometimes feels as though he should just keep walking and never come back home. He knows something is wrong. To get pocket change, he admits to having bullied neighborhood kids for “protection money,” and he hops turnstiles at the “L” stations for a free ride when he is broke. Most of the time, he says, he feels angry.

Sean is the one who gives Dorothy the most concern. “He is vulnerable,” she explains, “and he likes money too much.” The 11-year-old flunked 2nd and 5th grades and has started to draw street gang graffiti on his clothes and arms. He fights. “If the price was right,” Dorothy says, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he could be persuaded to sell drugs.”

While women in the Salford slums were under the strict authority of their mother and father, who could supervise the courtship process, Dorthy had to fend for herself in her romantic relationships. And then, without a father in the house, the next generation of children went unsupervised as they bullied other kids and got involved with gangs.

In Salford, for an able-body man to go on relief would require entering a workhouse where he would lose all access to sex and alcohol. But in the case of Calvin Barret in Chicago his government check came with no strings attached:

By the time Calvin Barrett leaves the apartment, it is past 10 a.m. Adusting the tilt of his black cloth cap, he bids goodbye to the person he calls his “woman” and struts through the fircnt door, out onto the sidewalk and into what has become his daily routine.

Barrett is 36 and an ex-convict, released from Stateville Penitentiary in 1981 after doing two years for burglary. After a couple of months on the street, he committed another burglary and was sent back to prison.

Today the taxpayers are paying for his liquor.

Like 5,034 others in this community, Calvin Barrett derives part of his income from general assistance, the welfare program for single men and women with no dependent children. He receives a monthly check for $151.55, plus $79 in food stamps, which he can sometimes sell for a little more than their cash value

In Salford, all of the youth were raised from a little child to have respect for adults. And the word of an adult is always taken over. If youth committed even a minor offense, they would be reported to their father, who would give the youth suitable punishment. In Chicago, the worst element among the youth openly preyed open the old:

Everyone in the ghetto is afraid. “Every day, it’s constantly on their minds, the fear of being hurt,” Father Clements says’

For example, Sister Jean Juliano, one of several Daughters of Charity who work at Marillac House, n22W. Jackson Blvd., on the West Side, notes: “There is a general fear on the part of seniors to come out on the streets, especially on the lst and 3d of the month when their checks come in.”

“They know there are young punks waiting to knock them down and take their wallet or purse. They’re afraid to death to open their doors, especially at night. They have become prisoners in their own homes.”

“The young punks around here have no respect for anyone. They’d cut their own grandmother’s throat.”

American Millstone (p. 43)

Punishment was also less serious in Chicago, as compared to in England where a predatory robbery could easily bring the death penalty:

Winston Moore, the Chicago Housing Authority security chief, blames the increase in inner-city drug use and the increasingly violent nature of underclass crime on the white and black middle classes, which have been indifferent toward ghetto crime and lenient toward ghetto criminals.

“There’s no justice when poor people commit crimes against poor people. Nobody cares,” Moore says. "A person can commit a very serious crime and go to the penitentiary and be out in a couple of years.

"We cannot control our streets until we control our penitentiaries and our jails. If they are running amok in the penitentiaries, they’ll run amok on the streets. (American Millstone p. 46)

Another article tells the story of Kevin Tyler, who participated in a gang assault, and then was murdered himself:

Just after 6 p.m. on July 24, 1984, Kevin Tyler left his mother’s 7th-floor apartment at 4555 S. Federal St. in the Robert Taylor Homes public housing project, went outside and started walking north.

He was on his way to another Chicago Housing Authority apartment at 4dI0 S. State St., where he lived with his girlfriend, their two infants and her two other children.

Tyler had lived in the Robert Taylor Homes since infancy. Nearly everyone in his mother’s building knew him. They had watched him grow into an aimless young adult without a job. Day after day, he could be seen loitering with other young men at the building’s entrance or sitting on the benches nearby

Tyler, thin and relatively short, was a product of life in the urban underclass. He had been a gang member since grade school, had dropped out of high school when he was a freshman and had recently signed up for general assistance but had not received any payments.

On the night of Dec. D,1981, at a rhythm-and-blues concert at the International Amphitheatre, an l8 year-old Cicero woman was stripped, beaten, robbed and sexually assaulted by at least seven black youths.

Her two male companions were beaten and robbed, and her girlfriend narrowly escaped the attackers.

“They were just like animals,” the girlfriend said. “I was screaming and kicking, biting and pulling hair, trying to keep them off of me.”

One of the attackers was Tyler.

Tyler had been one of five men who pleaded guilty earlier. Originally charged with attempted rape, deviate sexual assault, robbery, aggravated battery and conspiracy, he entered his guilty plea to a simple charge of aggravated battery and was sentenced to serve 90 days in Cook County Jail and two years’ probation.

(American Millstone p. 48)

Every part of Tyler’s path to crime have been entirely impossible in Salford. Tyler would not have been allowed to live in his mother’s or girlfriend’s government provided housing. Any public assistance would come via the workhouse. Women were under parental authority, and funneled into marrying respectable men. It would have been nigh impossible for a woman to live independently while supporting a loafer.

Another story:

Freddie Hopkins has never been married. The father of her daughters is a 21-year-old who, she believes, has fathered at least eight other children in their North Lawndale neighborhood.

Hopkins met the young man three years ago when he came to visit her younger brother. “He just kept comin’ over,” she recalls. “He would take me where I wanted to go. He had a car. We went to stores, to drive’ins. He was nice. He didn’t give me no hassle.”

Hopkins was taking birth control pills, but she still became pregnant. “Didn’t feel nothin’,” she says.

“Eyerybody else I knew was havin’ babies, so I just went along.”

The young man was elated. "He say: ‘Freddie! You pregnant with my baby boy.’ I say, ‘No, I not.’ I just didn’t -want to believe it. He-put his head to my belly and listened, and he say, ‘Man, I done got me a son."’

…

The young man who thrice made her pregnant never had to worry about marrying her and taking responsibility for his daughters. He knew, from his short lifetime of experience, that the check would be there to support them. (p. 90-92)

…

“Marry? Nothin’ but problems,” says Freddie Hopkins.

“I ain’t ready to settle down. I ain’t going to get married. I got at least 10 more years left of fresh air.”

Marriage, Hopkins explains, has nothing to do with having babies or starting a family. It means you settle down and “don’t have no fun.”

Will she marry the father of her daughters?

“You kidding?” she says. “What I need him for? He bad news.”

It is sometimes said that blaming the poor for not being responsible is victim blaming. But the father in this case is not a victim – he is a winner at the most important life goal: reproducing. He is a prolific victor. In Salford, again, a loafer could have had far less access to these women.

It is also said that it is wrong to blame women for being single moms. The father’s often don’t have steady jobs and are in no way marriage material. The fathers are, as Freddie says, “bad news.” But – what incentive for the father is there to have a job when you get the sex and kids for free? The entire point of the traditional family structure is that the man only gets the good stuff (sex and status) if he puts in the work.

It is said that the rise of single-motherhood is a result of lack of employment opportunities for men. But other societies have had terrible problems of underemployment, while having virtually no problem of single moms. From Tocqueville’s Journeys to Ireland:

Question:. At what number do you estimate those who are une employed in Ireland although they want to work?

A. Two million.

…

The population at the time would have been close to 8 million. So if we accept that number, that means over 50% of the Irish men were unemployed.

But, the problems of unwed mothers was rare:

Q. You have told me that morals were chaste?

A. Yes, extremely chaste. Twenty years of confession have taught me that for a girl to fall is very rare, and for a married woman practically unknown. Public opinion, one might almost say, has gone too far in this direction. A woman suspected is lost for her whole life. I am sure that there are not twenty illegitimate children a year among the Catholic population of Kilkenny which numbers 26,000. Suicide is most rare. Hardly ever in town, still less in the country, does a Catholic fail to make his Easter communion.

Let us return to American Millstone:

The check doesn’t teach people how to budget their money. It doesn’t teach them how to find adequate housing or how to get a good job or a decent education.

It does teach some clear lessons: Don’t work or you’ll lose the check. Don’t marry or you’ll lose the check.

Illinois, unlike many other states, does not make marriage an immediate disqualification for AFDC, though many recipients think it does.

A married woman can receive AFDC in Illinois and 25 other states, but only as long as her husband is unemployed. An unmarried woman can keep her grant if she weds, but only if her new husband is unemployed.

As far as I know, those laws have almost all been changed. But the damage has been done. And there are still often massive financial disincentives to work, or to marry someone who is working.

The “General Assistance” aid that many able body men relied on in 1980s Chicago has also been reduced in some states. But many men go on federal disability pay as an alternative. And then there is the other way for men to get money without working – leaching off of the women of the community:

Benjamin Jones Jt., 22, has been living in North-Lawndale since 1970. Six years ago, he joined a street gang. Four years ago, he was kicked out of Farragut High School for fighting.

For a year, he stayed at home, mostly sleeping and watching television. When he went out, he says, he sweet-talked girls into giving him money from their welfare checks. “You always got to be thinking when you’re talking,” he explains. “Don’t give her time to think.”

Finally, his mother, Lorine, who has worked at Curtiss Candy as a candy wrapper for 20 years, got fed up with him and ordered him to start paying rent.

So Jones went looking for work. He filled out six applications, then stopped.

“You got to have qualifications,” he says. “You have to be a master in this and that. They never call you back’ When they didn’t call, I said, ‘Hey, forget this.’”

So he went on the check. Each month, he receives $154 in general assistance and $79 in food stamps.

Another story reports on “welfare primps”:

But there are also men who take advantage of the situation, men known throughout the inner city as “welfare pimps’”

“They have a woman here, and another there,” says Hattie Williams, a longtime activist in the Oakland neighborhood on the south side. “Two or three women they keep barefoot and pregnant so they can survive with $50 a month or so from each of them.”

’My God,“ says a middle class black woman who works at a west side housing pryject, ”they are all over the place. They know the day the check comes and they wait outside the currency exchange. If a woman doesn’t give them money, she’s beaten."

“One guy here, he got two sisters pregnant. They each have several children by him. And he gets money from both of them.”

To switch books for a moment, Ghettoside, an account of LA ghettos around 2010, describes many underclass males as making money from welfare and side hustles:

Black people in Watts were generally governed by a complex system of etiquette, backed by the threat of violence. This was the shadow that filled the vacuum of legitimate authority. One reason it existed was the neighborhood’s vast underground economy. When your business dealings are illegal, you have no legal recourse. Many poor, “underclass” men of Watts had little to live on except a couple hundred dollars a month in county General Relief. They “cliqued up” for all sorts of illegal enterprises, not just selling drugs and pimping but also fraudulent check schemes, tax cons, unlicensed car repair businesses, or hair braiding. Some bounced from hustle to hustle. They bartered goods, struck deals, and shared proceeds, all off the books. Violence substituted for contract litigation. Young men in Watts frequently compared their participation in so-called gang culture to the way white-collar businesspeople sue customers, competitors, or suppliers in civil courts. They spoke of policing themselves, adjudicating their own disputes. Other people call police when they need help, explained an East Coast Crip gang member. “We pick up the phone and call our homeboys.”

Gangs issued informal “passes”— essentially granting waivers that exempted people from the rules that governed everyone else. A star athlete in a gang neighborhood, for example, might be issued a “pass” that exempted him from participation in gang life. Or passes might be extended to people allowed to conduct illegal businesses in rival territories. “Selling without a pass” was an occasional homicide motive.

Gangs could seem pointlessly self-destructive, but the reason they existed was no mystery. Boys and men always tend to group together for protection. They seek advantage in numbers. Unchecked by a state monopoly on violence, such groupings fight, commit crimes, and ascend to factional dominance as conditions permit. Fundamentally gangs are a consequence of lawlessness, not a cause.

Back to American Millstone, another Chicago Tribune article tells the story of a serial criminal:

[Edward Williams] started stealing cars when he was 12. He and his friends took joy rides through North Side neighborhoods, where “we could always find someone with $100, $150 to stick up,” he remembers.

At 14 he joined a street gang and broke into his first house. At 16, already a heroin addict, he was arrsted four times’ Convicted twice for armed robbery, he served six months in the Cook County Jail.

“If I had never gone to jail, I probably would have ended up getting killed,” Williams says. “We were young and wild on the streets. We thought we were doing what was smart, what was slick.”

Out of jail, Williams went right back to crime. At 17, during a robbery attempt, he shot a man with a sawed off shotgun stolen from a preacher’s house. This time he was sent to prison with a six-year sentence.

Released on parole after five years in stateville correctional Center, it wasn’t long before Williams stole more guns and began using LSD regularly. (p. 66)

…Williams and an 11-year-old boy were stealing tires from the lot of an auto supply store. The youngster was tossing the tires over a fence when a worker ran out of the store and grabbed him.

“He catches him and tucks him under his arm like a sack of potatoes,” Williams recalls. “In my mind I was thinking, ‘I hate all white people.’ I turned around and blew the man away.”

For this he went to prison for nine years. Compare to England of old, where in 1874 a murder as part of an attempted robbery made national news, and the assaultants, two of them of age 17, were hung. Another famous assault and murder in 1884 Blackstone Street murder also led to life imprisonment and hanging for two of the attackers. These types of predatory murders remained extremely rare in England.

After his release:

He found a job as a price reporter for the Chicago Board options Exchange but decided he would rather be a welder and enrolled in a vocational training program. Gilbert helped him find a job as an apprentice welder in Arlington Heights, but he was fired after a week for not showing up. Williams says his car broke down but concedes that he never called the company to explain why he would be absent.

He quit a job as a groundskeeper at the Glenview Naval Air Station after two weeks. “It was hard”, he explains. “I’m not used to doing manual work.”

On a recent visit to the first-floor flat that williams shares with his mother, Gilbert gets more bad news. Williams has quit his latest job with a trucking company.

“I told him he made a stupid move by quitting,” Williams’ mother says. “Now he don’t do nothing but sleep. He acts nervous all the time. Oh, he gets up every day and looks at the paper. I just say you don’t get nothing by looking in the-paper”’

This story illustrates something that I have observed when working with underclass men in trying to get them jobs: many of these men lack the attitudes and habits needed to hold down a job.

And as long as they are able to live off their family or girlfriends, there isn’t much incentive to change those attitudes.

Case workers and activists noticed similar attitudes:

“It’s ridiculous,” says Yvonne Gay, a caseworker with the Illinois Department of Public Aid. “A lot of people are offered a job at minimum wage. And they say, I ain’t working for no minimum wage.’ They haven’t been to school, they have no experience and they say no to a job. I just can’t figure it.”

John Lewis, head of the student Non-violent Coordinating committee in the early 1960s and now a councilman in Atlanta, notes that as a youth he worked as a janitor and “did it with pride and a sense of dignity.”

Yet over the last two decades, he says, something gave people the feeling that it is beneath them, that they’re better than that. People are afraid to get their hands dirty. They think it would belittle their pride to work as a janitor or washing dishes in a kitchen.

“To tell a young black that he should push a broom or wash a floor or wash dishes, they talk like that’s heresy!”

…

Denise williams, a social worker at Tubman Alternative School. “I’ve had several tell me, ‘I want to be a lawyer.’ They’re getting Ds in school. They have no conception of what it takes.” (p. 225)

…

To spend your whole life on welfare is very degrading, but I find this younger generation is proud about it," says Earlean Lindsey, president of the Westside Association of Community Action.

"I mean, the younger generation doesn’t feel the embarrassment that an older person who has been in the workforce before feels when they have to go on welfare. A younger person who has never known any other way feels that’s the way it is.’’

…

’The situation is getting worse,“ Gilbert says [ a case worker]. ”A lot of men on my caseload are very, very young. They don’t have any skills, they’re hard to train, and they’re committing crimes at a younger age."

The average age of ex-offenders contacting the Safer Foundation also is dropping, officials there say, from 25 a decade ago to 21 today.

Gilbert believes that underclass ex-convicts need “intensive deprogramming” if they are to move away from the self-destructive lifestyles they have been raised in. Parole officers try to change basic attitudes, but their individual efforts are no match for the negative influences that permeate poor black communities, he says.

Now it should be noted that these anectdotes are selected examples. There are many counter examples, many people who are working much harder than your typical middle class professional. But the people with these anti-work attitudes are the people who are the problem, and these people exist in a much, much higher proportion than existed in Salford, England. Thus figuring out how to change these attitudes is critical to making these neighborhoods safe and wholesome.

Investing in Education?

It is often said that investing in education is crucial to fixing the cycle of violence. The obvious rejoinder is that mass education is a relatively recent phenomena, yet it is not as if before the advent of mass education we had enormous crime problems in all our towns and cities. And today, even the most deprived ghettos have more years of schooling, and more money spent on schooling, than the elites had a century ago.

Back in 1910s Salford, students had far bigger classes, far more terrible conditions, and far fewer years of schooling. Yet the crime in that community was much lower, and the behavior in school better. Here is Roberts in The Classic Slum describing his school:

…. Under appalling conditions in our school the staff worked earnestly but with no great hope. The building itself stood face on to one of the largest marshaling yards in the North. All day long the roar of a work-a-day world invaded the school hall, where each instructor, shouting in competition, taught up to sixty children massed together. From the log book it is clear that rarely did a week pass with all teachers present. ‘Miss F.’ or ‘Mr D. absent today – ulcerated throat’ appears throughout with monotonous regularity.

One inspector early in the century had complained that “Classrooms are insufficient [four for 450 pupils] and one is without desks. Yet writing is taught in it, thus inducing awkward attitudes and careless work.” Error, though, was easily emendable; scholars wrote on slates and made erasures with saliva and cuff. In a school near by, however, this method was frowned on. There the pupil wishing to ‘rub out’ had to raise a hand and a monitor swung to him a damp sponge fastened to the end of a rod. Another inspector deplored the fact that all our ‘offices’ were without doors, ‘even those under the classroom’. …Time and again others condemned the wretched lighting (open gas jets) and the stench of classrooms.

And yet despite the terrible conditions, the the children were studious and well behaved:

At first the inspectors, conscious of the conditions under which teachers worked, refrained from attacking the staff. ‘The children are well-behaved’, wrote one, ‘and under industrious if not very intelligent instruction.’ ‘Scholars are orderly’, wrote another, ‘and attentive to their work, which is practised under careful conditions.’ ‘Pupils work willingly’, added a third, ‘under teaching of creditable regularity and endeavour.’

The attitudes back then were actually often anti-education, they viewed book learning as subverting work ethic:

Certainly many elders of the time, perhaps the majority, would have agreed wholeheartedly with the factory inspector who said, after the introduction of compulsory education: ‘to keep young persons The percentage of literate inmates of prisons in England and Wales between 1835 and 1900 from work till they are 12 years of age will, I fear, create an objection to labour, which through life they may never be able to overcome’.

…

Very many among the middle-aged and elderly, continuing a veto of their own parents, forbade all books and periodicals on the grounds that they kept women and children from their proper tasks and developed lazy habits. As far as children were concerned, our local council seems to have concurred in this: from the opening of public libraries half a century earlier until 1906, no one under fourteen years of age was allowed membership.

Roberts’ father wanted him to get out of the house and do real work as soon as possible:

we left [school] in droves at the very first hour the law would allow and sought any job at all in factory, mill and shop. But, strangely, I myself wanted to go on learning, and with a passion that puzzled me; an essay prize or two, won in competition against the town’s schools, had perhaps pricked ambition. ‘Isn’t there some examination you could take?’ asked my mother. I inquired of the headmaster. There were, he said vaguely, ‘technical college bursaries’, but he didn’t put pupils in: one needed things like algebra and geometry to pass – quite difficult stuff. Some homework, then, I suggested. He shook his head; he didn’t give homework. Still, my name could go up. I could sit, of course. The old man raised no objections, merely instructing me to ‘get through!’ I sat an incomprehensible paper and failed. When the results were announced weeks after, without having a possible hope of success, I felt sick with disappointment.

One dinner time I saw Father, half-drunk and frowning, fingering a slip of paper. ‘I see yer passed!’ he shouted down the kitchen.

‘Yes,’ I said boldly, ‘I came top!’

He rose, threatening, from his chair. ‘Get out!’ he roared. ‘Get out and find work!’

I went out and found work. The girl at the Juvenile Labour Bureau was very pleasant about it. She gave me a green card. ‘Fill it in,’ she said, ‘and put what you would like to be at the bottom.’

I completed the form and wrote on the last line ‘Journalist’. They did not require any journalists. A boy was needed, though, to sweep up, brew tea and abrade union nuts in a brass shop. I took that.

We have many, many examples of worse schooling yet better neighborhoods and better behavior. Here for instance, is an example I came across in a memoir I was reading about West Philadelphia in the 1960s and 1970s:

So many kids lived in our neighborhood that Most Blessed Sacrament (MBS) was one of the most crowded elementary schools in the country. When I started school at MBS in 1964, there were 101 kids in my first-grade classroom. There were 10 rows of 10 kids. The extra kid sat at a desk in a corner in the front of the classroom. To keep 101 kids under control, the rather large Catholic nun who was my first-grade teacher would walk up and down one row after another, tapping a wooden yardstick against her empty hand. We were all afraid of her, and we all knew she was eventually coming our way.

My classroom was not the only first-grade classroom with at least 100 kids. There were five more classrooms of first graders every bit as crowded as mine.

…

I remember seeing a nun beat the hell out of a kid who was involved in one of the fights with the kids from Mitchell. The beating happened in the coatroom. I was carrying boxes of supplies for my teacher, so I was allowed to use the elevator, which was all the way in the back of the huge coatroom, an open area big enough to hang the coats of hundreds of seventh-graders. I tried to pretend I wasn’t watching, but I saw the whole thing. The nun pushed some coats aside to make room on the metal pole that we hung our coats on. Then she forced the kid to hold on to the metal pole as she whacked him across the back of the legs about six or seven times with a three-sided wooden yardstick. Man, did that look painful. It even sounded painful hearing the kid yell each time he got hit. It just wasn’t right.

Yet, few kids, if any, would go home and tell their parents that a nun beat the hell out of them. Most parents, including my parents, were of the mind that if we did something bad enough for a nun to beat us up, we deserved to get beat up again when we got home. Luckily, only a few of the nuns were that violent. Most of the nuns were nice people who really cared about the kids. But the few crazy nuns seemed to get way too much pleasure out of beating the hell out of young kids. It wasn’t unusual to see those nuns slapping kids across the face, both boys and girls, for small stuff like chewing gum or not paying attention during class. And it wasn’t a gentle slap. It was a hard slap, the kind that left finger marks on the side of the kid’s face. Those were the nuns we all tried to steer clear of.

During the time that this school was overcrowded, the neighborhood was very safe:

…this was the greatest neighborhood a kid my age could grow up in. Like any neighborhood, ours had its share of kids who liked to start trouble. But I can’t imagine any neighborhood being more fun and safe to grow up in. Back then, on a warm June afternoon like today, I didn’t have a care in the world.

I always felt so safe on Cecil Street. On warm summer nights, lots of adults would sit on soft cushions on the top step of the four concrete steps that led from the edge of our front porches down to the sidewalk. Neighbors would sit out for hours, talking with other neighbors, many of them enjoying a cold beer or some other cold drink. I knew everybody on Cecil Street, and they all knew me. In fact, I knew almost everybody in our section of the neighborhood. And I felt safe no matter where I went. All us kids knew that most parents around here looked out for all the kids, not just their own.

Now compare this to recent times. Whenever the issues of schools come up on the Philadelphia subreddit, teachers report problems of bad behavior:

I work in philly. Our bathrooms are nasty. Our heat is fucked up. I have mice in my classroom and holes in the floor. I have more pencils stuck in my ceiling than I have in students’ hands. Today, in another class, students literally threw a desk out an open window. I have supportive parents who tell the kids they’ll whoop them if they misbehave, then those same students exhibit that behavior in the class. source

…

10 years? A friend of mine was a teacher in philly ~15 years ago. She was verbally abused by students on a daily basis, and she left for a private school in the suburbs after a year. Of course, I’m sure it’s been going on longer than that. edit: and the private school paid her less. It wasn’t about the money, she left because of the terrible environment and the fact that the administration was not willing to do anything to help out.

…

Nearly everyone i know that was a philly teacher was forced out by violence and uncaring administrators.

…

Had an ex a few years ago who did not make it through her first year at a north philly public school. She was removed by the administration. She broke up a fight in the hall one day, and the kid who started the fight came bursting into her classroom during one of her classes and went off about shooting her after school for snitching, getting in the way… or some similar hoodrat bullshit. She was forced to leave her job for her own safety. source

…

Schools are hell. A friend of mine works for City Year, and she says that the school she works at is run like a dictatorship. She feels ok about it, because she would actually prefer a system where the kids get in trouble for actual things, rather than arbitrary, punitive chaos. The adults there are just as scared as the children, and my friend had the thousand yard stare of someone who had really seen some shit. tldr- Philadelphia schools are hell. Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to. source

At Bartram High in Philadelphia:

A brawl erupted in the school cafeteria this week, with teenagers punching and stomping on one another and on school police. Students set off firecrackers inside the building. And the student who last month knocked a staffer unconscious was back in the halls of the Southwest Philadelphia school.

Staffers were shocked when they saw that the 17-year-old who assaulted Stephenson was back in the school this week, some said. The youth has been charged as a juvenile with aggravated assault, simple assault, and related offenses.

“He was cutting class, roaming the hallways,” said a teacher, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. “He spent two days in the building this week, and it seems the administration was not aware.”

On Tuesday, “firecrackers were lit off in the building, on two separate floors,” Calimag said.

The problems of bad behavior do not just remain in the school. In Philadelphia in the past year there have been at least three examples of gangs of forty to fifty kids roaming the streets, attacking innocent people for fun, and injuring them badly enough to hospitalize them. (see here, here, here).

Here is a former Teach For America teacher describing the problems of the modern ghetto school:

A large number of this country’s schools are failing its students—but not in the way that many columnists, education reformers, or school experts would have you believe.

From 2008 to 2010, I taught at the middle school level in Kansas City as a Teach For America corps member. But don’t worry, I’m not going rehash Freedom Writers, and I certainly won’t tell one of those sappy “this is why I Teach For America” stories.

Instead, I want to offer some very candid thoughts about why I think my district and school were such abysmal failures.

When people ask me what I believe was the number one barrier to student achievement at my school, I always offer the same answer: the failure of the school and district to address chronically disruptive students. It was a problem created by negligent leaders who willingly allowed a free-for-all environment that was conducive to chaos instead of learning.

Everything was great for the first three weeks, but then a few students began testing the limits of what was acceptable behavior. It’s one thing when a student throws a paper ball at his friend, or when someone utters a rude comment. It’s quite another thing when a student tells you that she’ll “crack” your “bitch ass” or demands that you “get the fuck out of [her] face”. Unfortunately, as the students soon discovered, our principal offered no support whatsoever. Nearly ever discipline referral sent to the office was returned with a polite reminder to please contact the students’ parents. Clear and consistent consequences simply did not exist—even though they were mandated by the district’s code of conduct.

Once that realization spread, the school effectively went from quality to chaos overnight. The following is but a sample of what an average day looked and sounded like:

• Students standing in the hall and kicking classroom doors for five to ten minutes at a time
• Students fighting
• Teachers pelted with paper, pencils, erasers, and rocks whenever they turned their heads
• Assignments torn up and thrown on the floor the moment they’re passed out
• Teachers cursed at, threatened, and sometimes even assaulted
• Classroom supplies vandalized or thrown about the room
• Groups of students running the halls and showing up to one or two classes at most
• Constant yelling and shouting from the hallways
• Gang writing written on the walls with permanent markers
• Students talking and yelling so loud in the classroom that nobody could hear the teacher

By “students”, I’m of course referring to the 15-25% that were chronically disruptive. The truth is that the overwhelming majority in each class were great kids who came every day ready to learn. Besides being from an impoverished part of town, they were no different than students at any other school.

This wasn’t just a problem at my school. When I spoke with other teachers throughout the district, they told me that the situation at their school was nearly identical to mine. Some of their stories are just as outrageous.

Furthermore, the “intervention” and social work meant to help at-risk kids, actually breeds the opposite behavior, because modern social work has an allergy to discipline. The kid learns for years that flagrant disobedience to authority produces no serious consequences. Then the kid becomes an adult, and the normal rules of the legal system apply, and he is in for a nasty surprise when he challenges a police officer. A commenter on the blog Education Realist gives a report:

I have seen it over and over again. Due to their behavior a child or teenager needs ‘intervention’, ‘help’, or is ‘at risk’. Teachers at first usually, and then a combination of teachers, social workers, and case managers come up with various ‘treatment’ and ‘goals’ for the child/teenager to strive for in their behavior. If the child or teenager ‘acts out’ the members of one of the institutions staffed exclusively by graduates of an approved social-work or education school, or some form of ‘line-worker’ like a (youth care worker) that has been vetted for ‘professional disposition’ by one of those graduates will ‘confront’ the child or teenager about their behavior. It is these confrontations about behavior that lie at the source of the problem. They happen almost entirely on the child or teenagers terms. By design.

A teacher, social worker, mental health professional, or case manager will for good reason make sure they do not touch, lay hands, or physically restrain their ‘client’. The fact that they can be sued is only the start. You may well have a teenager or even a child who is bigger and stronger than you. There are techniques for attempting to resolve the issue at hand or at least deescalate tension that may arise during a confrontation over behavior or that was present prior to it. However, these techniques all belie what is at issue and at stake; that the child or teenager has violated a rule or norm and that someone with the authority to command their behavior is telling them to stop and they are not doing it out of either ignorance or willful defiance. If you have the authority to command a stop to a certain behavior or change in it you do not need to negotiate your position on the matter. That is ceding authority to the kid. That is a horrible decision and especially practice to make but we do it anyway. Because it would be foolish to command behavior that you have no ability to back up with some form of consequence. THAT is why teachers, social workers, mental health professionals (I am thinking of them in institutional settings) and case managers do not physically restrain or push matters too far usually. Because you call the cops to do that. That is what we are for.

There is a problem with handling confrontations in this manner for children and teenagers who are treated this way their entire lives by institutional employees. They come to believe that when handling confrontations with employees of institutions (any institution: a school, a social work institution, law enforcement, companies, etc) that they can always dictate terms through their refusal to obey ‘the rules’ and by physically resisting or even physically escalating against whatever order they’re being given. ‘You can’t tell me what to do or else I’ll!…’ fill in the blank. This works fine if you’re in one of the institutions that is staffed by people who are given to avoid physical confrontation anyway (not everyone obviously) and are governed by rules that dictate that that is how confrontations will go, but if you run into people who won’t follow those rules in the real world you quickly run into problems.

A cop cannot get yelled at and simply back down. By law and certainly by case-law there is no requirement of a cop to cede ground. As a matter of fact in general you’d better not. You ARE required by law to enforce it whether you like it or not. We have discretion only when we know intervention will definitely cause more damage to life and property than can be reasonably justified, but as always, you’d better be ready to articulate it in court. You might back up to tactically gain advantage but that had better be the only reason you’re doing it. No law enforcement agency will employ a cop who backs down from enforcing the law. You aren’t ordered to take a suicidal position when enforcing the law, but you have to make your best effort and call back-up if you need it. This isn’t a chest-thumping, braggadocio’d position to take. It is the bare minimum required of any law-enforcement officer.

I see this day in and day out in the behavior of criminals and inmates in the jail and on the streets of the county I work for. My favorite situation is when fresh from being whisked from the juvenile detention center on their eighteenth birthday an inmate new to the jail will demand to see a supervisor when, “I don’t like the level of service being provided.” It’s the same on the street. After a few years the criminal type will get to know their rights in the system due to familiarity and their expectations will change. They won’t complain about things they can’t legally expect. They certainly don’t try to take your gun away and understand that it’s suicide to try. But the young ones… the ones that have only their prior experience with their schools or the juvenile system to operate on, they make very bad decisions. The world does not have to conform to your barbaric yawp. You must learn that no one kow-tows to you.

Other Contradictions to the “Poverty causes crime thesis”

Over the years I have come across many other counter examples to the poverty causes crime thesis. Most of the contradictions come from reading biographies. Time and time again I read stories of people growing up in poor neighborhoods, poor conditions, in places with little schooling, from Abraham Lincoln to Babe Ruth to Rockefeller, but when you read the accounts of these poor and uneducated communities you do not see any of the crime or social decay of the modern ghetto – despite them having less education and fewer material resources.

One of the most striking examples came from a memoir of the famous medical missionary, Dr David Livingstone:

At the age of ten I was put into the factory as a “piecer”, to aid by my earnings in lessening her anxiety. With a part of my first week’s wages I purchased Ruddiman’s “Rudiments of Latin”, and pursued the study of that language for many years afterward, with unabated ardor, at an evening school, which met between the hours of eight and ten. The dictionary part of my labors was followed up till twelve o’clock, or later, if my mother did not interfere by jumping up and snatching the books out of my hands. I had to be back in the factory by six in the morning, and continue my work, with intervals for breakfast and dinner, till eight o’clock at night. I read in this way many of the classical authors, and knew Virgil and Horace better at sixteen than I do now. Our schoolmaster—happily still alive—was supported in part by the company; he was attentive and kind, and so moderate in his charges that all who wished for education might have obtained it. Many availed themselves of the privilege; and some of my schoolfellows now rank in positions far above what they appeared ever likely to come to when in the village school. If such a system were established in England, it would prove a never-ending blessing to the poor.

…

My reading while at work was carried on by placing the book on a portion of the spinning-jenny, so that I could catch sentence after sentence as I passed at my work; I thus kept up a pretty constant study undisturbed by the roar of the machinery. To this part of my education I owe my present power of completely abstracting the mind from surrounding noises, so as to read and write with perfect comfort amid the play of children or near the dancing and songs of savages. The toil of cotton-spinning, to which I was promoted in my nineteenth year, was excessively severe on a slim, loose-jointed lad, but it was well paid for; and it enabled me to support myself while attending medical and Greek classes in Glasgow in winter, as also the divinity lectures of Dr. Wardlaw, by working with my hands in summer. I never received a farthing of aid from any one.

Another author describes his upbringing in 1960s South Korea, which at the time, was recovering from a century of occupation, war, and colonization, and was as poor as the Belgian Congo:

Whenever I and my sister, Yonhee, and brother, Hasok, complained about food, my mother would tell us how spoilt we were. She would remind us that, when they were our age, people of her generation would count themselves lucky if they had an egg. Many families could not afford them; even those who could reserved them for fathers and working older brothers.

When I was in primary school, the poshest school in the country had 40 children in a class, and everyone wondered, ‘how do they do that?’ State schools in some rapidly expanding urban areas were stretched to the limit, with up to 100 pupils per class and teachers running double, sometimes triple, shifts. Given the conditions, it was little wonder that education involved beating the children liberally and teaching everything by rote. The method has obvious drawbacks, but at least Korea has managed to provide at least six years’ education to virtually every child since the 1960s.

This generation in South Korea had homicide rates orders of magnitude lower than that found in the American cities. That generation grew up to turn South Korea into an economic force, staffing innovative, dominating companies such LG, Hyundai, and Samsung. In the late 1980s and 1990s South Koreans obtained the highest math scores in the world. This despite spending less money and having larger class sizes:

The state in South Korea does not devote an extraordinary amount of money to education – some 4.5 of the gross national product compared to 7.5 percent for the United States. Rapid expansion of the educational sytem and the lack of secondary education in the past have yielded a teaching force with limited education compared with the teaching forces in developed countries. Moreover, middle-school class size in South Korea, as in Taiwan, averages 40 to 50 – almost twice the average class size in most developed countries. These conditions are typical of several East Asian countries that score well on international tests in science and math.

Moving on to America, we find that the Chinese population faced segregation and poor economic circumstances, yet without the same crime problems. Harvard professors James Q. Wilson and Richard Herstein write:

During the 1960s, one neighborhood in San Francisco had the lowest income, the highest unemployment rate, the highest proportion of families with income under $4,000 per year, the least educational attainment, the highest tuberculosis rate, and the highest proportion of substandard housing of any area of the city. That neighborhood was called Chinatown. Yet in 1965, there were only five persons of Chinese ancestry committed to prison in the entire state of California.

The low rates of crime among Orientals living in the United States was once a frequent topic of social science investigation. The theme of many the reports that emerged was that crime rates were low not in spite of ghetto life, but because of it. Though Orientals were the object of racist opinion and legislation, they were thought to have low crime rates because they lived in cohesive, isolated communities. The Chinese were for many years denied access to the public schools of California, not allowed to testify against whites in trials, and made the object of discriminatory taxation. The Japanese faced not only these barriers but in addition were “relocated” from their homes during World War II and sent to camps in the desert on the suspicion that some of them might have become spies or saboteurs.

The arrest rate of Chinese and Japanese was higher in San Francisco than in any other California city during the 1920s, but even so Orientals were underrepresented by a factor of two, the Japanese more so than the Chinese. Such crime as occurred tended to involve narcotics, commercialized vice, or public disorder and rarely crimes against persons or property.

Lait and Mortimer describe Chicago’s Chinatown in their salacious 1950 book Chicago Confidential:

Chinatown gives no trouble to police. Juvenile deliquency is practially unknown, as respect for parents is the basis of all Chinese law and religion.

There are no panhandlers or relief clients among the Chinese. They take care of their own. Should a Chinaman be hard up, his family clan, by custom, must support him or get him a job. Every Chinese chips in monthly to this society, according to his means, and supports and age-old old age social security, which like many other innovations, was thought of in China first. If the clan can’t find work for an indigent, it must send him on to another city where the is also a chapter of the family society.

Lait and Mortimer also note that within the black areas of Chicago, it is actually the nicer areas that have more crime:

Here is one for the sociologists who have long proclaimed it an axiom that crime concomitant of poverty, ill-housing, and underprivilege: Chicago’s sore spot of malefactions is not north of 35th Street where the poorest Negroes live, but south of it – the infamous Fifth Police district. This police division, less than three square miles, contains some of the finest housing in Amerca, recently occupied by rich whites. Now it is almost 100 percent black – and it produces twice as much recorded crime as the Negro Third and Fourth Districts combined, immediately north, somewhat smaller in area, but many times more congested.

The Fifth Police district of Chicago has attained world-wide eminence. It is known to law-enforcement students around the globe. For it has, consistently year after year, the highest crime per capita known to man, having passed Casablanca’s diabolical Casbah, about which a library of literature has been written and staged, in wonderment to its wickedness.

…in Chicago, never forget this – lawbreaking is the handmaiden of the political tie-up, and nowhere is there any as insiduous as that which swaddles, nurses, and protects Bronzeville…There is an unwritten understanding that minor fracases, knifings, prostitution, and often capital felonies are to be kept off the blotter, especially if no complaint from a white person. Detectives throw up their hands at beefs coming directly to headquarters if they allege misdeeds in Bronzeville. The Negro politicians immediately go over their heads with yelps of race prejudice and interference with things that are no white man’s business. In fact it is a standing policy to keep this most sinful of all sections under-policed.

Crime and the Culture Zeitgeist

In Salford, Roberts reports his generation of young boys obtained their general moral outlook via the a series of pulp fiction stories by Frank Richard’s, about the fictional school Greyfriars:

Even before the first world war many youngsters in the working class had developed an addiction for Frank Richards’s school stories. The standards of conduct observed by Harry Wharton and his friends at Greyfriars set social norms to which schoolboys and some young teenagers strove spasmodically to conform. Fights – ideally, at least took place according to Greyfriars rules: no striking an opponent when he was down, no kicking, in fact no weapon but the manly fist. Through the Old School we learned to admire guts, integrity, tradition; we derided the glutton, the American and the French. We looked with contempt upon the sneak and the thief. Greyfriars gave us one moral code, life another, and a fine muddle we made of it all.

With nothing in our own school that called for love or allegiance, Greyfriars became for some of us our true Alma Mater, to whom we felt bound by a dreamlike loyalty. The ‘mouldering pile’, one came to believe, had real existence: of that boys assured one another. We placed it vaguely in the southern counties – somewhere between Winchester and Harrow. It came as a curious shock to one who revered the Old School when it dawned upon him that he himself was a typical sample of the ‘low cads’ so despised by all at Greyfriars. Class consciousness had broken through at last. Over the years these simple tales conditioned the thought of a whole generation of boys. The public school ethos, distorted into myth and sold among us weekly in penny numbers, for good or ill, set ideals and standards. This our own tutors, religious and secular, had signally failed to do. In the final estimate it may well be found that Frank Richards during the first quarter of the twentieth century had more influence on the mind and outlook of young working-class England than any other single person, not excluding Baden-Powell.

It may seem a bit curmudgeonly to complain about gansta rap or violent video games. Millions of suburban kids grew up playing Grand Theft Auto and listening to Tu Pac without becoming murderers. But for kids growing up in the ghetto, mouthing along to rap music isn’t just some harmless LARPing. The culture is part of life, and something you have to “keep real.”

One journalist in Chicago recently did an expose called Dispatches from the Chicago Rap Wars:

There are hundreds of gangs in Chicago these days, a splintering that occurred in the wake of the collapse of the traditional “supergangs” like the Black Disciples and Vice Lords in the ’90s. As dangerous as their predecessors, they operate as block-level factions, making the city a complicated patchwork of warring territories. In a relatively recent phenomenon, many of these gangs produce drill music—a Chicago-born low-fi version of gangsta rap, full of hyperviolent boasts and taunts. (Think NWA, but grittier and without the hooks.)

…

After I’d been talking with these kids for months, one of them told me his older brother, Zebo, is a member of the drill gang Corner Boys Entertainment….I met Zebo the next day, and we talked for hours. He told me how drill perpetuates gang wars, how it’s an engine of both truces and feuds. He told me how CBE members will retaliate violently if a song by another gang insults their friends or relatives. He kept returning to a refrain, one I would hear many times during my field research: ‘This is not just music. It’s not just a game. This shit is for real.”

…

As I’d soon find out, CBE makes three kinds of videos. In one, they talk about nameless, faceless rivals, or haters. In another, they specifically target a rival gang with lyrics like “So-and-so’s a bitch” or “So-and-so’s a snitch.” And then there’s an in-between kind, which to an outsider sounds like generic disses but is actually very targeted, with the rapper flashing a rival gang’s hand signs upside down. This was that kind of video.

…

It’s surprising how much strategy goes into the making and posting of these videos on YouTube and SoundCloud. CBE members are constantly considering how to get the most views. (At least one of their videos has exceeded five million.) The thinking is that if a video pulls enough, record labels will start calling. Sometimes the guys will record a video but wait to release it until a rival gang member—preferably one they’ve called out—is shot, so that it seems like CBE is taking credit. It’s all about convincing viewers that CBE really does the violent stuff that they rap about—and often they do.

Their model is inspired by the local patron saint of drill rap, Chief Keef, who successfully leveraged the persona of a black superpredator. The more he portrayed himself as a reckless, gun-toting, ruthless murderer, the more attention he got. Eventually, Interscope Records signed him to a $6 million deal and off he went to Los Angeles. Hardly a day goes by without someone from CBE mentioning Keef.

…

I once asked him why he projects such a violent persona in the videos. He flipped the question back on me: “If I wasn’t doing this, would you even be down here in the low incomes? Would you even care that I exist?”

He was right. As one of the other CBE rappers would always say, “You know, white people, Mexicans, bitches, those people don’t live the life, but they love hearing about it. People want the Chiraq stuff. They want a superthug ghetto man, and I’m giving that to them. I’m just playing my role.”

…For the gang—and other gangs like it—the rappers are designated as the ticket out of poverty. It becomes the responsibility of the rest of the members to support and protect them. Each rapper has one or two “shooters.” These are the members who make good on the threats the rappers dish out in their lyrics and on social media. And, yes, that means shooting—and sometimes killing—people.

The presence of police

The other difference between the modern ghetto and the slums of Salford, is that in the modern ghetto criminal gangs openly do business in a way that would be unthinkable in past societies.

In Salford, the police were the scourge of the youth hanging out in the streets:

One of the more articulate members might tell a story or amuse with puns, riddles or other word play; two would sing in harmony, an accomplishment much admired; another give a solo or perform tricks with string and matches. A happy air of concord hung over all. And in the heart of the group itself, shielded by lounging bodies, a small card school would sit contentedly gambling for halfpence. Suddenly one hears a shriek of warning. The gang bursts into a scatter of flying figures. From nowhere gallop a couple of ‘rozzers’, cuffing, hacking, punching, sweeping youngsters into the wall with a swing of heavy folded capes. The street empties, doors bang. Breathing heavily the Law retires, bearing off perhaps a ‘hooligan’ or two to be made an example of. The club is over for another night, leaving its young members with a fear and hatred of the police that in some perfectly law-abiding citizens lasted through life and helped colour the attitude of a whole working-class generation towards civil authority.

…

Up to the outbreak of the first world war many thousands among the undermass went to prison, sometimes repeatedly, for the most trivial offences, thus forming a massive, clearly defined group within the working class. Over the five years ended 1908–9 an average of 177,500 people annually were ‘summarily convicted’ for minor offences and committed to gaol: a ratio of 514 per 100,000 of the population of the country. Not only men and women but children by the thousand were sent to prison.

‘It is regretted’, remarked the commissioners, ‘that more than half those under 16 were committed in default of payment of a fine.’ And the commonest crimes? Trespassing, playing games in the street throwing stones and snowballs, sleeping out and gambling. Sentences were short, usually three days to a month.

While the low crime rates of Salford were admirable, law enforcement seems to have been quite a bit much. Did they really need to put children in jail for throwing snowballs?

The conventional wisdom holds that ghetto communities are over-policied. But when we read ethnographies, the situation is more complicated. Often there is both extreme over-policing in some cases, with extreme under-policing in others. The intervention of the police is often capricious and harassing, rather than consistent. David Simon reports in his ethnography The Corner about the ghetto of Baltimore:

After so many police sweeps, it’s understood by all concerned that the crews will open shop a block or two away, just as it’s understood that the police sweeps must come to an end with the dealers returning to the usual terrain.

At a drug market in Cincinnati:

[Officers] say the revolving-door punishment makes for an unwinnable game. They know the dealers and users they arrest today probably will be back tomorrow, selling the same drugs and prompting the same neighborhood complaints.

“The dopers know it, too,’’ says Sgt. Rick Lehman, a 26-year veteran who supervises the District 4 Violent Crime Squad. ”They’ll say, `I’ll be back out in a couple hours.’ "

David Kennedy notes that the lack of enforcement means that the people on the street lose respect for the police:

The streets got away with almost everything they did, which meant that if they took the woofing [threats by the police] seriously, the natural conclusion was that the cops were letting them get away with it, which was exactly what a lot of them did think. Our promises had to be true. It became a central tenet of the new thinking: Never write a check you can’t cash.

Later Kennedy notes that even the drug dealers are miffed that the police allow them to exist. They are so miffed that they actually think the cops are conspiring against the community for their own dark ends:

One block, over five years, logged five homicides, fifty-five robberies, and eighty-eight assaults. In 2001, the Terrace and Bedell intersection alone produced six homicides. RIP graffiti chalk the sidewalk and walls. An ABC Primetime crew filmed a dealer on Terrace taking delivery of Chinese food; he ordered, paid off the driver, and had dinner right there on the corner.

They found a Terrace and Bedell so alienated, so detached, that it no longer knew, if it ever had, what the police could and couldn’t do, in a way that fed directly back into the conviction that law enforcement was conspiring against them. “They thought we could just grab people off the corner,” Reiss said. It was a perfect storm of misunderstanding. The cops are all-powerful, they do whatever they want. The drug dealers are standing there in plain sight ordering Chinese food, so the cops could just grab them, but the cops aren’t just grabbing them. Therefore the cops want them there, therefore the cops are behind it. Hasn’t it always been thus?

Now compare that above passage to the examples we read previously from Salford, where the scuttler gangs had been reduced to a “minor menace” after they “appeared in droves before the courts, often to receive savage sentences.”

Another book, The Gangs of Manchester, describes how these scuttler gangs were subdued via the police truncheon, the prison treadwheel. When respectable residents complained, the police would actively prevent the groups from loitering or congregating at their normal street corners and pubs. The new Chief Constable Robert Peacock in 1898, “gave his men carte blanche to ‘move on’ any gathering of lads on street corners, however few in number, and however orderly their conduct. By 1903, confident that the scuttling menace had finally more or less subsided, the Manchester Guardian became concerned that the police were showing too much zeal in sweeping youths off the streets of districts such as Ancoats.”

In Philadelphia of the 1800s a gang problem was eliminated via direct action of the mayor and a posse of citizens. The crime rate fell in ensuing decades, and by 1890, the homicide rate was five times lower than in modern times (this despite much worse medical treatment):

The The Schuylkill Rangers were still carrying on their depredations, and demanded prompt attention. Sixty picked men were accordingly stationed along the Schuylkill front, between Fairmount and the Navy Yard. It was not long before the gang was broken up.

Mayor Vaux saw to it that the men entrusted with this duty were at work. In the most inclement weather, with the snow several inches deep, he went over the whole city at midnight, but paid especial attention to the river front. When any of the desperadoes were found they were summarily dealt with.

Mayor Vaux explains his policing tactics:

There was no formal arrest. There were few prisoners in the docks in the mornings; the justices of the peace were not much troubled, but the fellow who was caught never forgot until his dying day the time he fell into the hands of Dick Vaux’s police. I remember one night three of the Rangers were surprised, and jumped into the river and swam to a tug boat in the middle of the stream. It was very cold, and they thought that Dick (I was there) and his men would not follow. They were never so much mistaken in all their lives. We got a boat and overtook them. The interview was more muscular than intellectual. The rascals were pretty well satisfied before it was over. So were we. They didn’t trouble us again during the administration.

The residents of the city thanked him for his work:

One morning, after the Rangers had been suppressed, an old Irish woman forced her way into the presence of the Mayor.

“ Oh! Mister Mayor,” she said, “I’ve just come to thank you, for sure I’m able now to live in peace. I can put my bread wagon out all night without anyone to watch it, and there’s not a loaf away in the mornin’.”

Compare this to stories of the modern ghetto, where far more dangerous gangs are allowed to terrorize their communities without recourse. Here is an excerpt from Victor Rios’s ethnography Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys:

For as long as Jose could remember, the gang loitered in the parking lot of his apartment complex, often blocking the steps that led to Jose’s apartment. “They would, like, just do stupid stuff, like scare us [the apartment-building families], like shoot their guns and break shit and fight. I used to be hella scared of them,” explained Jose.

Jose remembered being terrified of the gang at age six or seven. He yearned for the police to protect him and his family from the gang. One day, when he was about ten years old, a teenage gang member pushed him as he returned home from buying a gallon of milk from the liquor store for his family. Jose fell back, landing on the gallon of milk. White fluid splattered everywhere. The teenage boys laughed at him. He began to cry. Soaked, he returned home to tell his mother. She yelled at him, “Pendejo [idiot], don’t you know we don’t have money for more milk?” Jose wanted the gang members to pay for another gallon of milk. He left the house and walked the neighborhood, looking for a police officer. When he found a patrol car, he told the officer about the incident and wanted the officer to talk to the gang members and ask them to buy his family another gallon of milk. According to Jose, the officer laughed at him and told him, “I got better things to do.”

In my observations, I counted twenty-two instances when police were called to solve “minor” community problems such as disputes, bullying, harassment, and vandalism. In these twenty-two instances, police were only able or willing to intervene in these “minor” issues one time. In the other twenty-one cases, the officers either ignored residents who called or took down information and left the scene. This is indicative of the underpolicing that I found in this study. It may seem contradictory to say that young people are hypercriminalized by law enforcement but that their communities are also underpoliced. However, Jose’s experience and my observations confirm what many of the other boys reported: officers consistently police certain kinds of deviance and crime, while neglecting or ignoring other instances when their help is needed. One reason for this may be that officers follow the path of least resistance.

Jose remembered the milk incident as a moment when he decided he would begin to take justice into his own hands. Jose recounted that after this incident, he began to develop a tough demeanor and increasingly turned to violence in an attempt to prevent victimization. He even joined the same gang that harassed him as a child.

Jose joined because he wanted to prevent being victimized by the neighborhood gang.

…Jose explained, for instance, that when he was a child he could not understand why the police wouldn’t just take all the gang members to jail since they all carried weapons. When he became a gang member, he came to his own conclusion. Jose explained that the police allowed them to loiter and sell drugs within the confines of their apartment complex because they were not visible to the public and therefore were not a problem the police would be held accountable for. During my time observing the complex while hanging out with Jose and his friends, I found a pattern that affirmed this assumption. Police were often stationed at the street corner but would never enter the complex, even when fights and drug use were clearly visible.

Residents suffered from the concentration of gang members who had been contained in these invisible spaces by police. Often, families—women and children—became the victims of a small handful of predatory gang members whom police neglected to apprehend. In this apartment complex, out of a group of about thirty boys, two of them were the ones that incited, provoked, and caused most of the assaults and crimes that occurred while I was there. Everyone in the complex knew who they were, and many residents seemed anxious when these two boys came around. A mother who lived in the complex told me one day, as one of the boys, nicknamed Psycho, greeted us and walked up the street with a sharpened, broken metal table leg in his hand, “When that boy is locked up, the whole neighborhood is at peace. But now that he is out, all the boys have gone crazy.” The only party that did not seem to know that these two boys were responsible for most of the havoc in the complex was the police.

Sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh noted the same thing when he spent time with a gang in the Robert Taylor home projects. The police try to stay out of the projects, leaving gangs as the de facto authorities:

And, most remarkably, law-enforcement officials deemed Robert Taylor too dangerous to patrol. The police were unwilling to provide protection until tenants curbed their criminality— and stopped hurling bottles or shooting guns out the windows whenever the police showed up. (*Gang Leader For a Day*, Location 590*)

…

got a bunch of nig*ers that get into the building and go and rob a bunch of people. Who’s going to take care of that? Police? They never come around! So you got J.T. and the Kings. They’ll get your stuff back if it was stolen. They’ll protect you so that no nig*ers can come and shoot up the place.” (Gang Leader For a Day, Location 1324)

I was curious about the gang’s relationship with the police, but it was very hard to fathom. Gang members brazenly sold drugs in public; why, I wondered, didn’t the cops just shut down these open-air markets? But I couldn’t get any solid answers to this question. J.T. was always evasive on the issue, and most people in the neighborhood were scared to talk about the cops at all— even more scared, it seemed to me, than to talk about the gang. As someone who grew up in a suburb where the police were a welcome presence, I found this bizarre. But there was plainly a lot that I didn’t yet understand. (Gang Leader For a Day, Location 1837)

…Whatever the case, he didn’t seem all that concerned about getting arrested. In his view the police could come after him whenever they wanted, but it was in their best interest to let familiar faces run the drug businesses. “They just want to control shit,” he told me, “and that’s why they really only come after us maybe once in a while.”

Closing Thoughts

In the long run, men follow incentives. That is not to say we calculate benefits and potential punishment before every action. But over time we build up intuition and a general sense of what we can get away with, what results in social sanction, what results in criminal sanction, what gets status among friends, and what results in success or failure with women.

When we compare the high crime and low crime poor comunities, we see large differences in the incentives:

In low crime areas, disobedience at school results in harsh punishment – often corporal punishment.

In high crime areas, disobedience is either unpunished, or punished by suspension, which is hardly punishment to a kid who does not want to be in school anyways.

In low crime areas, the police are quick to crack down on even petty crime. If a gang is known to be harassing a certain area, they are not afraid to apply the billy clubs as needed until the gang is no longer a problem.

In high crime areas, the police ignore drug dealing for months at a time. Murders go unsolved. Police only enter areas when called in, if even then.

In low crime areas, men who lack motivation to work go hungry or enter a workhouse where they are isolated from their buddies and women.

In high crime areas, men who lack a commitment to work earn a living from side hustles, welfare, and living off of mom’s and girlfriends. They still get access to their friends and to sex.

In low crime areas, women are kept under the care of their parents until they are married off to a stable man. If a woman gets pregant out of wedlock and needs aid, she too would have to go the work house where she would be under curfew and discipline.

In high crime areas, women get pregant before locking in a husband, and have to raise their child alone. A rotating array of boyfriends often abuse the children, setting off a cycle of violence. (Non-father males in all human societies, and indeed, all primate societies, are often the most dangerous child abusers, as they have no genetic investment to the children).

In low crime areas, anti-social people are ostracised from the community. They lose access to friends, credit, and are shamed. Without a job, they must enter the workhouse, or they are in jail for their crimes.

In high crime areas, predators live in public housing for years, committing all sorts of crime, with no repurcussion.

(Note: I’m not advocating a return to Victorian era workhouses. I’m simply noting the obvious that if you want people to work a market job, then the “not-working” option has to be worse than the market job option. In the modern era, when we are much wealthier, there are many ways of doing this that wouldn’t entail the horrors of Dickensian workhouses.)

Crime control is not actually a mystery. It is pretty obvious to me why crime is so bad in these neighborhoods, compared to other times and places.

But any attempt to reduce crime will run into several major difficulties:

1. There is a general lack of trust in the police – and this lack of trust is partly warranted. Police unions have too often failed the public by protecting officers who are bad apples. As long as the 5-10% of police officers who are bullies or dishonest keep their jobs, it will be hard to gain the trust of the community.
2. There is a general lack of trust in government. And again this lack of trust is often warranted. People do not want to give the government authority to mix charity with discipline, because they fear that the state will be abusive in its attempts to mete out discipline.
3. Many of the social arrangements used by Salford – parental oversight of young women, corporal punishment in schools – are now terribly politically incorrect. Any city that even experiments with these policies will come under fierce attack from social justice advocates across the country, and will probably face all sorts of civil rights lawsuits.
4. The zeitgeist has been moving toward the idea that ghetto communities are entirely over-policed, and that the answer is less punishment. I do not know how you convince people that, in fact, they are both under-policed and over-policed, and in some ways, need much more active policing.
5. The downside of a society that allows class mobility, is that the best people in an underclass community tend to move out as soon as they can. This leaves these communities with a deficit of the type of people needed to provide leadership and set up social institutions that prevent conflicts.
6. Party politics in America tends towards simplification and overreaction on all sides. It’s either “lock them up” and “get tough on crime” or it is “police are racist” and “end mass incarceration”, without a nuanced understanding of how to make enforcement of the law consistent, proportional and fair.

So that is where we are. The direct policies in fixing crime are not too difficult, but the politics of fixing crime are daunting indeed.

In college, I took a couple courses on urban decay. I also tried to get out in the city doing volunteering projects to see things with my own eyes. Since college, I have devoured every book or article that has offered the prospect of new information.

Recently I found a hidden gem – Philly War Zone: Growing Up in a Racial Battleground by Kevin Purcell. It is the memoir of one ordinary boy growing up in Southwest Philly during the height of “white flight” in the early 1970s. The books we read in college rarely included first-hand accounts, and especially not first-hand accounts from the white perspective. We were told that white people left because of block-busting, susidized mortgages and the appeal of the suburbs. But we never read unvarnished accounts told by the people who left. Kevin Purcell provides such an acccount, and his stories and perspectives are quite different than those taught in college (although it is congruous with other accounts I have read since college). His book is not going to win any awards for beautiful prose, but it comes across as honest and straightforward. From the Amazon reviews, most people find his story to be truthful, and I can’t think of any motivation he would have for making it up.

This post consists of lengthy excerpts from his book, which I think provide an important piece of the puzzle for understanding what happened to our cities. I feel a little guilty for excerpting so much (though I felt more guilty cutting pieces out and possibly making my selection of excerpts unfair), so even better than reading this post is if you buy the book and read the whole thing. It’s only 150 pages, and that way you can support the author (I have no connection to the author, I just want to see good work rewarded).

Kevin introduces his story:

When friends today ask me where I grew up, I tell them I grew up in a row home in Southwest Philly. Many then ask, “What was it like?” I tell them, “It was the greatest neighborhood a kid could grow up in, until I was 10. Then it began to turn into a racial battleground.”

Some then ask me to tell them more. To which I usually reply, “It’s a long story,” and leave it at that. Well, this is my long story.

Kevin starts his story by speaking from the perspective of when he was 10 years old:

Just a few years [prior to 1969], this was the greatest neighborhood a kid my age could grow up in. Like any neighborhood, ours had its share of kids who liked to start trouble. But I can’t imagine any neighborhood being more fun and safe to grow up in. Back then, on a warm June afternoon like today, I didn’t have a care in the world. Around this time of day, I’d be taking my time walking home with my friends from Most Blessed Sacrament School, or “MBS” as everyone called it. Once home, I’d quickly get out of my school clothes, put on my play clothes, and be on my way to my favorite place in the world, Myers playground.

Myers playground is just a half-block from our house, and it used to be the perfect place to hang out. Me and my brothers, Joe and Larry, were at Myers playground every day. Once I’d get to Myers playground, I’d get right into a game, any game, and keep on playing until dark. We played basketball, football, baseball, box-ball, sock-it-out, stick-ball, half-ball, wall-ball, and street hockey. We played one game after another all day long. At night, we’d watch the games in the playground’s summer basketball leagues. Every summer, a lot of the best high school and college players in Philly played in those leagues. A few nights each summer, the playground workers would set up a movie projector outside and show a movie against the wall of one of the playground’s three large, stone buildings. Lots of parents and kids would sit on blankets and lawn chairs to watch the movie. Every day, all day, there was something fun to do at Myers playground.

Most nights, we had to be back from the playground just after dark, but we didn’t have to go in yet. So we’d round up all the kids from the Cecil Street area and play games like “Ring-up” and “Hide-the-Belt” for at least another hour. No matter what game we were playing, the game came to an immediate stop the moment we heard the bell ringing from the water-ice truck. The truck was about the size of a bread truck, white with round edges. The truck would drive down Cecil Street and stop about halfway down the street, just past our house. All us kids and lots of parents would line up to buy water ice and soft pretzels. Then we’d all sit on the front steps and eat away. I liked to wait until my chocolate water ice began to melt, then I’d dip my soft pretzel into the melted, chocolate-flavored ice. I can still taste it just thinking about it.

I always felt so safe on Cecil Street. On warm summer nights, lots of adults would sit on soft cushions on the top step of the four concrete steps that led from the edge of our front porches down to the sidewalk. Neighbors would sit out for hours, talking with other neighbors, many of them enjoying a cold beer or some other cold drink. At least one neighbor would have the Phillies game blasting on their transistor radio. So we’d be able to keep track of the Phillies game while we were running up and down the street having fun. I knew everybody on Cecil Street, and they all knew me. In fact, I knew almost everybody in our section of the neighborhood. And I felt safe no matter where I went. All us kids knew that most parents around here looked out for all the kids, not just their own.

And there were kids everywhere. We lived in a mostly Irish-Catholic neighborhood that was packed with kids. There are five boys in our family, but we were considered a small family. Lots of families had eight, 10, 12 kids or more. Some of the really big families had to eat their meals in shifts because there wasn’t enough room in their row homes for everyone to sit down to eat at the same time.

So many kids lived in our neighborhood that MBS was one of the most crowded elementary schools in the country. When I started school at MBS in 1964, there were 101 kids in my first-grade classroom. There were 10 rows of 10 kids. The extra kid sat at a desk in a corner in the front of the classroom. To keep 101 kids under control, the rather large Catholic nun who was my first-grade teacher would walk up and down one row after another, tapping a wooden yardstick against her empty hand.

Before hipsters made moving to the city and going without a car cool, Kevin’s dad was doing the same thing:

The way I heard it: right after I was born, Dad simply didn’t renew his license, sold his big black Chevy, and never drove again.

Years later, when I asked Dad about it, he said, “Kev, I could take the “13” trolley on Chester Avenue to work. I could walk to the grocery store. I could walk to the bar. And I was tired of driving your mom and Nonna all over the city. What the hell did I need a car for?”

There was also a gorgeous park only a few blocks away:

COBBS CREEK PARK is a huge park that forms a big part of the border between Southwest Philly and the surrounding suburbs. The park was close to Myers playground, just a three-block walk from the playground entrance near 59th and Chester Avenue. Having the park so close by was really cool. Even though we lived in a crowded city, we could be in the middle of the woods in a matter of minutes. The park always seemed so peaceful compared to the busy city streets. So it was even more tragic when such a peaceful place became the scene of a gang fight that cost a kid his life.

Because Cobbs Creek Park was so close by, lots of people from our neighborhood would walk over to play ball, have picnics, walk the stepping-stones across the creek, explore the woods, that kind of stuff. In the winter, when temperatures dropped below freezing, a lot of people would ice skate on the frozen creek. The park also had some great hills for sledding.

And at least initially, Kevin did not notice obvious racial animus, although black people were not frequent at his local playground:

Sure enough, Dwight cut to the basket, my bounce-pass met him in stride, he made the lay-up, and we won the game. It was the first time me and Dwight had ever beaten my older brother, Joe, and Dwight’s older brother, Lonny, in a game of two-on-two. And we played them a lot. Dwight and Lonny were the only black kids who played basketball with us at Myers playground. Both of them were really good basketball players. About a year ago, they moved into a house right across the street from the playground. They were two of the nicest kids I’d ever met, white or black. We became friends from the get-go.

..

The only group of black people of any age who played basketball at the playground was a group of older guys who were in their twenties and thirties. Every Sunday morning, when the weather was nice enough to play, they’d pull up in three or four cars and park along the Kingsessing Avenue side of the playground. There were usually about 10 to 15 of them. Those older black guys were some of the best basketball players I’d ever seen. Lots of Sunday mornings, after going to early Mass at MBS Church, Dad would take us over to the playground to watch those older black guys play. Dad knew who some of them were. He told us some of them played in a semi-pro basketball league called the Eastern League.

Unfortunately, around June of 1969, the neighborhood started to change. The first incident Kevin relates happened when trying to buy sneakers:

When we walked past the supermarket, I saw a few black people mixed in with all the white people who were shopping. I never used to see black people in this area. But now the area near 54th Street was one of the first parts of our neighborhood where a lot of white families were moving out, and a lot of black families were moving in. Two of my friends from Most Blessed Sacrament School (MBS) who lived in this area moved out last year. Both of their families moved to the suburbs. And both of their houses were bought by black families.

Once in a while, I’d hear about fights breaking out in the 54th Street area between black kids and white kids. But all the stories I heard involved older teenagers. I figured kids our age had nothing to worry about. So as we made our way to Tip O’Leary’s, our only care in the world was hoping we could find John Smith sneaks in our size.

The second we set foot outside Tip O’Leary’s store, we were surrounded by six or seven black kids who were a lot bigger and older than we were. A couple of them looked about 13 or 14 years old.

The biggest kid said, “Hand over your sneaks, all y’all.”

I was stunned. We were actually being robbed. I had no idea what to do. I looked over at my brother Joe, who was definitely a lot crazier than me and Larry. Joe lifted his bag up toward the kids as if he was going to hand his sneaks over. Then he swung the bag toward the faces of two of the black kids and yelled, “Run!”

And run we did. The three of us sprinted down Chester Avenue toward 55th Street. As we were running, I could see there were still lots of people out shopping up ahead. If we can make it to 55th Street, I thought to myself, we’ll be safe. When we got to 55th Street, I looked back. Sure enough, the kids had stopped chasing us.

I decided right then and there I was not going back to the 54th Street area any time soon. When we got home, we told Mom what happened. She wanted to call the cops. We tried to convince her not to. She finally agreed, saying, “Okay, but you’re not going over to 54th Street again without me or Dad.”

A month later, in July of 1969, Kevin recounts an assault going the other way:

When I turned around from my seat on the bleachers, I saw six black kids I’d never seen before playing a game of three-on-three. They looked to be about three or four years older than me. I was 10. I guess they were around 13 or 14. It was the first time I’d ever seen a group of black kids that age playing basketball at Myers playground.

The only group of black people of any age who played basketball at the playground was a group of older guys who were in their twenties and thirties. Every Sunday morning, when the weather was nice enough to play, they’d pull up in three or four cars and park along the Kingsessing Avenue side of the playground. There were usually about 10 to 15 of them. Those older black guys were some of the best basketball players I’d ever seen. Lots of Sunday mornings, after going to early Mass at MBS Church, Dad would take us over to the playground to watch those older black guys play….

Anyway, this group of six young black kids that I’d never seen before played basketball for about an hour. Then they left the playground and headed toward 58th Street, where they turned right toward Greenway Avenue… I knew a lot of the black people who lived on that block because that block was part of the newspaper route where me and Joe delivered the Evening Bulletin every day. But I didn’t remember ever seeing any of those six black kids down there. They must have just moved in.

The next day, the same six black kids came back to Myers playground. They played basketball for about an hour, and then they left. After they left, I could tell some of the older white guys were getting pissed off that these black kids were playing basketball in Myers playground.

“Why the fuck they have to come here?” I overheard one of the older guys say.

Then another one said, “This is our playground. They got their own fucking playground down on 49th Street.”

He was talking about the playground on 49th and Kingsessing Avenue. I was never in that playground. But every time I’d ride by it on the “13” trolley, most of the people hanging out there were black. So I guess he was right, there was a playground for blacks at 49th Street. Still, it would be a long walk from 58th Street all the way to 49th Street just to play some basketball, especially when there were some empty courts during the day right here at Myers playground.

The following day, the same six black kids came back to Myers playground again….All of a sudden, I heard four or five bursts of glass shattering behind me in the basketball courts. I quickly turned around and saw about 10 older white kids chasing after the six black kids. At first, the black kids looked stunned. Then they took off running, jumped over the short fence, and continued out onto Kingsessing Avenue toward 58th Street. They even left their basketball behind.

After the black kids were out of sight, one of the older guys yelled, “This is our playground. We don’t want no fucking nig*ers around here.”

I didn’t like seeing those black kids getting chased away like that. Just three weeks earlier, at Tip O’Leary’s, it was me and my brothers who were outnumbered and being chased. I didn’t like that feeling. And I didn’t like seeing anybody, black or white, have to feel the same way.

I was glad none of the black kids got hurt. But I had a feeling they wouldn’t be coming back. And they didn’t come back the next day, or the next, or the next. Little did I know that, when they would return, they’d return with a vengeance.

A month later, in August of 1969, the black kids came back for retalliation:

Our team was playing the late game on the baseball field closest to 59th and Chester Avenue, farthest away from the basketball courts. Suddenly, I heard loud screams coming from the other baseball field, the one closest to the basketball courts. I looked up and saw about 20 black people, both teenagers and adults, swinging belts and broom handles and throwing bottles and rocks at the mostly white people who had been watching the game from the metal bleachers, but were now running for cover.

Within minutes, cop cars with sirens blaring raced into Myers playground through both the Kingsessing Avenue and Chester Avenue entrances. The black guys tried to get away, and most of them did. Two were caught and arrested. Later, when things had settled down, I overheard two older white kids talking:

“Some of those younger nig*ers looked like the kids we chased off the basketball courts last week,” one older white kid said.

“Yeah, I think it was them,” said the other, “they looked real familiar.”

After the fight, white families started moving out of the neighborhood at a much higher rate. “White flight” began in earnest:

Before that fight at Myers playground, there were already a lot of “For Sale” signs on most streets in the area. After the fight, it seemed like there were twice as many. I guess a lot of people decided they’d seen enough. They were moving out.

As soon as I walked through the alley to Alden Street, I couldn’t miss the huge moving van parked outside the Jordon’s house, completely blocking the narrow, When I walked to the Jordon’s house to say goodbye, both parents had a redness around their eyes. It looked like they’d both been crying. The Jordons were the third family in the Cecil Street area who’d moved out in the past couple of months. All three times, I noticed that the parents seemed to be upset about leaving. And their kids were usually even more upset. About a month earlier, I saw two of the McSorley brothers crying on the day they were moving out. They were about eight and nine years old, and they obviously didn’t want to move. No kid in his right mind would want to move out of this neighborhood. Each time I saw a family moving out, I thought to myself, If they’re that upset about moving out, then why are they moving in the first place? After all, things still weren’t too bad in our section of the neighborhood. I was glad we weren’t moving.

My parents never talked about moving, except when we’d get those phone calls from realtors at dinnertime. One time, I asked Mom why they call all the time.

Mom told me, “They keep tellin’ me we should sell our house now, before too many blacks move in.”

“Why do they say that?” I asked her.

“They say once the blacks move in, all the houses will be worth a lot less money.”

“Is it true?” I asked.

“I don’t know what to believe,” Mom said. “I just want them to stop callin’ me.”

My parents didn’t want to move. Besides, if they did move, they’d probably have to pay more for a new house than they were paying for our house now….I figured if my parents didn’t have enough money to pay all the bills now, there’s no way they had enough money to pay even more for a new house. And that was fine with me. I didn’t want to move. Even though we almost got robbed at Tip O’Leary’s, even though there’d been some trouble at Myers playground, I was still having way too much fun in our neighborhood to even think about living anywhere else.

It is stories like this, and similar stories from other cities, that made me disbelieve the theory that it was cheap mortgages or the appeal of suburbia that caused white flight. And even blaming “block-busting” is sort of like blaming bad Yelp reviews for the failure of a restaurant (rather than blaming the bad food that caused the bad reviews). Pressure from the realtors only worked because the threat of violence was real.

A few months later in September, Kevin and his friends and brothers are walking to the football game, which required going through a neighborhood that had turned black:

As we began our half-mile walk down 58th Street to the game, I wondered how the black teenagers who were new to the neighborhood would feel about having all these white people walking through what was now their turf. I figured if there was going to be any trouble, it would happen near Greenway Avenue. And that’s where it happened. As soon as we got halfway between Greenway Avenue and Woodland Avenue, about 10 black teenagers came running up behind us from Greenway Avenue, throwing bottles and rocks. It looked like they were aiming for a group of our oldhead who were walking right behind us.

Us younger kids took off running down 58th Street toward the football field. We were running as fast as we could, along with some older adults and young couples with little kids who were also on their way to the football game. Our oldhead stayed to fight. The fighting drifted into the middle of 58th Street.

Some of the white guys snapped car antennas off parked cars and began swinging them at the black guys who were swinging back with broom handles and belts. It looked like a few guys, white and black, got hit and were bleeding.

A week later they were jumped with “bottles and rocks came flying at us from a car-repair lot that was on the same side of the street where we were walking. The black teenagers had been hiding in the car-repair lot, waiting for the right moment to attack.” Kevin’s group barely escaped by running across train tracks a moment before a freight train rumbled through.

These fights became routine and grew more serious:

LOTS OF FIGHTS were breaking out between black kids and white kids throughout the neighborhood. Some fights I saw. Others I heard about. In one fight, a few months earlier, near 55th and Chester Avenue, a 16-year-old white kid got stabbed in the head with a screwdriver. Doctors had to insert a metal plate in the kid’s head to save his life.

During the winter of 1970, Kevin spent a lot of time playing basketball in the Myers gym with the other whites, while often black kids hung out outside. Gradually a struggle for the turf began:

None of the black kids ever came into Myers gym. It just didn’t happen. But they definitely knew we were in there.

One day after school, I was sitting up on the gym’s radiator cover, my back resting against the wall of windows, watching the older guys play basketball. All of a sudden, I heard “POP… POP… POP… POP!”

The sounds were coming from the windows at the other end of the court. I looked over and saw what seemed like a hundred small pieces of glass raining down onto the court. Four windows had been shattered. The kids who were sitting on the radiator cover closest to the broken windows jumped down onto the court. Four of the players who were near the windows when they shattered ran to the other side of the court, their hands protecting their heads from the falling glass. There, lying in the middle of the court, were five rocks ranging from the size of a golf ball to the size of a baseball…. After that day, it wasn’t unusual to see two or three of the small windows near the basketball court boarded-up until the playground workers got a chance to replace the glass. And when they finally did replace the glass, it was usually just a matter of time before another bunch of rocks were thrown through another group of windows. By the end of that winter, we came to expect that the windows would get smashed, the same way we came to expect more and more fights that were breaking out all around us. Racial trouble was fast becoming part of day-to-day life.

As it turns to the spring of 1970, the outdoor basketball courts at Myers park became a battleground:

As soon as the weather got a little warmer, we were back on the outside courts, playing basketball. Only now, it wasn’t unusual anymore for groups of black kids to come into the playground to play basketball, too. And it wasn’t long before the outside basketball courts turned into a battleground. Sometimes when black kids were playing on the courts, white kids would attack with bottles and rocks. Sometimes when we were playing, black kids would attack us. So we were always on the lookout.

Now, whenever I was playing on the outside courts at Myers, I’d try to keep my head on an even bigger swivel, thinking, See your man, see the ball, and see if we’re about to get attacked.

The first time we got attacked on the outside courts, we were playing a half-court game of three-on-three. When the ball went out of bounds, I took a quick look around for any signs of trouble. Everything looked cool. The instant we started playing again, a bottle smashed just a few feet from where I was standing. Then four or five more bottles smashed all around us. I looked over and saw about a dozen black kids with belts and broom handles, running toward us. They were nowhere in sight just a few seconds before. They were probably hiding on the side porch on the Kingsessing Avenue side of Myers gym, which we couldn’t see from the basketball courts.

The outside basketball courts were now a disputed territory. The black kids now thought the courts were theirs. We thought the courts were still ours. Because the courts were now a battleground, we stopped hanging out in that part of the playground. Instead, we started hanging out near the Old House. We still played a lot of basketball, although many times we’d have to clear broken glass off the court before we could play. The difference was, as soon as we were done playing basketball, we’d go back to the Old House to hang out. Hanging out there gave us more time to get ready if a fight was coming and a lot more ammunition to use in those fights.

Kevin then talks about the rise of the Dirty Annies gang. The origins of the gang came from two years earlier:

..in 1968 and 1969, a lot more black people were living in the 58th and Willows Avenue area, compared to our part of the neighborhood. So a lot more fighting was going on up there. Some of the first street fights I’d ever seen were between the white kids who hung out at The Sunshine Inn and black kids from the neighborhood. A lot of those fights were right in front of the Evening Bulletin office. Me and Joe would watch the fights as we sat in our red [newspaper] wagon, waiting for the Bulletin truck to get there. Some of those white guys who hung out at The Sunshine Inn were really tough fighters.

In the years that followed, the number of white guys hanging out at The Sunshine Inn kept shrinking as the number of black kids hanging out in that area kept growing. So now the guys who used to hang out at The Sunshine Inn were hanging out in our section of the neighborhood, the only section that was still mostly white. There, in front of Dirty Annie’s store, it was as if all the older white guys in our entire neighborhood had merged into the last remaining white gang their age.

When I say “gang,” I don’t mean a formal gang like the Pagans and Warlocks motorcycle gangs. There were no initiations, no gang leaders, none of that stuff. In our neighborhood, a gang was just a group of guys who all hung out together. Because all these guys were now hanging out in front of Dirty Annie’s store, it wasn’t long before the gang itself was called the Dirty Annies.

Because I spent so much time near the Dirty Annies hangout, I saw those guys get into a lot of fights with black kids. I was always impressed at how all the Dirty Annies stuck together, always ready to fight for each other. They had that “all-for-one, one-for-all” attitude that seemed to give them a big advantage every time I saw them fight. And a lot of times, I saw them fight right out the front window of our house.

The following weekend, in another fight in front of our house, someone did get knocked down. In that fight, a black guy got hit in the ribs with a broom handle and went down right in the middle of the street. Because there were more white guys than black guys in the fight that night, the black guy who fell was surrounded by three or four Dirty Annies. He immediately got into a fetal position, the way football players do when they recover a fumble. Only he was using his arms to protect his head, not a football, against the kicks, broom handles, and belt buckles that continued to pummel him until the cops showed up and everyone, except him, took off running. I’d seen people get beat up that bad on TV, but I never saw anybody get beat up that bad in real life. It was animalistic, like a pack of wolves pouncing on a fallen prey.

Evidently, the kid wasn’t as hurt as I thought he might be. The cops helped him get up off the ground. Then they helped him into the back seat of the cop car and off they went.

The Dirty Annies got into lots of fights with black kids that spring, and they won a lot of those fights, which meant more black kids got hurt than Dirty Annies. Word started spreading throughout Southwest Philly about the Dirty Annies, all the fights they were in, and how tough they were. They were becoming the most talked-about gang in Southwest Philly.

The Dirty Annies would often throw stuff at busses of black kids as they were bussed in to a nearby school. The situation escalated until there were protests from the black parents and then a near race riot.

In August 1970 one of the Annies was shot a couple blocks from Kevin’s house as he was was walking home:

Some of the Dirty Annies wouldn’t let him go alone. They knew it might be dangerous, so they decided they’d walk him home and then walk back to Dirty Annie’s. Just two blocks into their walk up 58th Street, a fight broke out with a gang of black kids. One of the black kids pulled out a gun. The 18-year-old white kid got shot. The bullet entered his lung and exited through his back. With the help of a respirator, doctors were able to save the kid’s life. The next day, when I heard what happened, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe a kid actually got shot just a couple blocks from our house. The last thing this neighborhood needed was for guns to be involved.

Kevin also began to encounter more racial fighting at school:

EVEN THOUGH THERE’D been a lot of racial trouble in the neighborhood for some time now, the racial situation inside MBS School had remained pretty calm. For the most part, black kids and white kids in MBS got along with each other. But starting in seventh grade, the year I turned 12, I could sense racial tension growing in the school itself and in the streets around the school.

…

The big fights that were happening now were between the white kids from MBS and the black kids from Mitchell school… When the white kids from MBS walked back to school after lunch, many walked right past Mitchell schoolyard. At that time of day, a lot of the black kids from Mitchell School were hanging out in Mitchell schoolyard for recess. That was never a problem in years past. Now it was a problem. Both groups would yell racial stuff back and forth, and fights began to break out.

…

That same year, in seventh grade, I began to notice changes in my relationships with some of the black friends I’d made over the years. Some black kids at MBS that I’d known for years started to act like they didn’t even know me anymore. One day, I was walking down the hallway between classes when I saw Kenny walking toward me. Kenny was a black kid I’d known for about three years. We were never real close. But we always got along, and said “hi” to each other. Kenny was walking toward me with two other black kids who were new to MBS. I didn’t know the new kids at all.

“Hey Kenny,” I said as we passed each other in the hall.

Recently, I’d noticed that whenever Kenny was with these new kids, he was acting kind of cold toward me. This time, he just ignored me. When he heard me say his name, he turned toward me. Then he quickly snapped his head right back to make it look like he didn’t see me.

At first, I wasn’t sure why Kenny was trying to ignore me. Then I figured it might have something to do with all the new black kids in MBS. I had a feeling a lot of the new black kids were putting pressure on the black kids who’d been at MBS for a while. They didn’t want them to be so friendly with white kids anymore. I know I was feeling more and more pressure from some of the tougher white kids to stop being friendly with black kids. Nobody ever said anything to me about it. But sometimes, if I was talking to a black friend in school, I noticed some of the white kids would give me dirty looks. Still, it pissed me off that Kenny couldn’t even give me a nod or something. The next time I saw him, I totally ignored him, and I never said a word to him again.

It should be noted that Kevin’s friends also were the instigators in the fighting:

Some of the guys really liked to fight. We had a few guys who would wander away from MBS schoolyard, trying to find black kids to fight with, which wasn’t hard to do considering we were pretty much surrounded by them. One of those guys who liked to get fights started was Billy. Billy was a year older than me. He got bored just hanging out. He liked action.

One afternoon, five of us, Billy included, were hanging out on Chester Avenue near MBS schoolyard, eating ice cream and drinking sodas from the ice cream store across the street. While we were standing on the corner, we noticed that two black kids, about our age, were walking toward us. Both kids were strutting the way most black kids in the neighborhood strutted, both arms swinging, one at a time, from about a foot outside their hips to about a foot behind the back of their butt.

It was kind of ironic, but it looked to me like a lot of us white guys were starting to walk with struts, too. I know I started walking with a strut. I started doing it when I noticed the black kids who were strutting had an advantage during the shoulder-to-shoulder bumps when I’d pass them on the sidewalk. Whenever I bumped shoulders with a black kid who was strutting, I usually got the worst of it because he had some momentum in his swinging arms. So I decided that whenever I was walking toward a group of black kids, I was going to walk with a strut, too. I wanted to have some momentum of my own when we made contact. It definitely helped.

As these two black kids strutted closer and closer toward the five of us, I kept thinking to myself, I know Billy’s gonna say something. Even though there was a cop car parked just a half-block away, I knew Billy wouldn’t let a chance to stir the pot go to waste.

Sure enough, just as the two kids passed us, Billy says, “Cut the strut, nig*ers.”

The two black kids, seeing they were outnumbered, ignored Billy and kept walking. Billy didn’t go after the kids because of the cop car parked nearby. I often wondered what made guys like Billy want to start trouble. Did they just like to fight? Was there a lot of violence in their homes? One thing I will say about Billy: he wasn’t like some kids in the neighborhood who would start a fight hoping everybody else would finish the fight for them. Whenever Billy started a fight, he always stayed and fought until the end. And Billy was a tough fighter with a powerful punch.

No matter who started the fights, we all got involved.

In the summer of 1971 a murder rocked the neighborhood. Cobbs Creek had become a popular spot for teenage drinking. One night the Dirty Annies were on one side of Cobbs Creek, and across the creek was a group of black guys. They started yelling at each other. One of the black guys began walking across the creek. The Dirty Annies chased him away, a fight broke out, and one of the black guys was stabbed dead at the age of 20.

The murder in Cobbs Creek Park was all over the news. Before our neighborhood started getting dangerous, the only part of the newspaper I ever looked at was the sports section. Now, every day, I looked through every page of both the Bulletin and the Inquirer, searching for articles about what was going on in our neighborhood. And there was a lot going on.

Around the same time of the murder in the park, in a fight near 56th and Greenway Avenue, a 16-year-old white kid got stabbed in the chest by a black kid. Doctors said the white kid would have died if the cut were inches closer to his heart.

Also, around the same time, near 58th and Chester Avenue, a 14-year-old white kid got into a fight with a 14-year-old black kid. The white kid ended up hitting the black kid in the head with a broom handle. The black kid died.

A lot of kids carried broom handles. We used them as baseball bats when we played half-ball. Half-balls were air balls that had gone flat. We’d cut the flat air balls in half with a penknife and stack them together. The pitcher would toss the half-balls underhanded to the batter who tried to hit them with the broom handle. Some of the best half-ball players took the sport very seriously, customizing their broom handles by sawing one end for a perfect length and taping the other end for a better grip.

Most cops would let us carry our broom handles. They saw us playing half-ball a lot, so they knew we used them as baseball bats. I guess the cops figured that if they took our broom handles from us, it would be like they were taking a piece of sporting equipment from us. But broom handles were more than just a piece of sporting equipment once a fight broke out. They became a weapon, and a very good weapon. The kids who got hit with broom handles usually got hurt pretty bad. Unfortunately, that day, when the two 14-year-olds got into a fight, the broom handle became a fatal weapon.

The 14-year-old white kid was sentenced to a few years in a juvenile detention center. An article in the Bulletin said the 14-year-old black kid who got killed had just moved into our neighborhood from another dangerous area in South Philly, near 30th and Tasker, where white kids and black kids were fighting a lot. The article said the black kid’s family moved to our neighborhood because they thought it would be a safer place to live.

Our neighborhood was mentioned in the newspapers just about every day. And the biggest stories were about the Dirty Annies gang. One Sunday, the Inquirer ran a long feature story about the gang right on the front page of its local section. The reporter quoted a lot of the Dirty Annies who didn’t want their names in the paper. Almost all of them talked about having to fight to protect the only territory they had left in the neighborhood.

One Dirty Annie said, “If we don’t stick together, we’re going to get killed. It’s their [the blacks’] neighborhood now.”

“The white adults,” he said, “never used to like us; now a lot of them are behind us. Last night me and two other kids were standing on the corner when a group of blacks came by. A lady invited us on her porch as they went by. That never happened before. They used to let us fend for ourselves.”

An article in the Evening Bulletin told the black people’s side of the story. A black woman was quoted as saying, “This was once a predominantly white neighborhood and then the blacks moved in. The whites are against it. They’re so much against it, they’ll just do anything.”

Later in the story, a black man was quoted as saying, “These are the poor whites, with no place to go. They’re making their last stand to keep from being forced out and that’s what created this situation of bigotry and prejudice.”

In the months following the murder (June 1971) things continued to deteriorate:

[June 1971] EVER SINCE THE murder in Cobbs Creek Park, I could feel the racial tension throughout the neighborhood growing stronger and stronger. …A few days later, something like that happened to us when we were hanging out in the corner of Myers playground near 59th and Chester Avenue. I didn’t know if he had a gun or not, but a black guy in a slow-moving car leaned out of the front passenger window and, using both hands, pointed a metal object at us. A couple of my friends yelled, “Gun! Gun!” I dove to the ground, as did most of the guys I was with. Again, no shots were fired.

…

Our little corner of Myers playground, near 59th and Chester Avenue, was the only part of the playground where we could still hang out. Black kids were now hanging out on the basketball courts and every other part of the playground, even near the Old House. We were more outnumbered than ever before, especially now that more white kids than ever had gone down to the Jersey shore for the summer….And this year, a few of the guys, including my friend Chris, were sent away for the summer to live with relatives. Chris was spending the summer with his cousins down the shore. A lot of parents were trying to find any way possible to get their kids out of this neighborhood that was getting more and more dangerous by the day. Because so few of us were hanging out in our little corner of Myers playground, we would often get attacked by black kids throwing rocks and bottles. We’d fight back for a while. But we were usually so outnumbered we’d have to retreat down Chester Avenue toward 60th Street, which was still a mostly white area. It was easy to see that Myers playground was not going to be a safe place to hang out that summer.

During that summer, there were times I found myself thinking about our situation compared to what I used to think our lives would be like as 12-year-olds. I expected we’d all be playing in summer baseball and basketball leagues at Myers playground every night. I expected we’d all be hanging out in the playground with a big group of guys and girls, flirting with each other and doing other normal stuff most kids our age were doing. I never expected this. I never expected that all the baseball and basketball summer leagues at Myers playground would be cancelled because of all the racial trouble. I never expected that we’d have nowhere to even play basketball anymore. Every time we tried to play on the outside courts at Myers, we’d get attacked. So we didn’t even bother trying. Man, did I miss playing basketball.

As time went on, piece by piece, Kevin lost access to the gyms, playgrounds and streets of his own neighborhood. As of July of 1971 he reports:

The situation in our neighborhood had gotten so bad that me, Joe, and Larry couldn’t even go to the grocery store for Mom anymore without getting attacked….We started shopping at the grocery store near 57th and Kingsessing Avenue. The man who owned that grocery store was also a nice man. He had no problem with us running up a bill. Unfortunately, shopping at his store became a problem for a different reason.

One day after school, when I went to buy groceries for Mom, a group of about seven black kids about my age were hanging out right across the street from the grocery store, in front of the shoemaker’s store. I was hoping that this was just a one-day thing, that this wasn’t going to be their new hangout. But I was wrong. That group of black kids started hanging out on that corner every day. So just about every time me, Joe, or Larry went to that grocery store, we had trouble. We’d either get into fights, get chased home, or both. I never liked grocery shopping in the first place. I always thought it was a pain in the butt. Now having to go grocery shopping felt like a combat mission. Many times, when I’d get close to 57th Street, I’d see the black kids hanging out that I knew were going to mess with me. So I’d turn around and go back home. I’d watch TV for about an hour. Then I’d try to go to the grocery store again, hoping the coast would be clear.

And now that me, Joe, and Larry were getting attacked almost every time we tried to go shopping, we had a problem. Mom had to come up with another plan. So she began sending our two younger brothers to the store. Marty and Steven were nine and seven years old at the time. Mom figured that there was no way the black kids who were hanging out near the grocery store would mess with a nine- and seven-year-old.

For a couple weeks, Mom’s strategy worked. But it wasn’t long before the black kids, who knew Marty and Steven were our brothers, caught on that they were now going to the grocery store instead of us. One day, one of those black kids, a 13-year-old named Duane, chased Marty and Steven home from the store and warned them to never come back. That was the end of Marty and Steven’s shopping days, and it made me want to get even with Duane more than ever before.

Duane was a punk. He was one of the first black kids to move into our neighborhood. Me and my brothers would walk past Duane’s house on our way back and forth to school. When Duane first moved into our neighborhood, I remember seeing how well he was treated by all his white neighbors. They even used to throw birthday parties for him. I didn’t have a problem with any of that. At the time, Duane seemed like a nice kid. We were about the same age, and we’d say “hi” whenever we passed each other on the street.

My problem with Duane started when more and more black kids began moving into the neighborhood. As Duane started hanging out with a bigger and bigger group, he liked to mess with us whenever his group outnumbered ours. So when Marty and Steven told me it was Duane who chased them home, I was more determined than ever to get even with him when the time was right.

I felt bad for Marty and Steven. When I was their age, I was having the time of my life, spending all day, every day, playing game after game with lots of kids my age in Myers playground. The only time Marty and Steven could go out of the house was when Mom or Dad walked them over to a friend’s house. They couldn’t even go out for Halloween.

…

Now Halloween night was nothing like it used to be. The few people who took kids trick-or-treating would do it right after school, before dark. Used to be that we had to wait until after dark before we could even start trick-or-treating.

Marty and Steven were pretty much confined to our house. Whenever they wanted to go outside to play, the only place they could play was out in front of our house.

One Saturday afternoon, even a simple football catch turned into an adventure. I remember I was sitting in the house watching the Phillies on TV when Steven walked into the house. He didn’t look happy.

“Do we have another football?” he asked me.

“Dad just bought you guys a football,” I said.

“I know,” Steven said, “Me and Marty were having a catch with it. When the football hit the telephone pole, it bounced up the street. When it got near the alley, a black kid jumped out, grabbed the ball, and ran away with it.”

It didn’t seem fair that Marty and Steven had to experience this kind of stuff at an age when they should have been having the time of their lives, just enjoying being kids. But they never complained about it. It was the only life they knew. They had no idea what they were missing. And that was probably a good thing.

By September 1971, Kevin also had to sneak around pretty much everywhere he went:

But working on the newspaper led to another problem. Because we did all of our newspaper work after school, we all walked home at different times. That meant I often had to walk home from MBS alone, instead of with the group that walked home together right after school when a cop car was still parked on every corner. By the time I’d leave MBS, it was usually around 4:30, giving me just enough time to get home, get something to eat, and get ready for football practice at six. By that time, the cop cars had already left their posts, and black kids were usually hanging out on both Kingsessing Avenue and Chester Avenue, my only possible routes home. Most times I didn’t even know which route I’d take until I scouted things out. The nicer the weather, the more careful I had to be. I never turned a corner until I took a peek around it. Then, depending on what I’d see, I’d sneak in and out of alleys to get past the areas where the black kids were hanging out. As soon as I was in the clear, I’d run as fast as I could the rest of the way home. Somehow, I always managed to get home safely. I was usually out of breath, but I was safe.

He then lost access to the Myers gym:

That winter, I was so busy with basketball, the school newspaper, and homework that I didn’t have a lot of free time. So I hardly ever made it over to Myers gym. Which meant I didn’t see all the changes that were happening over there. But I heard about them. For most of the fall and into the holidays, the indoor gym at Myers was still being used by white kids, including a lot of the Dirty Annies who played basketball there almost every night. The black guys still wouldn’t go into the gym. Then, one night after the holidays, it all changed.

The way I heard it, the night started out as a normal night at the gym. Lots of white kids, including a lot of the Dirty Annies, were hanging out and playing pick-up basketball. All of a sudden, about eight black kids from 58th and Greenway Avenue, the same kids who were always fighting with the Dirty Annies, walked into Myers gym and went right up to the basketball court.

The biggest black kid, a defensive tackle on the football team at Bartram High, yelled, “We got winners” loud enough for the kids who were playing to hear. Because nobody else had already called “winners,” the black kids had the right to play the winners of the game in progress.

When the game started, I heard things got rough in a hurry. Both teams were fouling each other so hard it wasn’t long before a full-scale brawl broke out on the basketball court. The playground workers rushed onto the court with arms extended, trying to separate the two groups. But they couldn’t stop the fight. Within minutes, cops rushed into the gym to get things under control. From that night on, there was always at least one cop stationed inside Myers gym. Now that there was always a cop in the gym, the black kids finally felt safe enough to hang out there. And before long, so many black kids were hanging in Myers gym that it was now the white kids who never went into the gym anymore. I never set foot in Myers gym again.

When Father McMurtry and our coaches from MBS found out that it wasn’t safe for us to hang out in Myers gym anymore, they decided to open MBS gym for us on weeknights to give us a place to hang out. So that’s where we went every night to get out of the cold, have some fun, and play some basketball. We had a great time every night, until it was time for everyone to walk home our separate ways. That’s when things got dangerous.

That next spring, in March of 1972, the violence hit closest to home:

Once I got home, I did my homework, had a quick dinner, and got ready to go over to MBS gym with my two brothers to hang out and play basketball.

I took the usual safety precautions. I wore my belt with the thick buckle. On the way out, I grabbed my car antenna from its hideout in our front garden and slid it up the sleeve of my spring coat. Because so many people were outdoors, I had a feeling it could be a dangerous night….Once inside MBS gym, we played pick-up basketball all night. The guys who weren’t playing sat around talking about sports, girls, and school, usually in that order. We had a lot of fun. And it wasn’t just white kids who came to MBS gym to play basketball. A few black kids from MBS parish usually played with us, including a tall, lanky kid who was the best player in the gym every night he showed up.

MBS gym usually closed around nine o’clock. Then came the hard part, getting home safe. And that night, as warm as it was, getting home safe figured to be even more difficult.

…on this warm night, as we got close to Cecil Street, nobody was around: no Dirty Annies, no black kids, no cops. Something didn’t feel right. Suddenly, at least a dozen black guys jumped out from behind five or six cars parked directly across Chester Avenue from where we were walking. They were coming after us, and they were coming fast.

Because we were already past Cahill’s, the six of us took off up Cecil Street, sprinting the 50 yards to our house as fast as we could. The black guys were right behind us. We made it into our house just in time. We were able to get inside and lock the front door just as the first black guy set foot on our front porch.

Usually, in the past, whenever we were being chased, the kids who were chasing us would go away once we ran into somebody’s house. This group didn’t go away. All of them came right up onto our small front porch and tried to force open the locked door.

Dad was bartending at Cahill’s that night. So Mom was home alone with my two youngest brothers. When we ran into our house and locked the door, Mom ran out from the kitchen. She was angry. Mom didn’t take any shit from anybody. I’m pretty sure my brother Joe inherited that trait from Mom. Even though all the black kids were still out on our front porch, Mom unlocked the front door and opened the storm door just wide enough to yell, “Get the hell out of here.”

As soon as those words left her mouth, I saw a fist burst through the slightly opened storm door and make contact with the right side of Mom’s face. Thank God the kid’s fist also hit part of the storm door, breaking the impact of the punch just enough so that Mom wasn’t seriously hurt. She was sore, but not nearly as sore as she would have been had the punch landed squarely. We got Mom out of the way, and the six of us kept pushing and pushing at the door until we finally got it shut and locked again.

I’d never felt such a terrible combination of anger and helplessness. Someone had just punched my mom in the face in our own house, and there was nothing I could do about it. The black kids on the porch were still trying to force their way in. If we had a gun in our house, I would have begun shooting out onto our front porch until I was out of bullets. As soon as the black kids heard police sirens getting closer, they took off running. The cops came to our house, wrote down information for their report, and drove John, Doug, and Tommy home.

The night Mom got hit in the face was a night I’ll never forget. But it wasn’t the worst thing that happened on our dangerous walks home after playing basketball at MBS. It wasn’t even close.

A few weeks later, when MBS gym closed at the same time Myers gym closed, six of us were headed home from MBS by way of Chester Avenue. Again, it was me, Joe, Larry, John, Doug, and Tommy. I remember looking ahead and seeing a group of about 15 black guys a block ahead of us, walking directly toward us.

As usual, our group thinned out along the route home. When me and my two brothers left our group at Cecil Street, only John, Doug, and Tommy remained. John would leave the group when they reached his house a block away. Then Doug and Tommy would continue on to the 60th Street area where they both lived.

About 10 minutes after me and my brothers got home, I remember hearing a lot of police sirens nearby. But I didn’t give it a second thought. Police sirens usually howled all hours of the night.

The next morning I heard the phone ringing in my parents’ bedroom unusually early, before we’d even gotten out of bed to get ready for school. Because me and Joe’s bedroom was right next to Mom and Dad’s room, I could easily hear Mom answer the phone. Then I heard Mom scream like I never heard her scream before. “No! No! No!” she yelled. Something was definitely wrong.

I jumped down from my top bunk and ran into my parents’ room. Mom was wiping tears from her eyes. After she got herself under control, Mom gathered the three of us older guys away from our younger brothers and told us what had happened. When Doug and Tommy continued walking home the previous night, they only made it as far as 59th Street. At 59th and Trinity Street, they where attacked by four black kids. Doug was stabbed to death.

The next day’s Evening Bulletin said that four black youths approached Doug and Tommy and asked them for a dime. When Tommy said he didn’t have any money, one of the black kids punched him in the face. At the same time, the Bulletin reported, another black kid pulled out a knife and stabbed Doug in the chest, killing him. The article also played up the fact that Doug was killed less than two blocks away from Police Commissioner O’Neil’s house, which was over by 61st Street, an area that was still mostly white.

What made Doug’s death even harder to accept was this: Doug and Tommy never hung out with us on weekends, or were part of our so-called “gang.” Doug worked a lot of hours at the beer distributor. I think Tommy had a job, too. They were just two nice kids who loved to play basketball with the boys in MBS gym. Nobody deserved to die that way. But Doug was probably the least deserving of all.

And I never saw Tommy again after the night Doug was killed. No one did. I heard his family moved him out of the neighborhood the very next day. In fact, after Doug’s death, there were four or five white kids from the neighborhood I never saw again.

My thoughts ranged from seeking revenge to a desire to get the hell out of this neighborhood. My anger grew deeper on the night of Doug’s viewing. His viewing was at a popular funeral home near 53rd and Chester Avenue. Nearly all the families living in that area now were black. Dozens of us lined the sidewalk outside the funeral home as we waited to say our final goodbyes.

All of a sudden, we heard the voices of a group of black kids from a half-block away. They were laughing and yelling at us.

One yelled, “Y’all goin’ to see the dead honky!”

A couple others kept chanting, “Dead honky! Dead honky!”

A bunch of us tried to go after them, but the cops held us back as the black kids scattered.

After Doug’s death, Mom and Dad were more determined than ever to move us out of the neighborhood. But they still couldn’t sell our house. And if they couldn’t sell our house, we couldn’t move. It was that simple. In the seven months our house had been up for sale, no one had come to look at it. Mom was so frustrated. To make matters even worse, Mom told me the realtor gave her some bad news. The realtor told Mom that, even if he found a buyer, our house was now only worth about $3,500. Mom was hoping she could get $6,000, which was still less than the $7,000 Mom and Dad paid for the house back in 1956. right a few years earlier when they kept calling Mom, warning her that if she didn’t sell her house soon, she wouldn’t get much money for it later.

In the fall of 1973, Kevin started going to private high school, which required taking the Trolley every day. As he waited at the trolley during, the morning rush hour, he sometimes got threats:

Still, even with all the adults around,sometimes the black kids would threaten me. The first time it happened, two black kids crossed Chester Avenue and stood right next to me. I had no idea what they were going to do. Then one of the kids said something to me just loud enough so only I could hear him, “We’ll get you when you come home, when none of these people are around.” And then the two kids walked back across Chester Avenue to join their friends.

I didn’t see this coming. I had no idea going to The Prep was going to put me in this situation. One morning, they even threatened me when Dad was standing right next to me waiting for the trolley. Four black kids walked right across Chester Avenue, and came right up to me, right in front of Dad.

“Your daddy won’t be with you when you come home,” said Willie, the biggest of the black kids.

“We’ll get you then.” As I said, Dad’s usually as easy-going as can be. But on that morning, he almost lost his cool. Dad’s face turned beet red as he warned them, “You guys lay a hand on my son, and you’ll regret it.”

Every day coming home was an adventure in avoiding Willie’s gang:

On every trip home, as soon as my trolley passed MBS Church at 56th and Chester Avenue, I’d stand up, grab the balance bar, and start scanning both sides of Chester Avenue. I had to quickly decide whether I’d be safer getting off the trolley at 57th Street or staying on until 58th Street. I had to get off at one stop or the other. And I had to make my decision even faster if no one else was getting off at 57th Street. If no one else was getting off there, I had to be the one to pull the cord above the window to let the trolley driver know someone was getting off at the next light.

Even if I didn’t see Willie and his friends, I still had to assume they could be hiding out, waiting for me. It was like a game of cat and mouse. I had to guess where they might be waiting. They had to guess which street I’d get off at. Those times when the black kids guessed right, I either had to outrun them to my house or end up having to try to defend myself against the group of them until a cop or an adult in the area came over to help me out.

By January 1973, Kevin had settled into a regular pattern of drinking and fighting:

IT WAS THE same routine every Friday and Saturday night. We’d all meet up at MBS schoolyard around six o’clock. Because MBS gym wasn’t open on weekend nights, we couldn’t go into the gym to hang out and play basketball like we did during the week. We really had nothing to do on weekends except to hang out in the schoolyard. Only now, we started doing what our oldhead always did on weekend nights. We started drinking beer.

While we waited for our beer to arrive, we’d gather the night’s artillery. We were getting into street fights just about every weekend night. So we had to collect every bottle, rock, or any other potential weapon we could find. We’d usually hide our collection of weapons in a metal trashcan in a corner of the schoolyard next to Monsignor Dooley’s garage.

When our beer arrived, we’d usually drink about two quarts of beer each in a back alley or on the front porch of a nearby row home where nobody lived anymore. In the past couple years, more and more houses were becoming abandoned as so many people moved out and so few people moved in. Years ago, there was hardly an empty house in the entire neighborhood.

The beer definitely got us fired up for the fight that was likely to happen soon. As much as I enjoyed the buzz from the beer, I tried not to get too drunk. I knew I needed to have some of my wits about me when the fighting started. A lot of times, the guys who got really drunk got hurt the most.

Whatever the reason, one night Scott was really drunk when a fight broke out on Kingsessing Avenue. As soon as we heard some of the guys yelling that they were in a fight, we all headed for Monsignor’s garage and grabbed whatever weapons we had hidden in the trashcan. Then we ran to the fight. When we got there, it was easy to see that we were outnumbered. So we tried to just hold our ground until the cops showed up. Bottles and rocks were flying. Belt buckles, broom handles, and car antennas were swinging.

Scott was so drunk, he didn’t even realize how outnumbered we were. He just kept running straight ahead into the middle of all the black kids, swinging his belt in the air, yelling, “I’m gonna fuck you up!”

As soon as Scott said those words, one of the black kids whacked him across the ribs with a broom handle and down he went. We all tried to get to Scott’s side, knowing if we could surround him we could protect him until he was able to get back on his feet. But there were too many black kids. We couldn’t get past the first line of kids we were already fighting. Getting to Scott’s side was impossible. They surrounded him and beat him up bad.

It reminded me of the way that black kid got beat up a few years ago by the Dirty Annies in front of our house. It had that same animalistic feel to it, like wolves attacking a fallen prey. Scott got pummeled with belts, broom handles, and kicks for about 20 seconds.

…

A lot of us were getting hurt in fights. The most common injuries were hits to the head or chest, usually from a belt buckle or broom handle. The worst injury I got was the night I got smacked across the head with a broom handle.

That night, the fight started when about 10 black kids attacked us, running at us from the Kingsessing Avenue entrance to MBS schoolyard. There were about 10 of us, too, hanging out in our usual spot on the steps of the annex building. Within seconds, the fight was on right there in the schoolyard.

I was in the middle of the pack; guys were fighting on my left and right. Luckily, I had my car antenna with me that night. On my first swing, I hit the black kid I was fighting across his right shoulder. I could see that I got him good, as he grabbed his right shoulder with his left hand.

My first reaction was to look to my right to see if any of my friends needed help. No one was in trouble on my right. Then I quickly looked to my left. All of a sudden I saw a fast-moving shadow coming from my right. A split second later, I saw stars.

My head was throbbing. I could feel a lump the size of half a golf ball. Every time I pulled my hand away from my head, I expected to see blood. But I was lucky; it never bled. Unfortunately, my luck ended there.

“I got hit,” I said, pointing to the lump on my head, which felt like it was getting bigger by the second. “My head’s killing me.”

I was hoping the cop would have some sympathy. He didn’t.

“Get up and shut up,” the cop said. “A couple of your friends are waiting for you.”

After he handcuffed me, he opened the doors to the back of the paddy wagon. As soon as the doors opened, I saw that two of my friends, Billy and Ron, were already in there.

“Get in there with your friends,” the cop said as he pushed me into the back of the paddy wagon and slammed the door shut.

Billy was yelling at the cop, “Let me the fuck out of here. We didn’t do nothin’. I’m gonna sue your ass, McCluskey.”

Officer McCluskey yelled back, “Shut the fuck up, Billy.”

We knew all the cops’ names. And they knew a lot of our names, as well. They all knew Billy’s name. Ron didn’t say a word to the cops. Last time Ron gave a cop some lip, the cop smacked him hard across the left side of his head with his huge walkie-talkie. That happened about a month earlier. Ron was still having a hard time hearing out of that ear.

That was the second time I got locked up. The cop who was driving the paddy wagon did the same thing as the cop who was driving the first time I got locked up. He kept slamming on the brakes, sending the three of us banging against the unpadded metal sides of the paddy wagon. Because we were in handcuffs, we couldn’t even brace ourselves. The more we slammed into the sides of the paddy wagon, the louder the cops laughed.

The cops put the three of us into the same holding cell. Four other white kids we didn’t know were already in the cell. We knew we were only going to be in the cell for a few hours, but it was still a scary feeling when those thick, steel bars slammed shut in front of us. As we were sitting in the cell, the cops marched four of the black kids we were fighting right past our cell and into another holding cell right next to ours. The trash talking began.

“Honky mother-fuckers, we’ll get y’all tomorrow night,” one of the black kids yelled.

To which Billy yelled back, “Fuck you, nig*er.”

The taunting continued back and forth until a cop walked past both holding cells, banging his nightstick against the jail bars and telling us all to “shut the fuck up.”

Because we were all under 18, we knew the cops would call our parents and tell them to come pick us up. The cops decided whose parents would be called in what order. So it was a good idea not to mouth off to the cops. The guys who gave the cops a lot of lip sometimes stayed in jail three or four hours longer than everybody else. Billy was the last one out of jail that night.

Mom had to call a neighbor to ask for a ride to get one of her boys out of jail. Dad was bartending. It made for an awkward ride home. I didn’t say a word. And neither did Mom. I knew she was upset. But she seemed to be getting used to this, now that me and my two brothers had already been locked up a total of six or seven times. When Mom would get the phone call from the cops, I actually think she was relieved when she found out we were in jail, not in the hospital, or worse.

Kevin’s dad was a part-time bartender down the street. An elderly woman named Agnes started making a habit of coming in alone, and she grew friendly with Kevin’s dad. This friendship ended up being the ticket out of the neighborhood:

I knew how much Dad wanted to move. I also knew we didn’t have the money to move unless we were able to sell our house. And that didn’t look like it was going to happen anytime soon. But I wasn’t going to tell Agnes we didn’t have the money to move. And I knew Dad had way too much pride to tell her. Evidently, Agnes figured it out for herself. One night, when Dad brought Agnes’ drink back to her table, she asked Dad if he had a minute to talk. Dad said he did, and he sat down with her. Agnes told Dad that she had some money saved, and that she wanted to lend him some to help us move out of the neighborhood.

I heard about it the next night. My parents were talking in the kitchen. I was eavesdropping, which was way too easy to do in our tiny row home. When Dad told Mom what Agnes said, Mom was thrilled.

“Joe, we have to do this,” I heard her say. “These kids are in danger.”

“Then let’s do it,” Dad said.

Right on, I thought to myself, we might be moving! By now, I was definitely ready to move. As much as I loved this neighborhood, it was nothing like it used to be. The danger now far outweighed the fun. Finally, I could allow myself to think that, someday soon, we might be moving to a safer place. I tried to never think about it in the past because I didn’t want to be disappointed. But now, at last, there was a good chance it was actually going to happen.

When Mom and Dad told me and my brothers that we might be moving, I never saw a group of happier kids.

By June of 1973, Kevin only had a few more days in the neighborhod:

“Just three more days,” I keep reminding myself, “and we’re moving out!” I take a slow, long look across the public church’s grounds over to Myers playground. I’ll definitely miss Myers playground. As bad as things got over there, the good times I had in that playground far outweigh the bad.

Then I take a look at all the houses up and down Cecil Street. I used to know everybody who lived on this street. And they all knew me. Now, I don’t know half the people who live here. Most of the new families are black. The few black neighbors that I’ve met seem nice. Most of the white people who still live here are trying to move out. There are six “For Sale” signs on our street, including ours. As I look at our “For Sale” sign sticking out of our tiny garden, I remember all the fun we had in that house when we were kids. But then my mind quickly flashes back to all the danger we faced living in that house in recent years. Every time I look at our front porch, I can still see Mom getting punched in the face through the screen door. No, I won’t miss that house at all.

Then I think to myself, “How did this neighborhood ever get so dangerous?” And I really don’t know the answer. It’s easy to say that when black people started moving in, the neighborhood started getting dangerous. So should I just jump to the conclusion that all the trouble was the black people’s fault? What about the fact that both the whites and the blacks started their share of trouble? What about all the black friends I made over the years at school in MBS, playing sports at Myers playground, and at The Prep? Once again, I’m reminded of Mom’s words, “There are good whites and good blacks. And there are bad whites and bad blacks.”

Then I wonder if other factors were involved, other than race. Why did the realtors keep calling white families to try to get them to move? Was it greed, so they could sell more houses and make more money no matter what impact it had on our neighborhood? Why did so many white families move out, even before a lot of the serious trouble started? Was it to protect their investments in their homes, or was it fear of what they thought living here would be like if they stayed? And why did so many black families move into our neighborhood? Was it part of some inner-city population shift? Obviously, I’ve got a lot more questions than answers.

One answer I do have is based on something I learned in my studies this year at The Prep: the struggle for territory nearly always leads to violence. In our neighborhood the past few years, there was definitely a struggle for territory. The battles in Myers playground, in Myers gym, in Cobbs Creek Park, in MBS schoolyard, throughout the whole neighborhood really, were just as much a struggle for territory as many of the battles in the wars I studied at The Prep. In a way, even the constant shoulder-to-shoulder bumps on the sidewalks were a struggle for territory, neither side willing to give up even one inch of ground. Hopefully, the longer I go to school, the more sense I’ll be able to make out of some of the stuff that happened around here.

…

Our house remained unsold for another two years after we moved. We never did find a buyer. Mom and Dad simply sold it to the realtor for $3,000 just to get it off their hands. During those two years when our house was empty, we still kept one bed in the house. Dad wanted to keep working his second job bartending at Cahill’s for as long as possible. On the nights Dad bartended, he’d sleep in our empty house. Then, in the morning, he’d take the “13” trolley back to his full-time job at Penn Central Railroad.

Considering how long it took us to finally sell our house, Agnes’ financial help was even more crucial. We would have been stuck, living in those dangerous conditions for at least a couple more years. Who knows what would have happened? I’m sure I would have had at least a few more chapters to write.

Years later, Kevin takes his children on a car ride through his old neighborhood:

The first words out of my six-year-old son’s mouth were, “Dad, didn’t you have any paper when you were growing up?” I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about, so I asked him, “What do you mean?” He replied, “Why does everybody write on the walls? Don’t they have any paper?” I couldn’t help help but laugh at my six-year-old son’s reaction to all the graffiti spray-painted on virtually every inch of every wall everywhere we looked.

At Chester Avenue, I made a right turn toward MBS schoolyard. All the entrances leading into the schoolyard were padlocked shut. The chain-link fence surrounding the schoolyard was now topped with a layer of barbed wire. Near the schoolyard, many houses and storefronts were boarded up. Lots of cars were abandoned. And trash was piled up on empty lots where houses once stood. It was sad to see. When I left the schoolyard area, I decided to drive past Myers playground and head back home to West Chester.

As I slowly drove along the Chester Avenue side of Myers playground, I could see graffiti spray-painted on every wall. Also, the playground now had a big in-ground swimming pool, which was built shortly after we moved out of the neighborhood. Other than the graffiti and the pool, everything else in the playground looked pretty much the same as it looked back in the early seventies. Driving past Myers playground that day, I got choked up a bit as I thought about all the great times we had in that playground.

MBS School closed for good in 2002. At the time, MBS had only 150 students in the entire school. Remember, this is the same school that had nearly 3,500 kids back in the sixties. MBS Church remained open for another six years. Then, in 2008, after 117 years, MBS Church closed its doors for good. But this glorious structure still stands, the crucifixes on its palatial green domes still looking down over the entire neighborhood. The church in the basement is still in use, serving as a thrift shop. The inside of the upstairs church has been gutted. Many of the church’s magnificent artifacts and stained-glass windows have been removed and were incorporated into the renovation of a church in Holland, Pennsylvania, St. Bede the Venerable.

And that is the end of the story.

The $64,000 question here, is what could have been done differently? How could have this race war been prevented?

But as I have looked into this issue, I have come to believe that this consensus misses the reality of what is going on. In this post, I will share some passages that made me question the conventional narrative.

We’ll start with an excerpt from the acclaimed book Ghettoside by LA Times journalist Jill Leovy. The book is an excellent investigation into issues of crime and policing in the ghetto of South Central LA. Jill notes that most crime was not a direct result of the drug trade, but of “male drama”:

The fights might be spontaneous, part of some long-running feud, or the culmination of “some drama,” as Skaggs would put it. These male “dramas,” he observed, were not so different from those among quarreling women of the projects. In fact, they were often extensions of them. “Women work through men by agitating them to homicide,” observed an anthropologist studying Mayan villages in Mexico. The observation fit scores of killings in L.A. that cops chalked up to “female problems.”

The smallest ghettoside spat seemed to escalate to violence, as if absent law, people were left with no other means of bringing a dispute to a close. Debts and competition over goods and women— especially women— drove many killings. But insults, snitching, drunken antics, and the classic— unwanted party guests— also were common homicide motives. Small conflicts divided people into hostile camps and triggered lasting feuds. “Grudges!” Skaggs would exclaim: to him the word summed up scores of cases. Every grudge seemed to harbor explosive potential. It would ignite when antagonists met by chance in the streets or in liquor stores. Vengeance was a staple motive. In some circles, retaliation for murder was considered all but mandatory. It was striking how openly people discussed it, even debating the merits from the pulpit at funerals.

Professor David Kennedy, who worked on the ground with the police implementing anti-crime programs, noted in his book Don’t Shoot that most killings were not related to the drug business:

Nearly 60 percent of all killings happened in or near a street drug market. Despite the super-heated street drug scene, only about 20 percent of killings had to do with drug business; the usual beefs, vendettas, and respect killings were the order of the day.

Now 20 percent of the killings being related to drugs is not something we should belittle. But it also means that drug legalization is not going to be some magic cure to the problems of the ghetto.

And there are actually ways drug legalization could make things worse.

Jill Leovy explains that sometimes drug crimes are used as “proxy crimes” for more violent offenses. The police prosecute the proxy crimes because they cannot get witnesses to talk about the other offenses:

The drinkers saw Coughlin and ran. He chased them. One was in a wheelchair. He rolled away with short, strong bursts. Coughlin said he saw the wheelchair suspect toss a bag of marijuana. He was hoping to find an illegal gun. Coughlin didn’t care about the marijuana. For him, and many of his colleagues, drugs were just a pretext to stop, search, and arrest gang members suspected of other, unsolved violent crimes.

This was how Coughlin did his job on many a night. Coughlin couldn’t do much about all the shooters in Southeast who got away with it. But he could enforce drug laws, gang injunctions, and parole and probation terms relatively easily just by driving around and making “good obs”— good observations, cop lingo for catching, at a glance, a bulge under a shirt, a furtive motion of hands. A chase might ensue, and sometimes ended with the cops shutting down whole neighborhoods as the LAPD “airship,” or helicopter, thumped overhead. Coughlin took extra risks to get guns — this was the gold standard.

Coughlin’s methods were guaranteed to look like straight harassment to those on the receiving end. After all, how important was a bag of marijuana in a place where so many people were dying? But Coughlin’s motivation wasn’t to juke stats, boost his department “rating,” or antagonize the neighborhood’s young men. He had seen the Monster, and his conscience demanded that he do something. So he used what discretion he had to compensate for the state’s lack of vigor in response to murder and assault.

This practice of using “proxy crimes” to substitute for more difficult and expensive investigations was widespread in American law enforcement. The legal scholar William J. Stuntz singled it out as a particularly damaging trend of recent decades. In California, proxy justice had transformed enforcement of parole and probation into a kind of shadow legal system, sparing the state the trouble of expensive prosecutions. State prisons, already saddled with sick and elderly inmates, were all the more crammed as a result.

But in the squad rooms of Southeast station, cops insisted that desperate measures were called for. They would hear the name of a shooter, only to find they couldn’t “put a case” on him because no witnesses would testify. So they would write a narcotics warrant— or catch him dirty. “We can put them in jail for drugs a lot easier than on an assault. No one is going to give us information on an assault,” explained Lou Leiker, who ran the detective table in Southeast in the early aughts. To them, proxy justice represented a principled stand against violence. It was like a personalized imposition of martial law.

That’s why Coughlin went in hot pursuit of that pot dealer in a wheelchair. Coughlin caught and searched the man. He found a faded old revolver.

Coughlin understood why the man was carrying that gun. Black men who lived in Watts were in constant danger. Those who sold drugs were in more danger. And those who couldn’t run away? One could almost say it was a matter of time before serious violence visited a drug dealer in a wheelchair. In fact, a man in a wheelchair from a gunshot injury had been murdered in the Nickersons near the very spot just a few years before.

Obviously this is a horrible system. But when we talk about the problem of drug incarceration, we need to understand the problem completely. If we take away drug arrests as a tool for police, what would we have Officer Coughlin do instead? What is the plan for getting illegal guns off the street, for taking down violent gangs that have scared all the witnesses into silence?

Bloomberg journalist Megan McArdle says that she came to a similar conclusion about drug prosecutions after observing court cases:

We’re hampered by the rampant perception that all we need is to wise up and stop incarcerating people for simply possessing drugs, something many of us feel shouldn’t be a crime at all and certainly shouldn’t merit prison time. At the event I attended, someone who has actually studied the matter closely pointed out what experts know and most journalists apparently don’t: Relatively few people are in prison for simple possession or for other minor crimes. The shock in the room was palpable.

I wasn’t shocked, but not because I am somehow immune to this delusion. Rather, I had it stripped from me a few years back, when I went to Hawaii to report on its innovative probation program, Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement. HOPE has sharply reduced the number of people who “flunk” probation and end up with long prison terms. To study it, I sat in a courtroom for a week and actually watched how the process worked. I’ve written about it in my book, but here’s something I didn’t write about: how shocked I was by the composition of the docket. I’d been expecting a lot more simple possession – and a lot less robbery, assault, domestic violence and burglary.

Even the most dedicated anti-incarceration activist would call these “real” crimes, and they were numerous. Even the most dedicated advocate of drug legalization – such as, say, me – would have to admit that a large percentage, perhaps the majority, of the people who committed “real” crimes had some sort of a drug problem – not as in “smokes more weed than they really should” but as in “admitted to the judge that they had smoked crystal meth recently enough to flunk the drug test they were about to be required to take.”

City Journal looks at the overall statistics and notes that the idea of a large number people being incarcerated for simple possession is a myth:

Less than 1 percent of sentenced drug offenders in federal court in 2014 were convicted for simple drug possession, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, and most of those convictions were plea-bargained down from trafficking charges. Even on the state level, drug-possession convicts are relatively rare. In 2013, only 3.6 percent of state prisoners were serving time for drug possession, often the result of a plea bargain, compared with 12 percent of prisoners convicted for trafficking. Virtually all the possession offenders had long prior arrest and conviction records. The meth users that Tustin, California, police officer Mark Turner encountered in his undercover narcotics days were sentenced to drug classes. “Then they would skip out of the classes and always re-offend,” he says.

Obama and other incarceration critics have targeted mandatory minimum sentences for federal drug crimes. The current penalty structure is hardly sacrosanct, but mandatory sentences are an important prosecutorial tool for inducing cooperation from defendants. The federal minimums are also not lightly levied. A ten-year sentence for heroin trafficking, for example, requires possession of a kilogram of heroin, enough for 10,000 individual doses, with a typical street value of at least $70,000. Traffickers without a serious criminal history can avoid application of a mandatory sentence by cooperating with investigators. It is their choice not to do so.

When President Obama commuted the sentences for a batch of prisoners in federal prison, 25% had gun crimes on their record. Here is an example of a prisoner released:

Felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition (five counts); possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking offense; possession with intent to distribute more than 50 grams of a cocaine base (crack); possession with the intent to distribute cocaine; possession of crack cocaine; possession of marijuana.

If there are so many people in federal prison for petty drug dealing, why cannot Obama find any of them to release, instead of releasing those trafficking drugs while armed with a weapon?

I also think that we may have the problem of drug enforcement backwards – rather than the predominantly black ghettos being policed too harshly, they may be policed too lightly.

In my white suburban town growing up, if a group of young men were to set up an open air drug market on our police corner, they would be reported, shut down, and sent to juvenile court within days, probably hours. It would be unthinkable that open air dealing would be tolerated.

Yet in many ghettos, these markets are in fact tolerated, with minimal punishment, for long times. For illustration, here is a scene of a drug market in Cincinnati:

The guy in the No. 9 baseball jersey hangs out by a beat-up LTD on a steep Mount Auburn street. A tattooed man in a do-rag pulls up in a Jeep. He’s an undercover cop and he buys 20 bucks worth of crack. He drives off; uniformed officers move in…Officers tackle him a block later….

Jaquay Milhouse, 23, will go to jail this time, sentenced last week to 60 days behind bars for selling drugs to a cop. It’s the first time he’s been sentenced to jail, despite five earlier convictions for possessing small amounts of marijuana…His story is not unique.

That’s just talk to officers, who say the revolving-door punishment makes for an unwinnable game. They know the dealers and users they arrest today probably will be back tomorrow, selling the same drugs and prompting the same neighborhood complaints.

“The dopers know it, too,’’ says Sgt. Rick Lehman, a 26-year veteran who supervises the District 4 Violent Crime Squad. ”They’ll say, `I’ll be back out in a couple hours.’ "

Note that last sentence – when the arrest is made the person comes right back out onto the street. There are arrests, but no actual punishment. Thus, despite the appearance of policing, no actual law enforcement is taking place. At the very least – why not give these dealers 20 hours of community service? And even Singapore style caning would be better than jail time that takes people away from jobs and family.

David Kennedy noted in Don’t Shoot that the lack of enforcement means that the people on the street lose respect for the police:

The streets got away with almost everything they did, which meant that if they took the woofing [by the police] seriously, the natural conclusion was that the cops were letting them get away with it, which was exactly what a lot of them did think.) Our promises had to be true. It became a central tenet of the new thinking: Never write a check you can’t cash.

Later Kennedy notes that even the drug dealers are miffed that the police allow them to exist. They are so miffed that they actually think the cops are conspiring against the community for their own dark ends:

One block, over five years, logged five homicides, fifty-five robberies, and eighty-eight assaults. In 2001, the Terrace and Bedell intersection alone produced six homicides. RIP graffiti chalk the sidewalk and walls. An ABC Primetime crew filmed a dealer on Terrace taking delivery of Chinese food; he ordered, paid off the driver, and had dinner right there on the corner.

They found a Terrace and Bedell so alienated, so detached, that it no longer knew, if it ever had, what the police could and couldn’t do, in a way that fed directly back into the conviction that law enforcement was conspiring against them. “They thought we could just grab people off the corner,” Reiss said. It was a perfect storm of misunderstanding. The cops are all-powerful, they do whatever they want. The drug dealers are standing there in plain sight ordering Chinese food, so the cops could just grab them, but the cops aren’t just grabbing them. Therefore the cops want them there, therefore the cops are behind it. Hasn’t it always been thus?

What seems to happen is that these drug markets are tolerated for months or years, with minimal punishment to the dealers. They get arrested, processed, and come right back on the street. But open air dealing breeds crime. Rival gangs get in turf wars and shoot each other. Families beg the police and mayor to do something. They beg the police to get rid of the gangs. And eventually they take action.

For instance, when Corey Booker was elected mayor of Newark (a black man in a majority black city) he promised residents that he would clean up the disorder. After his election officials credited the first homicide-free month in 44 years to ‘large-scale’ drug sweeps:

When the clock struck midnight on April 1, Newark reached a milestone: its first homicide-free calendar month in 44 years. While police and city officials say that’s a solid benchmark, they say there’s more work to do.

McCarthy credited large-scale sweeps at some of the city’s most notorious drug strongholds — in one case nearly 150 arrests during a six-month operation — as well as increased police presence on city streets at night with helping keep the city without a homicide from Feb. 28 through tonight.

City officials also said community safety caravans as well as the installation of the ShotSpotters gunshot detection system and surveillance cameras in high-crime neighborhoods has helped.

“The reason this is happening is because of the takedown at (Garden) Spires, the reason why it’s happening is because of the takedown at Stephen Crane, Pennington Court,” McCarthy said, referring to several housing projects known as havens for drug dealers. “Step by step, there’s a systematic clean-up of all these traditional locations …We’re attacking and holding on to those locations.”

McCarthy said the arrest of 149 suspected drug dealers at the Garden Spires apartments during a six-month undercover operation may have helped stifle the homicide rate by preventing narcotics disputes that often turn deadly.

In other words, the drug arrests were used as a way to take down a hot spot of violence and crime.

The reason why black men are getting arrested for drug crime (as opposed to white, Wall Street cocaine dealers), is not because white America is racist against black people. It is because open-air dealing in the ghetto is associated with shootings and crime and because mothers do not want their kids walking by drug dealers. The black residents and black mayors often want the police to arrest the dealers and get them off the street.

Remember the infamous 1986 Act that imposed much harsher penalties for crack dealing? “Representatives Charles Rangel and Major Owens, two black liberal Democrats from New York not known for their reluctance to play the race card, led the fight to impose the differential…11 of the 21 black lawmakers serving in Congress in 1986 supported the new law.” (source) They wanted the penalties because crack was ravaging black neighborhoods.

In Ghettoside, Jill Leovy tells the story of one black, middle-class officer who does the unthinkable – he decides to move to the ghetto himself, live there, and raise his family there:

Not that there weren’t difficulties. When the Tennelles first moved in, an apartment building down the street was a hub for drug deals. A dealer once stood in Tennelle’s driveway and conducted a transaction as Tennelle, who had served briefly as a narcotics cop, was mowing the grass a few feet away. Perhaps the dealer had a faulty antenna for cop detection; more likely he was caught slippin’ because it had never occurred to him that a cop would live on his street. Tennelle called 911 and had him arrested.

Later, Tennelle wrote a 3.18 narcotics report on the building and offered his home as an “OP,” or observation post, and the problem swiftly abated. After that, the Tennelles enjoyed the area.

Rather than have too much enforcement of drug law in the inner city, we may have to little. Why can’t police respond everywhere the way they responded when officer Tennelle moved in? Why can’t the police crack down on open air dealing completely, rather than waiting for months until a gang war breaks out before getting serious?

The paradox is that lax law enforcement can actually create more incarceration. If you allow crime to fester, it becomes more serious, and you ultimately have to put more people in prison, for longer. By nipping things in the bud, you can ultimately have less total punishment. Unfortunately, our public discourse on this seems to be headed the wrong direction, and I fear we will continue to make the problem worse, not better.

From a crime standpoint, we have the worst drug policy. Either full legalization would be better, or much more consistent and stronger punishment of open air dealing would be better. Which one is preferable is a separate question (I have my own thoughts here).

It is also insane that a drug dealer (like Jaquay Milhouse metioned earlier) can get five convictions that convey no jail time but that prevent him from getting a job. Thus as a result of getting caught dealing drugs, he gets no punishment, he just gets a scarlet letter preventing him from doing something other than dealing drugs. This is bonkers. It would make much more sense to have a stiffer up front penalty, but then expunge the record entirely, and enable him to enter legitimate workforce.

What many people may not realize is that America is facing a shortage of college graduates. That may not seem possible, especially for any graduate who is unemployed or underemployed. But here are the numbers: By 2025, two thirds of all jobs in the US will require education beyond high school.

Gates’s opinion represents the conventional wisdom: more-and-more jobs require college, and thus, we must double-down on efforts to push all Americans through college.

It is possible that Gates is technically correct. Perhaps in 2025, on paper, two thirds of jobs will demand a college diploma.

But is this demand for a college diploma a natural requirement based on the characteristics of current jobs? Or is it an artificial demand – the result of credentialing laws or degree inflation?

I have long suspected that a college education is not an innate requirement for the vast majority of jobs. There are many famous high achievers who lacked higher education: Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, and Bill Gates himself. But of course, these could be outliers.

So I decided to do a more systematic study. I picked six professions, and for each profession selected a representative sample of a dozen or so people who were eminent during the mid-to-late 19th century.

• For architecture I picked 10 of my favorite buildings from the 19th century, and then looked up the biographies of the 17 architects.
• For civil engineering, I picked the first dozen presidents of the American Society of Civil Engineers who had a biography.
• For law, I picked every Supreme Court Justice who sat between 1830 and 1870.
• For mechanical engineering, I found a list of famous 19th century inventions and picked out fifteen inventors.
• For business executives, I found a list of the “robber barons” from wikipedia.
• For writers, I found a list of the best American novels.

In total, only 34% of all these accomplished knowledge workers graduated college. And many of these graduates finished schooling before they reached 20 years of age. Meanwhile 36% of these professionals dropped out before even obtaining a high school diploma. The least schooled were the architects, mechanical engineers and the business tycoons. The most schooled were the civil engineers.¹

Let us go through each profession, see how it breaks down, and learn about how people came to their profession before college was the universal requirement.

19th Century Architects

I looked up a dozen of my favorite buildings from the 1800s, and tracked down the 17 architects who were listed as designers. These architects represent the preeminent masters of their time. The buildings are still the pride of their cities. The formal schooling breakdown is as follows:

• Only one-third (6 of 17) had a college degree. Those with degrees generally graduated at a young age – for example, Gilman at 19, Root at 19, Renwick at 19, Bullfinch at 18.
• One-third had no formal art, engineering or architectural schooling whatsoever. They went straight from local schooling to apprenticing as drafters for an established architect.
• The other third had either a year of college, or spent time in an atelier. An atelier was a hybrid studio and place of learning.

Here is a sample showing the buildings drop-outs designed and how they came into the profession:

Thomas Ustick Walter

Born in 1804 in Philadelphia, Walter was the son of mason and bricklayer Joseph S. Walter and his wife Deborah. Walter received early training in a variety of fields including masonry, mathematics, physical science, and the fine arts. At 15, Walter entered the office of William Strickland, studying architecture and mechanical drawing, then established his own practice in 1830.

Walter was the fourth architect of the U.S. Capitol and the one who gave it its iconic dome.

Walter worked with his partner McArthur (also an architect with no formal schooling) to design the Philadelphia City Hall. It set a world-record for height and is still one of the most epic buildings in America:

Louis Sullivan

Louis Henry Sullivan was born to a Swiss-born mother and an Irish-born father, Patrick Sullivan, both of whom had immigrated to the United States in the late 1840s. Learning that he could both be graduated from high school a year early and pass up the first two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by passing a series of examinations. Entering MIT at the age of sixteen, he studied architecture there briefly. After one year of study, he moved to Philadelphia and took a job with architect Frank Furness.

Sullivan moved on to Chicago in 1873 to take part in the building boom following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. He worked for William LeBaron Jenney, the architect often credited with erecting the first steel-frame building. After less than a year with Jenney, Sullivan moved to Paris and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts for a year. He returned to Chicago and began work for the firm of Joseph S. Johnston & John Edelman as a draftsman. Johnston & Edleman were commissioned for the design of the Moody Tabernacle, with the interior decorative “fresco secco” stencils (stencil technique applied on dry plaster) designed by Sullivan. In 1879 Dankmar Adler hired Sullivan. A year later, Sullivan became a partner in the firm. This marked the beginning of Sullivan’s most productive years.

One of the most famous American architects, Sullivan thus had one year of college in total (and later one year at the Paris atelier), and was working full-time at age 17. He was partner of his firm at age 23, when a modern architectural student would just be starting graduate school.

He mastered the new technology of building steel-framed building, and designed some of the first Skyscrapers. Not only that, his buildings were renowned for their gorgeous detail and ornament:

Frank Lloyd Wright

Soon after Wright turned 14, his parents separated. Anna had been unhappy for some time with William’s inability to provide for his family and asked him to leave. As the only male left in the family, Wright assumed financial responsibility for his mother and two sisters. Wright attended Madison High School, but there is no evidence he ever graduated. He was admitted to the University of Wisconsin–Madison as a special student in 1886. There he joined Phi Delta Theta fraternity, took classes part-time for two semesters, and worked with a professor of civil engineering, Allan D. Conover. In 1887 [at age 20], Wright left the school without taking a degree and arrived in Chicago in search of employment. Within days, and after interviews with several prominent firms, he was hired as a draftsman with the architectural firm of Joseph Lyman Silsbee.

Wright is known for his prairie houses, which was an entirely new, entirely American style of architecture:

Modern architects

Compare the work of those unschooled architects, to the iconic works of highly credentialed architects of today.

Here are three buildings I have come across recently. These buildings were commissioned as expensive, prestige buildings and won awards by the professional associations.

The first building was developed by the firm of Erdy and McHenry. Erdy has a bachelors and a masters in architecture, McHenry has a bachelors and an MBA. Both principals lecture at Penn:

It looks even worse when you are street-side:

Modern architects are allergic to ornament, yet ornament is the most straight-forward way to make a building look good up close. Otherwise you just see sterile, barren concrete.

The second building is MIT’s Simmons Hall. It was one of their most expensive dorms to construct. It won the 2004 Harleston Parker Medal, administered by the Boston Society of Architects and awarded to the “most beautiful piece of architecture building, monument or structure” in the Boston area. Sometimes I wonder if I am insane or the rest of the world is insane. Then I look at a building like this getting an award for beauty, and say, nope, it is the rest of the world that is insane, I’m the sane one:

The architect was well schooled though. Steven Holl got a bachelors from the University of Wisconsin and did graduate work in London at the Architectural Association School of Architecture.

The third building is Boston’s City Hall. It also won awards when it was built. Gerhard Kallmann studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture and then was a professor at Columbia. He submitted the design along with his Columbia graduate student Michael McKinnel.

When Boston’s mayor at the time first saw the model, he reportedly gasped and said, “What the hell is that?” But of course, Mayor Collins did not go to an Ivy League school, so clearly he was not enlightened enough to understand the beauty of the design.

The true nature of architecture schooling

The horribleness of these buildings is no accident. Rather, decades ago the architecture departments were taken over by crazy Stalinist academics who actively mis-educate students. I mean “Stalinist” with no hyperbole intended. The architect who inspired the infamous and ugly concrete buildings of communist Eastern Europe – Walter Gropius – ended up running the Harvard architecture department. Author Michael Jones describes his background:

One of the most influential members of the New World clerisy when it came to modern architecture and urban planning was the German émigré and cultural Bolshevist Walter Gropius, who arrived to take up the reins of leadership at the Harvard School of Architecture at the same time that Walter Phillips was assembling the “clever few” in Philadelphia. Throughout the 1930s, Gropius would proselytize for his vision of worker housing - thirteen-story machines for living which would facilitate the new social arrangements that modern science was then making possible. This entailed the abolition of the family as well as the assumption into large communal cafeterias of much of what got done in the traditional home. Much of Gropius’s vision got implemented in Communist bloc countries after World War II. His lieutenant and successor at Bauhaus Dessau, Ernst May, actually emigrated to Moscow in 1933 to put that vision into effect there.

In July of 1933, Gropius was back in the Soviet Union, again railing against what he now called “the immoral right of private property”:

“Without the liberation of the land out of this private slavery it is impossible to create a healthy, development-capable urban renewal that is economic in terms of society in general. Only the Soviet Union has fulfilled this most important requirement without reservation, and thereby opened the way for a truly modern urban planning.”

Four years after he made this speech, Gropius was chairman of the architecture department at Harvard. From then on he refrained from using phrases like the “immoral right of private ownership.” Instead, he talked about things like “our belief in democratic government.”

(source: Slaughter of the Cities by Michael Jones, page 82)

Here are a few of the buildings and cities that Gropius’s proteges designed in Soviet Russia:

And here a few buildings Gropius designed for the Harvard campus:

If you think I am cherry-picking, just walk around any college or any old city. The buildings built after the 1940s are immediately discernible from the buildings built prior. It is hard to think of a single building built in Philadelphia in the last forty years, that would make a top twenty list of buildings built from 1870 to 1910.

My significant other attended an Ivy League architecture school, and I ended up spending up a great deal of time among her classmates. A few observations:

1) The schools are obsessed with novelty. No longer do they teach how to do beautiful styles. They do not teach pattern books, nor the time tested methods of building facades that will be tasteful and attractive for decades to come. Instead they are obsessed with the latest fad. In the 60s that was brutalism, most recently, it has been algorithmic design. Many projects looked like this:

2) The schools do not actually teach the practical and structural knowledge needed to create real, sturdy buildings. After students graduate, they have to spend hundreds of hours cramming for the exams to get licensed. Then, on the job, they learn a million practical details: designing with real world materials, complying with regulations, and dealing with everything from HVAC systems to structural loading. The entire theory of requiring an architectural degree is that you want someone prepared to build buildings that won’t fall down or poison their residents – but the schools proportionally spend a minuscule amount of time on such matters.

3) One theory is that buildings are more complicated now, and thus require more education. But this is not so. My significant other is amazed at some of the ways they built things a hundred years ago and was never taught how build using those methods. Designing with steel is different than with masonry, but does not obviously require more years of schooling.

4) A masters degree is a hard requirement for becoming a licensed architect. It used to be that work experience could be used as a substitute, but that alternative path was gradually rolled back.

A hundred years ago an ambitious, but poor young lad could find a job as a drafter and work his way up. By his mid 20s he would be designing beautiful buildings, without any debt for college or graduate school. Today, this same lad would have to pay upwards of $250k to be miseducated, and end up designing buildings far inferior in aesthetics.

So much for architecture. Let’s move on to lawyers.

Educating a Supreme Court Justice

I did an inventory of every Supreme Court Justice who served between 1835 and 1870. Among them:

• 2 of 18 went to Law School. One graduated at age 20, the other at age 22.
• 11 of 18 graduated college, of those four graduated at the age of 18.
• 7 of the 18 had no college, they were either self-taught or had an apprenticeship.

Here a few example backgrounds of the unschooled justices:

John McClean

McClean worked on his parents’ farm in Ohio until he was 16. At that age he received his first formal education in a local school, where he studied classics for two years. In 1804 [age 19] McLean was apprenticed to the clerk of the Court of Common Pleas of Hamilton County. During that time he studied law under Arthur St. Clair Jr., one of Ohio’s leading lawyers. McLean was admitted to the bar in 1807.

John Catron

Modest family circumstances deprived John Catron of a private education, and such knowledge as he managed to acquire was self-taught. He studied law briefly before undertaking military service for Tennessee and eventually serving under General Andrew Jackson during the War of of 1812. After this military career he resumed legal studies and was admitted to the practice of law in 1815…The story is told in the diary of S.H. Laughlin that Catron was passing through McMinnville, Tennessee on one occasion in 1812 and saw a copy of Blair’s Rhetoric on a counter of Buchanan & Laughlin’s store. Although without ready cash, he arranged to buy the book on credit and returned later and paid the purchase price. Those familiar with that textbook know that it was used in the colleges for advanced study of the English language. Schools were few and far between in the western country in those days, and it is no small wonder that young Catron was able to attain enviable proficiency in history, geography and literature. The Bible, being the daily reader in the early schools, was thoroughly absorbed by the student.

Noah Haynes Swayne

Swayne was born in Frederick County, Virginia in the uppermost reaches of the Shenandoah Valley, approximately 100 miles (160 km) northwest of Washington D.C. He was the youngest of nine children of Joshua Swayne and Rebecca (Smith) Swayne. After his father died in 1809, Noah was educated locally until enrolling in Jacob Mendendhall’s Academy in Waterford, Virginia, a respected Quaker school 1817-18. He began to study medicine in Alexandria, Virginia, but abandoned this pursuit after his teacher Dr. George Thornton died in 1819. Despite his family having no money to support his continued education, he read law under John Scott and Francis Brooks in Warrenton, Virginia, and was admitted to the Virginia Bar in 1823.

Schooling and Law

Once again, the requirement for a law degree was a result of legal changes. The bar associations in 49 states have eliminated the apprenticeship and self-study option for becoming a lawyer.

If Supreme Court Justices could once self-study to pass the bar, why cannot an ordinary modern lawyer do the same? The stories above make the idea of school or college being the ladder to opportunity into a cruel joke. It was far easier for someone like Noah Swayne to study via self-study and apprenticeship, when his family had no money, than it would have been for him to spend four years at college and three at law school. But now such a path is legally prohibited. It has been cut-off. Law school deans who wax philosophical about the value of college are like some bully who has stolen $10 from you, then allow you to mow their lawn to get it back.

One may say “but the law is more complicated today, people need more schooling.” This argument fails at least four different ways:

1. A traditional response to the growing scope of a field is to specialize. A divorce lawyer does not need to study corporate finance law.
2. My lawyer friends have told me that law school does not actually teach much practical law. Professors and classes are generally far removed from actual case work. Practical legal knowledge is learned on the job, and it takes years of actually doing it to become a good lawyer.
3. Rather than spend enormous time and effort educating people to keep up with an increasingly byzantine legal system, would not the proper response be to greatly simplify the law?
4. Even if more knowledge is needed today, shouldn’t a lawyer be allowed to gain that knowledge through self-study? Why is paying a gate-keeper a legal requirement?

Business Tycoons

I found on Wikipedia a list of twenty-eight 19th century tycoons. These businessmen engaged in complex financial transactions, oversaw large chains of supply and production, and pioneered new methods of sales and marketing. They virtually all had less formal education than the modern “business” graduate who accumulated 12 years of grade school and 4 to 6 years of university. Their education breakdown was as follows:

• 13 of 28 had only grade school or less for education
• 3 of 28 graduated high school, but had no college
• 9 had some “college”
• 2 graduated college
• 1 graduated college and went to law school

I put college in quotes because these were often just a few classes, taken at a young age. For instance, Rockefeller studied bookkeeping at college when he was in his mid-teens, and then started his career:

Rockefeller attended Cleveland’s Central High School, the first high school in Cleveland and the first free, public high school west of the Alleghenies. Then, he took a ten-week business course at Folsom’s Commercial College, where he studied bookkeeping. In September 1855, when Rockefeller was sixteen, he got his first job as an assistant bookkeeper working for a small produce commission firm called Hewitt & Tuttle. He worked long hours and delighted, as he later recalled, in “all the methods and systems of the office.” He was particularly adept at calculating transportation costs, which served him well later in his career.

Other example backgrounds:

At age 14, John Cleveland Oswgoodn was on his own, working in the office of a cotton mill where he gained business knowledge. He left for New York City at age 16 and clerked for a Produce Exchange Commission firm while attending night school. After three years there, he returned to southeast Iowa as cashier of the White Breast Fuel Company, then learned the banking business as cashier of the First National Bank of Burlington. At age 26, he took over the White Breast Fuel Company.

After finishing a two-year course at Philadelphia’s Central High School, Yerkes began his business career at the age of 17 as a clerk in a local grain brokerage. In 1859, aged 22, he opened his own brokerage firm and joined the Philadelphia stock exchange.

As a young boy, Edward Henry Harriman spent a summer working at the Greenwood Iron Furnace in the area owned by the Robert Parker Parrott family that would become Harriman State Park. He quit school at age 14 to take a job as an errand boy on Wall Street in New York City. His uncle Oliver Harriman had earlier established a career there. By age 22, he was a member of the New York Stock Exchange.

Cornelius Vanderbilt was born in Staten Island, New York, to Cornelius van Derbilt and Phebe Hand. He began working on his father’s ferry in New York Harbor as a boy, quitting school at the age of 11. At the age of 16 Vanderbilt decided to start his own ferry service.

Civil Engineers

I went to Wikipedia and looked up the first 15 presidents of the American Society of Civil Engineers. These men built some of the great works that laid the foundation of American greatness: the Erie Canal, the Chicago Water Works, the Washington sewer system, the Fort Pitt Foundry that produced artillery for the Civil War, the first bridge across the Missouri River.

Of these, 10 graduated college, and 5 did not. Of those who graduated, ages ranged from 19 to 22.

Ellis S. Chesbrough

His father met with business reverses, and the boy was taken from school at the age of thirteen and became chainman to an engineering party engaged in the preliminary survey of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. Later he was engaged on the Allegheny and Portage railroad, and in 1831 became associated with William Gibbs MeNeill in the construction of the Paterson and Hudson River railroad. In 1837 he was appointed senior assistant on the building of the Louisville, Cincinnati, and Charleston railroad, and in 1846 became chief engineer of the Boston water-works, planning the important structures on it, including the Brookline reservoir.

William Milnor Roberts

In 1826 [age 16], he served as an assistant in survey and construction, Lehigh Canal, between Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. From 1831 to 1834, he served as senior assistant engineer for the proposed Allegheny Portage Railroad, and general manager from 1834 to 1835. In 1837, he served as chief engineer, Lancaster and Harrisburg. He was in charge of construction of a two-level lattice-truss bridge across the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

James Francis

James Francis was born in South Leigh, near Witney, Oxfordshire in England, United Kingdom. He started his engineering career at the early age of 14 as he worked as his father’s apprentice at the Port Craw Railway and Harbor Works in South Wales. When he turned 18, he decided to emigrate to the United States, in 1833. His first job was in Stonington, Connecticut as an assistant to the railway engineer George Washington Whistler Jr., working on the New York and New Haven Railroad. A year later, James and his boss, Whistler, travelled north to Lowell, MA, where at the age of 19, he got a draftsman job with the Locks and Canal Company, and Whistler became chief engineer.

Octave Chanute

Immigrating to the United States with his father in 1838, Chanute attended private schools in New York City. His first job was as a member of a surveying crew with the Hudson River Railroad. He then worked his way up through a series of increasingly responsible engineering positions on western railroads. In addition, he served as chief engineer on a variety of important projects, notably the construction of the first bridge across the Missouri River.

It is now commonplace in histories to mock the Horatio Alger stories of some poor pauper working his way up from the mail room all the way to being a millionaire corporate tycoon. And of course, very few people ever become rich barons. But what was much more common was to start penniless as a teenager as a low-level technician or laborer, and then work oneself up into a solid career as a highly skilled professional. Once again, the idea that all professional advancement can only be come through college, the idea that either you go to college or are stuck at some menial position, is an artificial construction of today’s world.

Mechanical Engineers and Inventors

I made a list of fifteen of the most important and impressive inventions before World War I: the cotton gin, the revolver, the sewing machine, the gas engine, the steam turbine, the airplane, the mechanical reaper, the radio, etc. Of the 18 inventors involved, 11 of 18 had a grade school education or less, 1 had a high school diploma, 6 others graduated college.

Robert William Thomson

Thomson patented the pneumatic rubber tire:

Born in Stonehaven in the north east of Scotland, Robert was the eleventh of twelve children of a local woollen mill owner. His family wished him to study for the ministry but Robert refused, one reason being his inability to master Latin. He left school at the age of 14 and went to live with an uncle in Charleston, United States, where he was apprenticed to a merchant. Two years later he returned home and taught himself chemistry, electricity and astronomy with the help of a local weaver who had a knowledge of mathematics.

Samuel Colt

Samuel Colt invented the famous 6-shooter revolver:

At age 11, Colt was indentured to a farmer in Glastonbury, where he did chores and attended school. Here he was introduced to the Compendium of Knowledge, a scientific encyclopedia that he preferred to read rather than his Bible studies. Its articles on Robert Fulton and gunpowder motivated Colt throughout his life. He discovered that other inventors in the Compendium had accomplished things that were once deemed impossible, and he wanted to do the same. Later, after hearing soldiers talk about the success of the double-barreled rifle and the impossibility of a gun that could shoot five or six times without reloading, Colt decided that he would create the “impossible gun”.

George Stephenson

Stephenson, born of poor and illiterate parents, rose up the ranks via talent, and ended up building one of the first steam locomotives:

George Stephenson was born on 9 June 1781 in Wylam, Northumberland, 9 miles (15 km) west of Newcastle upon Tyne. He was the second child of Robert and Mabel Stephenson, neither of whom could read or write. Robert was the fireman for Wylam Colliery pumping engine, earning a very low wage, so there was no money for schooling. At 17, Stephenson became an engineman at Water Row Pit in Newburn. George realised the value of education and paid to study at night school to learn reading, writing and arithmetic – he was illiterate until the age of 18. In 1801 he began work at Black Callerton Colliery as a ‘brakesman’, controlling the winding gear at the pit. In 1802 he married Frances Henderson and moved to Willington Quay, east of Newcastle. There he worked as a brakesman while they lived in one room of a cottage. George made shoes and mended clocks to supplement his income….In 1811 the pumping engine at High Pit, Killingworth was not working properly and Stephenson offered to fix it. He did so with such success that he was promoted to enginewright for the collieries at Killingworth, responsible for maintaining and repairing all the colliery engines. He became an expert in steam-driven machinery. Stephenson designed his first locomotive in 1814, a travelling engine designed for hauling coal on the Killingworth wagonway. The locomotive could haul 30 tons of coal up a hill at 4 mph (6.4 km/h), and was the first successful flanged-wheel adhesion locomotive: its traction depended on contact between its flanged wheels and the rail.

Eli Whitney

Eli invented the cotton gin. His family could not afford Yale, so he worked as a teacher and farm laborer to save up enough and then went to school a bit later in life:

Whitney’s mother, Elizabeth Fay, died in 1777, when he was 11. At age 14 he operated a profitable nail manufacturing operation in his father’s workshop during the Revolutionary War.

Because his stepmother opposed his wish to attend college, Whitney worked as a farm laborer and school teacher to save money. He prepared for Yale at Leicester Academy (now Becker College) and under the tutelage of Rev. Elizur Goodrich of Durham, Connecticut, he entered the class of 1789 and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1792. Whitney expected to study law but, finding himself short of funds, accepted an offer to go to South Carolina as a private tutor.

19th Century Writers

Starting with Edgar Allen Poe and going until 1900, I gathered twenty authors of famous novels from this list. Among these authors:

• 6 had only had grade school or less
• 3 were educated via private tutors or had a professor for a father
• 3 graduated high school
• 5 had some college, but did not finish
• 3 graduated college

Here are a few bios of those who had little schooling:

Mark Twain

Mark Twain is perhaps the most renown American writer of the 19th century. He never made it past the fifth grade:

In 1847, when Twain was 11, his father, by then an attorney and judge, died of pneumonia. The next year Twain left school after the fifth grade to become a printer’s apprentice. In 1851, he began working as a typesetter and contributor of articles and humorous sketches for the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper Orion owned. When he was 18, he left Hannibal and worked as a printer in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. He joined the newly formed International Typographical Union, the printers union, and educated himself in public libraries in the evenings, finding wider information than at a conventional school.

George Lippard

George Lippard is most famous for The Quaker City, the Monks of Monk Hall, which was the best selling novel in America before Uncle Tom’s cabin:

Young Lippard grew up in Philadelphia, in Germantown (presently part of the city of Philadelphia), and Rhinebeck, New York (where he attended the Classical Academy). After considering a career in the Methodist religious ministry and rejecting it because of a “contradiction between theory and practice” of Christianity, he began the study of law, which he also abandoned, as it was incompatible with his beliefs about human justice. Following the death of his father in 1837 [at age 15], Lippard spent some time living like a homeless bohemian, working odd jobs and living in abandoned buildings and studios. Life on Philadelphia’s streets gave him firsthand knowledge of the effects the Panic of 1837 had on the urban poor. Distressed by the misery he witnessed, “Lippard decided to become a writer for the masses”

Harold Frederic

Frederic is most famous for The Damnation of Theron Ware in 1896, which was a best-seller. Biographers wrote of the novel, “If this were the only novel Frederic had written, it would still be enough to place him alongside writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Henry James, William Dean Howells, and Stephen Crane in the nineteenth-century American canon.” Here was his career path:

Frederic was born in Utica, New York, to Presbyterian parents. After his father was killed in a railroad accident when Frederic was 18 months old, the boy was raised primarily by his mother. He finished school at age fifteen, and soon began work as a photographer. For four years he was a photographic touch-up artist in his hometown and in Boston. In 1875 he began work as a proofreader for the newspaper The Utica Herald and then The Utica Daily Observer. Frederic later became a reporter. Frederic married Grace Green Williams in 1877, and they had five children together. By 1882 he was editor of the newspaper The Albany Evening Journal in the state capital.

Now that we have given an overview of how it used to be, let me ask and answer some key questions.

If a college degree is not required for these professions, why are so many people paying $250,000 for college and law school?

In the 1800s, there was no degree requirement to become a lawyer in most states. Some states required an apprenticeship. In other states a person could simply self-study and pass the bar exam. In the early 1900s more and more state bar associations began to require degrees. At first, people got around this by taking correspondence courses (MOOC’s are nothing new). But the accreditation requirements were changed to require expensive, in-person schools.

A similar story exists in other fields. A wide variety of high-paying professions now require a degree either by law or internal policy: All these professions now have a hard requirement: lawyer, doctor, nurse, teacher, commissioned military officer, parole officer, many civil servant positions, education administrator, lab assistant. If you are 18 years old and uncertain of your future, it makes sense to get a degree so that you have the option of pursuing one of these high-paying professions.

A second reason for the rise of college is that anti-discrimination laws made alternative mechanisms of screening candidates perilous. The Griggs v. Power case made it basically illegal to use IQ tests for hiring. If companies use more subjective screens in interviews, and the results do not have the proper racial balance, the company exposes itself to a disparate impact lawsuit. Thus, the path of least resistance for HR departments is to make a blanket college degree requirement, since this is always seen as an acceptable screening mechanism by the courts. Instead of submitting IQ test results directly, students take an IQ test to get into college (the SAT), and the company screens based on degree. Colleges have the legally privileged position of being IQ test launderers.

The third reason for the increase in college is that more and more the best jobs are politically connected bureaucratic and regulatory jobs (or jobs with companies that must comply with regulations). Employers need to know that you have assimilated the latest zeitgeist. McKinsey, JP Morgan, et al, want employees who they can trust to say “Asian-American” instead of “Orientals”, who they can trust not to make wisecracks when discussing transgendered bathrooms, and who otherwise are on top of the latest fashions in speech and thinking.

The fourth reason is that college for many people has become four years of government subsidized fun and partying. There is a long list of subsidies, tax breaks, and special legal privileges that colleges possess. College has historically been a luxury good. We are richer as a nation now, so more people want this good, especially if it is subsidized.

The fifth reason is that once all the intellectual taste-makers have degrees, then their output will reinforce the idea that a college degree is high status and marks you as a better person. The educational-industrial complex supports this same message by teaching everyone how essential school is. Thus with everyone from our 8th grade teacher to the latest sitcom father promoting college, the importance of college gets embedded deep into our psyche.

These factors have all combined to create a feedback loop: most smart, diligent people find it wise to go to college, and therefore, most employers will not even bother searching elsewhere for new hires. It is simply easier to hire college graduates than to try to find a hidden gem among people who skipped college. This creates more incentive for strivers to go to college in order to get access to jobs and network with other strivers. People who do not go to college are seen as losers and weirdos. With a higher percentage of strivers in college, the feedback loop grows stronger as companies have yet more incentive to rely on college degree as the initial screen.

Objections and Responses

When I have argued this topic, I get a few common objections:

I found my college to be very valuable. I was exposed to a wide array of thinkers, learned many valuable skills. Much of what I learned is very valuable in my profession.

I am not arguing that college is always useless. I am arguing that it is not intrinsically required. And for most people it is not the most cost-efficient way to gain needed career skills. In most professions, the most efficient path would be to read library books or do a paid apprenticeship while studying on the side. Even when having a teacher is better than self-study, very little of college tuition goes toward instruction.

Are you saying Doctors should not need any medical school? Are we go to back to the 19th century practice of the barber doing surgery? How do you feel about leeches and blood letting? Are you crazy?

No, barbers should not do surgery. There are some professions where formal schooling is necessary, because book learning is insufficient. There are practical aspects that are too risky to learn on the job. Aspiring doctors certainly need to attend medical school in order to do labs and dissect cadavers.

Before we had extensive education, children were forced to work in factories and suffered a generally horrible quality of life.

Children had to work in factories when their families were in dire poverty. We have much less dire poverty now, thanks to improvements in technology. But to the extent that we have such poverty, fixing poverty directly is the way to go. Forcing people to pay for a credential in order to work is actively harmful.

Consider the 19th century examples of the poor working their way up – such as Mark Twain working in a printing office. If the laws at the time had prevented Twain from working, and instead forced them to go to school and take on debt to get a credential, then he would have been much worse off.

Sure, college was less necessary then. But there is more need for college with modern high tech jobs.

One of the hottest professions in recent years has been computer programming. No area of the economy has done better than Silicon Valley, which has been driven by software engineers.

Now computer programming is my trade, and generally other people consider me quite good at it. Some of the products I have worked on achieved great commercial success. And while I had an expensive and prestigious education, I took all of two programming classes. All of my programming knowledge comes first from being self taught and second from mentorship in the workplace. The education given from older co-workers to younger ones is often far more relevant than that given by an out-of-touch professor.

I do think that putting in the time to learn programming is important. And college can be useful in forcing you to work through the basics, such as learning dozens of algorithms, writing your own operating system, writing a compiler, etc. But none of that work should necessarily cost $30k a year. None of it requires college. If a job demands the skill, and the job is well paying, the high wages will create an incentive to self-train to get the job. If you are smart enough to be a professional programmer, you are smart enough to self-teach yourself to a level where you can get an entry level job.

One programmer writes a fine blog post echoing my own observations:

Let’s look at the problem from the other end of the pipeline. Let’s take successful professional software developers and ask them how they learnt to code. One would expect from the headlines above that they had all been to expensive, exclusive coding schools. But here again that seems not to be the case. Here are the results of the 2015 Stack Overflow developers survey. Note that this was a global survey, but I think the results are relevant to the UK too:

Only a third have a computer science or related degree and nearly 42%, the largest group, are self taught. I have done my own small and highly unscientific research on this matter. I run a monthly meet-up for .NET developers here in Brighton, and a quick run around the table produced an even more pronounced majority for the self-taught. For fun, I also did a quick Twitter poll:

76% say they are self taught. Also interesting were the comments around the poll. This was typical:

Even programmers with CS degrees insist that they are largely self taught. Others complained that it was a hard question to answer since the rate of change in the industry means that you never stop learning. So even if you did at some point have formal training, you can’t rely on that for a successful career. Any formal course will be just a small element of the continual learning that defines the career of a programmer.

We are left with a very strange and unexpected situation. Formal education for programmers seems not to work very well and yet the majority of those who are successful programmers are mostly self taught. On the one hand we seem to have people who don’t need any guided education to give them a successful career; they are perfectly capable of learning their trade from the vast sea of online resources available to anyone who wants to use it. On the other hand we have people who seem unable to learn to code even with years of formal training.

Even for people who attended prestigious colleges, much of the actual knowledge transfer into the brain comes via self-directed practice. The money spent on the college does little to improve this knowledge transfer.

In my college computer science course, the actual education came from a foreign teacher with a heavy accent who had zero teaching ability. The value of the diploma was not the education, it was from the filtering. Only really smart students could self-teach themselves the material and get through the course. And what help was provided, was done by teaching assistants who themselves were just slightly older students. Thus the actual education being provided by my college was being done by students who themselves were net payers of tuition. What a racket.

This is a common pattern. Caltech is one of the premier high-tech education places. But again, Caltech is not spending money to transfer knowledge. It is simply giving smart students a place to self-teach themselves, while filtering out those who cannot hack it, and so that the value of the degree is maximized. One alum of Caltech writes:

When I attended Caltech, the university was notorious for “correspondence courses” in which big name faculty would deliver awful, boring, generally uninformative lectures and students would not attend but instead send tape recorders in their place. Yes this did happen.

There is a serious point in this. Many of the big name researchers at Caltech were terrible teachers for undergraduates. They skipped over key steps and concepts that they took for granted but which it was their job to teach in introductory courses. They failed to assign or perform adequate practice and drilling for basic concepts and methods that they were supposed to teach in undergraduate courses. They assigned quite advanced problems as homework and exam problems in introductory courses, problems involving subtleties of physics and other fields that students would not encounter or grasp until advanced undergraduate or graduate level courses. They used advanced problems as teaching examples in lectures in introductory courses as well. Many were simply boring — clearly not a weakness of Richard Feynman. Looking back, the terrible teaching was a major contributing factor to the high dropout rate at Caltech.

Students needed to recognize not only that the teaching was terrible, but also what was wrong and to perform a large amount of unassigned work to compensate for the gaps in the teaching for which their parents or in some cases the students were paying a lot of money.

There is a myth that top-ranked schools offer a “great education.” Rather, top-ranked schools provide an intense filtering process whereby only the top students get the sheep-skin.

Ok, but programming is unique because it doesn’t require any special equipment. Mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, etc, all require equipment not available at home.

True, but often the most cost effective approach is apprenticeship. A young adult might spend a year or two of self study to learn the math, science, and other book knowledge behind the profession. Then on the job they learn to use the equipment. This is more efficient, because you do not have to replicate the entire equipment setup in a non-commercial setting; and the equipment you use on the job will be the most relevant and up to date.

A better path forward

Let’s talk policy fixes.

Here is an easy fix: legally recognized professional associations should not be the sole determiners of the entry requirements for their profession. Existing professionals have an incentive to always make it longer and more expensive to enter the profession, because restricting entrants props up their own salaries. Thus we see bar associations and the American Institute of Architects continually tack on more years of expensive schooling to the licensing requirements.

Even better fix: revoke all laws that make college a legal requirement for entering aa profession. Entry requirements can only be based off passing exams and completing a paid apprenticeship. It is reasonable to have licensing requirements for lawyers and architects. But there is no reason to make listening to a professor a requirement. As long as you prove you have the knowledge, it need not matter if you got that knowledge from a book or from a lecture.

Since government has created this spiral of degree inflation, it may take government action to unwind it. So we may need an even harder fix: Create an alternative credentialing system whereby people can get a degree without paying for school. Students would simply have to pass tests to prove they had done the readings, solved the problem sets, and/or written worthy papers. Companies would not be allowed to prefer college diplomas to these alternative credentials.

Today, we condemn our youth to four years of soul draining high school, then four to seven more years of expensive schooling, all in order to gain the credentials necessary for a career. We can imagine a world where a motivated yet disadvantaged student could be working as an office assistant in his teens, studying the books on the side, and passing the alternative bachelors degree exam. He takes up an apprenticeship at 18, studies for the bar, and by 21 be a full-fledged lawyer, with zero college debt, and zero grad school debt.

We had that world once before, we could have it again.

Further Reading

Here are some good articles by other authors, who have noticed the same problem of degree inflation:

• College has been oversold
• Career Opportunities
• The Magic of Education
• BAAAA! Tremble Before the Mighty Sheepskin Effect
• Educational Signaling: A Fad Whose Time Has Come
• The Master’s as the New Bachelor’s

Episode 13, The Keys to the Kingdom, covers school desegregation in Boston. I have long studied education policy and recently did a deep-dive on the history of busing in Boston. And I found that in the forgotten, back pages of the history books, the story is very different than what is portrayed in Eyes on the Prize. The PBS account is heavily slanted, it omits critical context, and ultimately leaves us with the wrong lessons.

Don’t believe me? Think I’m being too harsh? Read on.

The main sources for this blog post are books by respectable, liberal academics and journalists: The Pulitzer Prize winning Common Ground, written by Anthony Lukas who was a Harvard graduate and journalist for the New York Times; The Death of a Jewish Community, by Boston University professor Hillel Levine and Boston Globe journalist Lawrence Harmon; and Boston Against Busing by University of Kentucky professor Ron Formisano.

What we will see is that in the process of starting from the deep pages of the history books and producing a punchy summary documentary, the facts get selected in a way so that a complex story with folly and blame to go around, becomes a one-sided story of cartoon villains.

Quick Background of Desegregation in Boston

In the 1960s and early 1970s Boston did not have legally enforced segregation whereby all blacks must go to blacks school. But schools were are aligned by neighborhood, and neighborhoods tended to be one race or the other, and so de facto the schools are generally mostly white or mostly black. There were numerous battles in the mid-60s and early 70s between the Boston school committee, the state school board, local citizens, and activists about whether this “de facto” segregation was really a problem and about how district lines should be drawn. Finally in 1974 a federal judge ruled that the Boston’s school committees methods of drawing boundaries constituted intentional racial segregation, and therefore was illegal. He ordered black students from Roxbury to bussed into the white ethnic Irish high schools in Charlestown and Southie, and vice versa. These students were treated to a very hostile welcome. Conflict ensued for many years, before resistance fizzled out, and busing continued on for many decades.

A Quick Summary of Eyes on the Prize: Keys to the Kingdom

The narrative in Eyes on the Prize is a straight up morality play. Black parents wish for a better education for their kids and argue for more racial blance. They protest and rally, but the school board callously denies any problems. They agitate for years and even operate their own volunteer busing operations. Finally, they win a great judgment in the court and the schools are to be integrated via busing. Alas, when the black students arrive at the white school in South Boston, the students face horrible racism and attacks by white protesters. Mobs shout the n-word, pelt rocks at the bus windows, and even throw bananas. This violence begets more violence and the school day is filled with fighting all around.

Footage is shown of a newscaster interviewing a cute African-American child. She looks forlorn, and says, “When we go up there [to the white school] we’re going to be stoned. It’s not fair to me. Why is it the other way when they come here? When they come here, we don’t mess with them.” The film then changes to more optimistic music. We are told that in 1977 the biggest opponent of integration was voted off the school committee, and the first black committee member elected. The final word comes from a black politician who tells us, “I felt what took place absolutely had to happen. It may have not had to happen that way – if there had been a different leadership provided by white Bostonians of all classes, and all neighborhoods.”

So where is the slant in this story?

Slant #1: The assumption that integration is a magic cure

The first problem with the documentary is that it never questions the underlying assumption – that going to a mostly black school is inherently oppressive, and that integration is the crucial fix. But this assumption that integration is a key to better schools is supported by neither common sense nor evidence.

Despite what Eyes on the Prize implies, the school board was not ignorant of the problems existing in black schools, nor did they oppose all reform. But the board noticed that Irish went to schools that were almost entirely Irish, Italians went to schools that were Italian, Asians to schools that were mostly Asian, so why was it inherently a problem for blacks to go to schools that were mostly black? Boston did not have a Jim Crow system – if a black child lived in a white area, he could go to the local mostly white school. There were many racially mixed schools. But what was wrong with schools aligning with neighborhoods? What about having white kids in the same school would magically make black kids able to understand how to calculate the slope of a line? The school committee was willing to take steps to address grievances about the quality of schools, but it did not see any reason to make forced integration part of the fix.

To the extent that we have data, it seems to align with the view that integration does not matter for academic performance. Even as early as 1965, the famous Coleman Report showed that there was little correlation between classroom integration and test scores – any correlation was below the level of statistical noise.¹ The Coleman report showed that the strongest correlation with academic achievement came from characteristics of the students’ parents. Even facilities and teacher characteristics had little correlation with anything.

More recently, NAEP scores show the same black-white achievement gap in schools regardless of racial composition. The NAEP scores show no differences or little difference in test scores for black students depending on racial composition.²

Prior to the court ordered busing of 1974, there was already a small program in Boston that bused select students into the suburbs (the METCO program). David Armor, a Harvard sociologist and liberal integrationist, wrote an article summarizing the research on six integration efforts and focused specifically on the METCO program in Boston. In 1972 Armor wrote:

None of the studies were able to demonstrate conclusively that integration has had an effect on academic achievement as measured by standardized tests." … In the case of [the METCO] high school students, the bused group scores somewhat higher than the control groups initially (but not significantly so). Nonetheless, the gain in scores presents no particular pattern. While the bused junior high students increased their grade-equivalent score from 7.5 to 7.7, the control group improved from 7.4 to 7.5; the bused gain is not significantly different from that for the control group. For senior high students the effect is reversed; the control students gain more than the bused students (9 percentile points compared to 4 points), but again the gains are not statistically significant for either group.

The results for reading achievement are substantially repeated in a test of arithmetic skills; the bused students showed no significant gains in arithmetic skills compared to the control group, and there were no particular patterns in evidence.

…

While none of these studies are flawless, their consistency is striking. Moreover, their results are not so different from the results of the massive cross-sectional studies. An extensive reanalysis of the Coleman data showed that even without controlling for social class factors, “naturally” integrated (i.e., non-bused) black sixth-grade groups were still one and one-half standard deviations behind white groups in the same schools, compared to a national gap of two standard deviations (Armor, 1972). This means that, assuming the Coleman data to be correct, the best that integration could do would be to move the average black group from the 2nd percentile to the 7th percentile (on the white scale, where the average white group is at the 50th percentile). But the social class differences of integrated black students in the Coleman study could easily explain a good deal of even this small gain. Other investigators, after examining a number of studies, have come to similar conclusions. (St. John, 1970)

Armor also reported that the METCO program did not improve long-term college achievement. More METCO students did start college (84 percent to 56 percent, in a small sample size). But the drop out rate was higher. Altogether, by sophomore year, the average METCO student was no more likely to be enrolled in full-time college than a student in the control group.

Armor was even more surprised to find that the METCO program made race relations worse:

One of the central sociological hypotheses in the integration policy model is that integration should reduce racial stereotypes, increase tolerance, and generally improve race relations. Needless to say, we were quite surprised when our data failed to verify this axiom. Our surprise was increased substantially when we discovered that, in fact, the converse appears to be true. The data suggest that, under the circumstances obtaining in these studies, integration heightens racial identity and consciousness, enhances ideologies that promote racial segregation, and reduces opportunities for actual contact between the races.

And keep in mind, that race relations worsened even though this was a voluntary program. According to surveys, students and families at the white suburban schools were initially very favorable toward the program. This was not a busing program that was forced upon them.

Overall, David Armor concludes:

The available evidence on busing, then, seems to lead to two clear policy conclusions. One is that massive mandatory busing for purposes of improving student achievement and interracial harmony is not effective and should not be adopted at this time. The other is that voluntary integration programs such as METCO, ABC, or Project Concern should be continued and positively encouraged by substantial federal and state grants. Such voluntary programs should be encouraged so that those parents and communities who believe in the symbolic and potential (but so far unconfirmed) long-run benefits of induced integration will have ample opportunity to send their children to integrated schools. Equally important, these voluntary programs will permit social scientists and others to improve and broaden our understanding of the longer-run and other consequences of induced school integration. With a more complete knowledge than we now possess of this complicated matter, we shall hopefully be in a better position to design effective public education policies that are known in advance to work to the benefit of all Americans, both black and white.

Thus, by 1972, the idea that integration was the fix for education had already been contradicted by the available evidence. If there was anything to the idea of integration, it would require more study to determine the circumstances where it might be a helpful policy.³

In a sane world, if you have a radical social policy idea, you try a small experiment first, and only enlarge it once you prove the experiment works.

In Boston, the experiment was tried and it did not work. Yet, two years later, a federal Judge would force the policy upon a half-million people.

The PBS documentary never tells us about the dismal results of METCO. It never tells us that integration-as-cure was not backed by evidence.

Slant #2: Exaggerating the difference between black schools and white schools; Exaggerating the school committee’s neglect of the problems

One of the traditional arguments for integration is that when a politically less powerful minority is relegated to same-race schools, they will inevitably receive worse facilities, textbooks, and teachers.

Yet even in 1965, that was not some iron rule. For example, while nationwide, the average pupils-per-classroom was 23 for whites and 26 for blacks, this varied by region. In some regions blacks actually had fewer classmates per classroom. Overall, the difference between races was smaller than differences from school district to school district, or region to region.⁴

The documentary tells us that the black schools in Boston were horribly neglected. Despite the protests of parents, the school committee denied any problems. Black children went to school with out-of-date textbooks and endured broken windows that let in cold drafts. Schools were overcrowded. In one testimonial, multiple classes were taught out of the same auditorium at the same time, as the teachers from either class shouted over each other in order to be heard.

The history here is murky and contradictory. We do not have good statistics, and we have conflicting accounts.

Activist Jonathan Kozol wrote about the problems he saw while substitute teaching, in his book Death at an Early Age:

The room in which I taught my Fourth Grade was not a room at all, but the corner of an auditorium. They had desks and a teacher, but they did not really have a class. What they had was about one quarter of the auditorium. Three or four blackboards, two of them broken, made them seem a little bit set apart. Over at the other end of the auditorium there was another Fourth Grade class. Not much was happening at the other side at that minute so that for the moment the noise did not seem so bad. But it became a real nightmare of conflicting noises a little later on. Generally it was not until ten o’clock that the bad crossfire started. By ten-thirty it would have attained such a crescendo that the children in the back rows of my section often couldn’t hear my questions and I could not hear their answers.

..

One day something happened to dramatize to me, even more powerfully than anything yet, just what a desperate situation we were really in. What happened was that a window whose frame had rotted was blown right out of its sashes by a strong gust of wind and began to fall into the auditorium, just above my children’s heads…After the window blew in on us that time, the janitor finally came up and hammered it shut with nails so that it would not fall in again but also so that it could not open. It was a month before anything was done about the large gap left by a missing pane. Children shivered a few feet away from it.

…

Statistics that I saw later pinpointed the discrepancies between amounts of money al- located to the white and Negro disticts. In-class expenditures for Boston as a whole averaged $275 per pupil. In the Nego schools: $213. It was apparent from this report that Negro areas also had the highest percentage of provisional teachers, those who were fill-ins, had no tenure, no seniority, no experience, and no obli- gation to remain (p. 52)

Kozol’s book runs 200 pages and condemns the schools for many other short-comings. But most of his complaints are not related to segregation. And in fact it seems that his school was 1/3 white, and had been a lot more white just a few years before. The problems mostly stem from either 1) the general problems of bureaucratized government schools (similar to the critiques of John Taylor Gatto) 2) problems not knowing how to deal with hard case students or 3) problems that would be worse with integrated schools (such as white teachers favoring white students over black students).

While Kozol’s account seems bad, it should be noted that some of these same problems of overcrowding and broken-down facilities also occurred at all-white schools. And these were the schools that blacks got bused to as part of the integration plan! Here is a description of Charlestown High School:

By 1968, the granite fortress on the hill was sixty years old, one of the oldest school buildings in the city. Designed for 450 students, it now held 600 (with 150 more in the Electrical Annex and the Charlestown Boys’ Club). With no cafeteria, no library, no athletic fields, its facilities were clearly inadequate for a modern urban high school. In 1964, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges had warned that unless these deficiencies were promptly corrected the school would lose its accreditation….

…

Paint peeled from ceilings and walls; windows were broken; linoleum was scraped and worn. When she asked to see the cafeteria, she was told that Charlestown had none, the only high school in the city without a hot-lunch program.

…

In 1974, after Judge Garrity ordered Charlestown High transformed from a three-year to a four-year institution, it was more grotesquely overcrowded than ever. Its enrollment— spread over three buildings— had ballooned to 1,150, with 800 of them in the obsolete main building alone. But fire laws permitted only 636 students in the building at one time, so they were shuttled in and out all day, an elaborate game of musical chairs which made serious education all but impossible. Teachers and students feared things could only get worse the following fall when the judge’s desegregation order embraced Charlestown. (Common Ground, p. 285, p. 281, p. 287)

Going beyond anecdotes and looking at statistics, again, we have conflicting accounts. Reform groups cited funding disparities:

As more voices began to call for change, CBPS prepared a study to describe the true state of Boston schools, but BPS refused to provide data. However, alarming statistics were found through the CBPS survey and other studies by the NAACP….Of the 13 schools in predominantly black neighborhoods, only one school had been built since 1933, two more built after 1913, ten built before 1913, two of which were almost 100 years old. Four had been recommended for renovation or condemnation. Compared to white districts in the BPS system, these schools had a 2–20% lag in instructional expenses and 11–27% lags in health services.

But funding is a tricky question and it is hard to evaluate without reviewing the calculations. For instance, the Washington DC school district had similar disparities. But the funding disparity was found to be an artifact of teacher pay being based purely on seniority – the white districts had older teachers. Thus the spending gap was not indicative of black districts being deprived of any real resources (there being no evidence that older teachers are better or worse than younger teachers).

Another report from the state government, looked at classroom vacancy rates (a measure of overcrowding) and the educational background of assigned teachers. It found no difference between black schools and white schools.

School committee member Joseph Lee, claimed that the existing situation actually benefited blacks, because the committee could funnel them special support:

Fifth, the Negro elementary school pupil, recently come from the South, if shifted to a mainly white school away from his home, would have to forfeit the special education now established (for his needs) in most of his neighborhood schools at the request of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Such instruction is designed to bridge the gap between such Negro children’s cultural background and the northern society into which they are going. These courses impose a 25.7% greater cost for a Negro child’s education on Boston than a white child’s. (The Negro child would lose this, if shifted to a mainly white school. Such courses in a school predominantly white do not exist, and would be useless, retardatory, and irrelevant, if they did.)

Lee also claimed that black parents did not wish to leave their neighborhood to go to white schools. Like all ethnic groups, they preferred to go to schools where they were the majority:

Time and again, when we tried to bus Afro-American children to white schools and sent them questionnaires for parental permission, the answers cam back 9 to 1 against busing. And this even though the questionnaires were loaded to invite a “yes” answer, in order to alleviate heavy overcrowding in their local schools….When the Boston School Committee has gone further than this willing 10 percent of Afro-American pupils and has compelled the busing to white schools of an entire black population in a school, it has had to face a storm of tearful telegrams from black parents, and heart-tearing hearings in protest.

So what can we conclude from this?

I am not sure if we’ll ever know what the real story was. Were Kozol’s claims of a 20-30% differential in resources accurate? Or was Lee correct that black students actually got more help, with the compensatory education? Were activists right when they said that access to the Open Enrollment plan was blocked in practice? Or was Lee correct that black parents did not wish to go to white schools, even when the black schools were overcrowded?

There is also some context to consider: most blacks were very new to the city (the population had grown from 30,000 to 100,000 in a couple decades), paid less in taxes, received more in welfare, and had more children. School spending in Boston was a net transfer from the white population to the black population. So even if there was a gap, this was hardly a case of white people oppressing black people.

Also consider that according to the biggest number cited, the spending gap was 30%. For comparison, the school spending gap between modern Utah and Washington D.C. is around 173%. Are the students of modern Utah oppressed compared to the students of Washington D.C.? In general, school spending has never been shown to matter for academic achievement.

I think a fair documentary should have given equal time to the school committee’s case. It should have acknowledged there were efforts such as the compensatory program, that white schools had problems too, and there were new schools being built to relieve overcrowding. Instead, the documentary only presents one side.

There was one particular episode that put the lie to the notion that racially unbalanced neighborhood schools were inherently worse. In the case of Lee and Marshall schools, the black community received beautiful, brand new schools – but integrationists at the state board wanted the lines redrawn so that the black students would go to further away, white schools.

But the committee’s key concessions involved the redistricting of four elementary schools in Dorchester. Two of them, the Joseph Lee and John Marshall schools, were spanking new schools built with 25 percent state aid on the promise that they would open balanced, and thus had been built in mixed neighborhoods. But the racial composition of the area had changed to virtually all black during construction, and the gleaming new Lee School would open imbalanced unless district lines were redrawn.

At first the school committee gave white parents at the nearby Fifield and O’Hearn schools the option of having their children attend the Lee, but under intense pressure from the state board, a shaky three to two majority of the committee agreed to redraw district lines. In May, at a committee meeting to discuss traffic and safety, parents packed the meeting and expressed fears that busing would be required and spoke out against it.

In July Deputy Superintendent Herbert Hambleton warned that any redrawing of district lines would fail because white and black parents “have told the school committee in unmistakable language on numerous occasions that they want to send their children to the local school.”

The white parents protested:

That same night nearly two hundred white parents met in Dorchester and vowed not to send their kids out of the Fifield and O’Hearn schools into the Lee School. Their state legislator, Paul Murphy, Democratic whip in the House, offered to be their legal adviser, while Mrs. Hicks lashed the crowd into a frenzy by exclaiming that “our children are the innocent victims” and that parents should not send them to the “far-distant Lee school where we know the hazards that are presented to them … . Should we be forced to send our children into an area where we know what harm can come to them?— I say no, a thousand times no.” And the audience agreed with stomping, thunderous, visceral applause. (Boston Against Busing, p. 50)

And the black parents were equally irate:

But many black parents had also defied the reassignments because they were bitterly opposed to sending their children to the Fifield and O’Hearn, where they were not welcome. Besides, the Lee contained a modern gym, a pool, a theater, carpeted classrooms, and a curriculum described as “one of the finest in any elementary school.”

The black protesters lived across from the school in the run-down Franklin Field housing project, so close to the Lee that, as one black mother said, “Your mouth waters when you look at it.” Thus many black parents showed up at the Lee and gave false addresses. One black group demonstrated and threatened to “hold a class” in the lobby of the Lee until their demands were met, and some black parents joined Father Burke and white parents meeting at St. Matthews the night of September 9 to plan strategy. (Boston Against Busting p. 51)

At a meeting attended by hundreds of angry parents, the school committee caved to pressure, reversed ways, and redrew the school catchments to align with racial boundaries.

Slant #3: Omitting any discussion of violence instigated by black students

The impression we get from Eyes on the Prize, and the story we learn growing up, is that opposition to integration was based on bigotry, a phobia of the “other”, and an irrational desire to make divisions based on surface differences, such as the color of one’s skins.

In Eyes on the Prize, we witness numerous interviews with earnest black mothers and students who express a heartfelt desire for a better education. How could the whites in Boston be so hateful so as to deny that?

The documentary also implies that the failure of integration was due solely to bigotry of whites. The adorable little girl mourns that it is unfair that whites throw rocks, while black residents treat the whites well when they come into their neighborhood. The final quote of the segment blames the problems on “white leadership of all classes.”

But what the episode does not mention is that school and residential integration had already started before the 1974 court rulings. Integration happened due a combination of an open enrollment policy, voluntary busing, and the transitioning of neighborhoods as blacks moved into white neighborhoods using government subsidized loans. One of the primary places impacted by integration was the Lewenberg school in Dorchester. At the Lewenberg school there was little white bigotry, there were no mobs trying to prevent blacks from coming to school. Yet it still ended in disaster.

Here is a description of the school from Death of a Jewish Community:

The one notable exception to de facto segregation was the Lewenberg, touted not only for its academics but as a rare example of successful integration at work in Boston during the mid-1960s. Black parents in Roxbury knew their children might be greeted with taunts, fists, or worse in schools in South Boston, East Boston, and Charlestown, but in Mattapan they would be free to learn. Jews would not throw rocks at their children.

…

For decades “the Lewenberg” had been considered the premier district junior high school in the city. For decades the student body was composed primarily of Jewish youngsters who had not passed the competitive test for admittance to the seventh grade at the public Latin schools. The Latin school curriculum was so demanding, however, that almost 30 percent of seventh and eighth graders flunked out, resulting in another competitive exam for ninth graders. Lewenberg parents pushed their fourteen-year-old sons and daughters relentlessly in the hope that they would fill those seats ignominiously abandoned by youngsters sent back to the less demanding district high schools.

Since 1965 blacks had been bused to the Lewenberg under the city’s open enrollment policy, an early attempt to address issues of racial segregation in the Boston public school system. By 1967 the nine hundred-member student body was equally composed of blacks and whites. White parents perceived a rapid decline in academic standards. Relations between students were strained. Jewish parents suddenly saw their children growing more adept at wisecracking than at conjugating verbs.

…

During the late 1960s, young children whose homes abutted the Solomon Lewenberg Junior High School at the top of Wellington Hill collected tattered textbooks and smashed school supplies in the same manner that other kids collected charms or baseball cards. Pickings were always good on the coal tar schoolyard. Ripped-out textbook pages with pictures or details of colorful maps had trade value superior to broken rulers, pencil stubs, or other pieces of educational dross. The honor code among the little memento seekers dictated that any intact textbooks would be handed over to parents for return to one of the teachers monitoring student arrival on the next morning. Everything else was fair game. After school the little ones were always careful to wait until the middle school students were well out of range before picking over the battlefield.

As the school and neighborhood declined more Jewish families either moved out of the neighborhood or transferred their own children to schools in Hyde Park:

When teacher Allan Cohen returned from summer vacation for the start of the 1968-1969 school year, he was shocked both at the school’s new racial composition and the behavioral changes in the students he had known the year before. From the first day of school it was clear that the teachers had lost control. Veteran teachers stood in silent shock as young blacks raced through the corridors trying out the black power slogans they had learned over the summer. The overall student body had shrunk to 754 students, of whom 32 percent were white. It had seemed, over the summer, that the great Lewenberg promise of integration had shattered. Drugged students fell off their chairs and were carried to the nurse’s office. White students huddled together for protection against roving extortion rings; fifty cents was the going price to avoid a beating. The largely inexperienced faculty and its principal, Luke Petrocelli, were at a loss. Of fifty-eight teachers, thirty-nine, including Cohen, had not taught long enough to receive tenure from the Boston School Department; nine faculty members were in their first year of teaching. Throughout that winter an average of nine teachers called in sick each day. Without teachers, students often sat all day in the auditorium and watched movies. In one fifteen-day period alone, school administrators counted 718 tardy students; average absenteeism was 178 students each day, roughly one out of four. Like the panic selling in the center sections of Mattapan, these disruptions defied explanation.

Teacher Allan Cohen kept a diary of his experiences. Here is one entry:

Today is May 15, 1969, the end of a grueling day. Right before recess, at 10:25, a girl I didn’t know entered my class and “called out” one of my students, Melissa, for a fight. The girl jumped on Melissa. What seemed like a hundred other students gathered around. I separated the girls. A girl named Beverly kicked and punched me… Next period I substituted for an absent teacher in a low math class and heard the sounds of fighting next door. I got there just in time to take a bottle away from a boy who was about to swing it at Miss Sullivan… I went in to monitor lunch period. Miss Flynn was leaving with an injured hand… Students were standing on lunch tables, breaking plates, and fighting… The mechanical drawing teacher injured his hand trying to protect himself from a student… Today I broke up five fights. I asked the principal, Mr. Petrocelli, to call the police in. He told me to get back to my room.

…

On a Friday afternoon in late May, Cohen was lecturing an eighth grade civics class on the individual’s responsibilities in a civilized community when he heard shouts and cursing in the next classroom. Entering the corridor, he came upon a ninth grader with a vise-like grasp on the doorknob of a classroom. A woman teacher, who had clearly lost control of the class within, frantically pushed on the door in an effort to escape. Cohen demanded that the student release the door as the sobbing Latin teacher rushed from the classroom. “Report now to the principal’s office,” Cohen demanded. “Fuck you,” the student retorted. “Down to the office now or I’ll see you suspended,” said Cohen, holding his ground. “I’ll get your ass, Cohen,” the student threatened before sauntering off. The following day, Cohen confronted the student. “I’m pressing charges against you for assault,” Cohen told the student.

“Fuck you,” the student retorted.

“Down to the office now or I’ll see you suspended,” said Cohen, holding his ground.

“I’ll get your ass, Cohen,” the student threatened before sauntering off.

One wonders – did the student face any consequence for cursing at and threatening a teacher?

The book continues:

Throughout 1969 a school day rarely passed without violence or mayhem. City editors hungry to fill gaping holes in the newspaper knew that they could always pick up a story at the Lewenberg. On average, a reporter’s two-hour-long meandering in the Lewenberg revealed three fist-fights, a cafeteria food fight, a superficial injury to a teacher, and a host of exasperated quotes from shell-shocked administrators. None, however, ever reported that most rumored Lewenberg event: the sight of students hanging upside down from windows twenty feet above the schoolyard.

Among the visitors to the school that year was Rabbi Gerald Zelermyer, a young Mattapan rabbi who decided that he must see for himself if the Lewenberg horror stories told by his congregants were indeed true. Zelermyer had little trouble getting access to the school through his friend Allan Cohen. Zelermyer identified himself to one of the three police officers assigned to the junior high school. As he entered the building, he immediately heard sharp bursts of what he mistakenly thought was gunfire. “Only firecrackers,” said the impassive beat cop. Sensing the rabbi’s nervousness, the officer gave Zelermyer the guided tour. First was an overturned and shattered piano in the school auditorium, a fallen monument to music appreciation class. Close by the principal’s office a veteran teacher was calling a cab; only moments earlier he had entered his classroom to find his desk overturned and his chair smashed. Zelermyer then heard a woman unleash a storm of profanity that stung his ears. (The police officer explained that the woman was the mother of a female student who had been suspended two weeks earlier for assaulting an art teacher. The girl, who had interpreted criticism of her work as racist, had splattered her teacher with paint, torn her dress, and broken her glasses. On the day of Zelermyer’s visit the girl’s mother, accompanied by a lawyer, had come to demand an end to her daughter’s suspension.) At noontime Zelermyer stopped at the cafeteria. He had barely passed the first table of students when pandemonium ensued; groups of students hurled plates of food and sandwiches at each other.

The mayhem was not confined to school grounds. At the end of the school day, the Lewenberg open-enrollment students burst down Wellington Hill toward Blue Hill Avenue. Nothing, it seemed, was safe along their path — tricycles were smashed and carefully planted rows of flowers were tramped upon; those unlucky enough to get caught in their path were fortunate to escape with just a shower of verbal abuse. Along the Avenue, vendors scurried to remove their goods from sidewalk stalls and dropped their iron grates before the Lewenberg wave broke over them. Those who moved too slow could expect to spend the next few hours salvaging fruit from overturned carts or trying to match left shoes with right.

The mayhem in the schools and in the streets were a major reason why Jews fled Dorchester. I wrote more about this in another blog post, but in a matter of a few years the Jewish population went from 40,000 to non-existent. The result of integration was a school and community destroyed.

Now imagine you live in Irish Charlestown or South Boston. You’ve seen the news reports of madness in these schools. You’ve seen this community destroyed. You notice that black students never transferred to Charlestown because the Irish are a tougher lot, and would not let another tribe take over their turf.

Then in 1974 a federal judge announces a plan to force integration among all Boston schools. Kids in black Roxbury will be bused to Charlestown and South Boston. Kids in Charlestown will be bused to Roxbury.

Naturally, the whites in Charlestown and South Boston hate this plan. They might think, we’re not just going to roll-over like the Jews in Dorchester, we’re going to stand our ground and fight. The whites then behave very badly. The low elements among the population take out their anger on the kids being bused in, even though most had never done anything wrong. The whites in Southie throw rocks, yelling slurs, starting fights. Surely some of the motivation was the pure savage thrill of aggression. But part of their hope was that if they made life difficult for the incoming black students, they would give up, stick to their own schools, and the whole plan would be tossed out.

The disaster of the Lewenberg school and what happened to the Jews in Dorchester is absolutely critical to understanding the violent reaction to forced busing. But this context is left out of the PBS narrative. The film spends an entire 10 seconds on violence by blacks against whites and describes any violence against whites only happening after whites first started being violent towards blacks. The film makes it seem that the whites woke up one day and just decided to be hateful for no reason. That narrative is simply false.

Furthermore, the Lewenberg school episode gives lie to the central take away of the PBS narrative. The take away is that if only white people had not resisted so violently, that integration could have been successful. But in this Jewish school, in that Jewish neighborhood, there was no violent resistance to integration. And the result? The total destruction of the Jewish community.

The Lewenberg School is not the only example of failed integration prior to the 1974 crisis. Six years before the forced busing, there were already stories of whites fleeing an integrated school due to a series of riots of the black students:

Black teachers at the severely overcrowded Gibson School took a group of students out of the school with them and started their own “liberation school.” The school committee immediately suspended the teachers, and as the controversy simmered, a black student at English High was suspended for wearing a dashiki. Black students there went on a rampage, which quickly spread to other schools. Teachers in Roxbury were assaulted, firemen trying to put out a brush fire behind Brighton High School were stoned, and disturbances, looting, and clashes between police and black youths lasted for days. A September 25 rally of five hundred students at Franklin Park led by adult militants demanded the right to wear African dress, recognition of black student unions, and a curriculum dealing with black history and culture.

The incidents raised the temperature of race relations in Boston several years before Garrity’s court order and also contributed to the white flight developing during these years from other causes. The Jeremiah Burke High School, for example, up to 1966 was an integrated all-girls school, 20–25 percent black, about 5–8 percent Chinese, and the rest white, with a substantial representation of students of Jewish, Irish, and Italian background. In April 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr.’ s assassination sparked a riot and in the aftermath, said a veteran teacher, “many, many of the white kids left the school.” Then in October the English High dress code incidents provoked “a major confrontation outside the school … . Then all of the white students left except for the seniors who graduated the following June in ’69.” After that, the Burke was virtually all black.

Whites also opposed integration because it meant that their children would have to travel through dangerous neighborhoods in order to attend school. Professor Formisano tells us:

However exaggerated the perception, many whites, not only South Bostonians, saw black Roxbury as crime infested, and some who had lived on its borders or fled from districts engulfed by the ghetto had been mugged or terrorized by poor black youths. One parent told lone Malloy that his boy was scheduled to be bused to Roxbury the following year: “I worked nine years in Roxbury as a street cleaner, and I’ll never let him go there.”

Police, firefighters, cab drivers, and public service workers, of which there were so many in Southie, often had seen the worst side of ghetto culture.

Were these fears justified or irrational? Well, in more recent years, I personally was walking through one of these same neighborhoods. A police officer stopped me and told me I should take the next bus out because it was “the murder capital of Boston” and “I didn’t look like I fit in.” So if a police officer tells me to get the hell out of the hood, I can imagine the same dangers existing forty years ago, and can imagine why a mother would not send her kid walking through such neighborhoods. Every shred of evidence, from both statistics, memoirs, and ethnography, tells us that the black ghettos in Roxbury and Dorchester were and are quite dangerous places.

Professor Formisano continues and explains that a few high profile murders had fueled fears of crime, escalated racial tensions, and made rumors and imaginations run wild:

In 1973 white perceptions of black crime had intensified considerably in Boston because of two particularly brutal murders committed by black teenagers. In October, twenty-four-year-old Rene Wagler, living in Roxbury in a women’s integrated collective, had run out of gas a few blocks from her apartment. Returning along Blue Hill Avenue shortly after 9 P.M. with a two-gallon can of gas, six young blacks set on her, dragged her into a vacant lot, doused her with the gasoline, and set her ablaze. Four hours later, with virtually no skin surface left, she died at Boston City Hospital. Two days earlier, ABC-TV had shown the film “Fuzz,” which included scenes of white delinquents on the Boston waterfront torching homeless tramps for kicks.

Two days later, Louis Barba, a sixty-five-year-old retired contractor and lifelong Boston resident, was fishing at the Pleasure Bay Pond behind the Columbia Point housing project. A large gang of black youths began to stone him, then stabbed him to death with his own fishing knife. Shortly after, a twenty-year-old white cab driver, working to raise college tuition, was found stabbed to death in a vacant lot in Roxbury. These murders shocked white Bostonians just as the decade-long desegregation controversy approached a climax. To make matters worse, black leaders expressed no regrets but rather anger at the disparity they saw in the attention given by the police and media to white and black deaths.

The Wagler-Barba murders formed part of the background of the Southie “Declaration” on black crime. Three black teenagers were arrested in the Barba case, none in the Wagler. At a meeting in Southie in December 1974, as parents voiced a long litany of concerns, one asked: “What about the white woman who was burned to death in Roxbury? The murderers haven’t been caught yet. How do we know they aren’t right here with our kids?”

In Charlestown white youths reacted immediately to the Wagler murder by attacking the few blacks who lived there. Black aggression against whites in Charlestown was as rare as white aggression in Roxbury— it did not happen. Yet Alice McGoff’s daughter Lisa revealed to Lukas the nightmarish fears that haunted her in anticipation of black students’ arrival in Charlestown. Rumors ran about that blacks would come riding into town shooting anyone they saw. “A few kids went down to the bridges to serve as lookouts, and for nearly a week many project families … slept with baseball bats by their beds.” No carloads of blacks showed up, but Lisa and most of her friends believed that “when the buses came, the black kids would step off armed to the teeth and ready to rumble. She believed that most black boys were out to molest and rape white girls, that black girls would attack white girls in the ladies’ room, and that blacks of both sexes carried knives, razors, scissors, stickpins, and other weapons.” (Boston Against Busing, p. 186)

When busing went into full effect, many parents wrote to Judge Garrity telling of the assaults that the white students received when attending black schools:

Many parents, and a few students, also wrote to Judge Garrity telling him of assaults or harassment: the fifteen-year-old junior on her own attending classes at Roslindale and South Boston who found it difficult to pay attention because of constant tension, who did not regard herself as prejudiced, and who found it trying “when I’m told (in exact words) ‘I’m gonna’ kick your ass, bitch,’ when I’m just minding my own business” and racially motivated harassment kept on; the Roslindale father who described the Philbrick School as racially imbalanced with more blacks than whites, with blacks given preferred treatment (“ let’s keep peace”) while white children were unsafe going to restrooms and in the school yard, with blacks not allowing whites to participate in games, white children ganged up on, in his view the “school totally taken over by blacks”; the Hyde Park antibusers and parents who lamented the racial attack on seven “of the outstanding 10th graders” at Rogers Hyde Park Annex who had now left the school; the West Roxbury mother of a fourteen-year-old boy beaten by two blacks wanting a quarter, the day after he missed school because the bus did not show up, “no explanation, therefore no school”; the Hyde Park mother whose daughter’s bus was stoned by blacks and who now suffered from nightmares and other emotional upsets; the West Roxbury parent whose five children had already attended the Shaw School, now majority black, whose sixth, an eleven-year-old, had known many anxious mornings and had now been assaulted twice; the Dorchester father whose boy was attending Dorchester High, which instead of being 52 percent white was 65 percent black, and which would soon be 70 to 80 percent black, where a black “in jest” pulled a knife on his son and was told to put it away by a black aide, where his son and two others had their pockets emptied by blacks during a fire drill; and the Boston father whose daughter came home needing three stitches in the back of her head.

Several parents repeated the theme that “it’s common knowledge that the lavatories in some of these schools are manned by young toughs who demand money from kids that have to use them.” “I don’t care what color my kid is sitting next to,” wrote one Roslindale mother, “as long as he gets the education … . I’m willing to work at living together in peace and harmony but I don’t want my kids hurt in the process.”

White parents often complained too of the “foul language” to which desegregation exposed their children. One Hyde Park mother wrote to Judge Garrity sarcastically thanking him for her daughter’s quick maturing: “If it were not for busing she would not learn such phrases and words (to mention a few) as FUCK YOU, YOUR MOTHER SUCKS, YOU HAVE A BLACK CUNT/ DICK.” The mother had tried to keep her daughter relatively innocent, “But I guess nine years is quite old enough.” (Boston Against Busing p. 207)

…

Perhaps the most eloquent testimony to the feeling of powerlessness was a letter to Judge Garrity from a distraught parent who never used the word. The man simply told in meticulous detail, in capital letters, of an assault on his son by three black youths in a lavatory at Madison Park High School resulting in the fifteen-year-old white youth running home with an injured left eye. The father told of his visits to hospital, school, police station, federal building downtown, and elsewhere, of lack of redress, and of his request for a transfer. Denied, he would keep the boy home. The father said he represented no group and had written on his own. His letter constituted a hymn of rage, resulting from an inability to do anything, or even to get anyone to listen. (Boston Against Busing, p. 192)

Other Bostonians wrote in about the dangers of the black ghetto, explaining why they did not want their kids sent to those neighborhoods:

I was borned [sic] in Roxbury on Blue Hill Avenue 40 years ago. A person would either happen to be insane or want to commit suicide to travel in that area today. I moved to Mission Hill… when I started High School. To me, that was God’s little acre until the projects, two (2) behind the church and one (1) in Jamaica Plain, became non-white. When I was living there, there was no such thing as locked doors or being afraid to walk the streets at night … . Now the priests are warning the old people not to come to daily mass because of rampant crime … i.e., muggings, stabbings, etc. My parents still live in fear with double and triple locks on their doors. (Boston Against Busing, p. 184)

…

Two years earlier, this letter writer told Judge Garrity, his brother had been knifed by two blacks who tried to rob him while in his car stopped at a traffic light. The brother died a year later. “What the real problem is [sic] a tremendous clash in cultures, economics, etc.” Not all white Bostonians victimized by black crime, or feeling vulnerable to it, were able to muster that degree of dispassionate analysis. (Boston Against Busing, p. 184)

…

Fear of black crime ran through many of the letters written to Judge Garrity during 1974– 77, particularly in those sent by many elderly persons. They told of being mugged, beaten, hospitalized, or of witnessing beatings, and also of the sad process of neighborhood change. “They (the colored people) made a hell-hole of Mission Hill so let them stay there.” They wrote of the even sadder mutation of acquiring hatred and prejudice: “I liked them at first but when I saw their savagery I had no use for them.”

For fairness, we should point out that not all the integrated schools suffered from these problems:

In January 1975, white parents connected with the Massachusetts Experimental School, whose children commuted to Roxbury from several neighborhoods, issued a statement declaring that their children had been attending schools in Roxbury for five years and more, and that the whites had been safe and “welcomed in the community and in its schools.” The Experimental School parents said they were distressed by all the talk about the dangers of sending white children into black areas: “These stories are frightening and we know they are not true.”

If you were a parent would you want your kids bused into neighborhoods and schools that were full of the stories above? Or would you do anything to avoid it? What would you do? If we want to understand the history of what happened, we must understand the real cause and effect and the real human motivations.

Slant #4: Never telling us that desegregation failed in its own terms

Because of the disorder and violence in the schools, white families of means fled the district and moved to the suburbs. Thus the result was the schools were even more racially imbalanced than ever. The Boston Globe recently reported:

Today, Boston’s schools are even more segregated than they were before busing began: 86 percent of its students are nonwhite and, as of the 2014-15 school year, 78 percent are low income.

Even if you believe that integration is good, at best, this story should be a cautionary tale about the limits of hubristic, unelected judges who want to make children to plans of grandiose social engineering plans. Parents simply aren’t willing to take big risks with their kids. Even if they agree that integration is good in theory, if they have to choose between enduring disorder to make integration work, and fleeing to more orderly school districts, most will choose to flee. Their kids only have one childhood. Good parents are not going to risk their children’s childhood for some abstract, theoretical, societal benefit. Any sane leader should recognize this. But Judge Garrity did not.

Slant #5: A cartoonish view of the nature of “Racism”

One argument for integration is that it will produce more racial harmony. People argue: Yes, integration will be hard at first, but living and learning together is an essential part of our national healing process, part of overcoming the bigotry of the past. Only when we live, work, and go to school together can we see each other as human beings and all get along. The thesis is that stereotyping and bigotry is caused from a lack of understanding. By bringing people together, we can form friendships and common bonds.

This entire line of thinking is mostly nonsense. As a prescription, it is a recipe for racial discord, not harmony.

People – and most viciously men – fight over resources, turf, status, and women. In a fight, the larger more organized group trounces a disorganized group. Thus, people form into tribes for both protection and predation.

Peace occurs when tribes exist in a stable equilibrium. Peace exists when boundaries are clear, ownership of turf is clear, and when violating boundaries will result in swift and sure tit-for-tat, thus making conflict unprofitable.

War exists when there is conflict over turf and resources. Vitriol and tribal hatred exist as part of the war-making process. It is not hatred that causes war, it is disputed boundaries that cause conflict, and conflict causes hatred.

When the white, Irish Southie tribe thought of their school, they thought of it as more than just a place to learn reading and writing. It was a cornerstone of their tribal community:

As woeful as many Boston schools may have been by middle-class standards, the fact is that their localist, working-class clientele cherished them, especially the neighborhood high schools. These old, often dilapidated but beloved buildings served less as educational institutions providing upward mobility and more as community socializing agents. For the working-class kids of Southie, Charlestown, or East Boston, high school days were often the best times of their lives, after which many moved on to unexciting, dreary jobs or became mothers and fathers soon after bringing their youth to a close well before middle-class youths who attended college. One Southie young woman told me that while growing up she was “just dying to go to Southie High,” and “thought it would be the greatest thing in the world to go to the senior prom.” The sports teams of these schools commanded deep affection and passionate loyalty. Young men grew into middle age wearing their high school letter sweaters or team jackets.

Now imagine growing up and looking forward to playing on the same football team as your elders in front a cheering hometown crowd. And then that dream is taken away from you by some unelected judge. At his order, another tribe invades, takes your spot on the football team and dates the girl you were wooing. You are not going to like that very much. You might want to join with your tribal brothers and brawl with this opposing tribe in the lunch room. And of course the other tribe is going to fight back.

And thus we have the myth and reality of racism and segregation.

The myth, that we learn in school, is that “racism” is some malady of the heart, caused by ignorance of the other, and that it can be overcome by mixing and integrating people together, and showing people that we really have more in common on the inside.

The reality, is that tribes coexist peacefully when they have clear boundaries and don’t interfere with each other’s lives. The competition for resources comes first, the demonization of the other comes second, as part of mobilizing to fight a war.

Think of World War II. In the early 1930s, the average American never gave the Japanese a second thought. Then in the 1940s they were evil Japs, the target of the most noxious propaganda. In one news report, FDR received a letter-opener made out of the arm of a Japanese soldier and said, “this is the sort of gift I like to get, there’ll be plenty more such gifts.” Now, many decades since the war, Americans have overall a positive opinion of Japan and the two nations are friendly. The competition over turf and resources in the South Pacific, and the ensuing war, created the racism, not vice versa.

We think of South Boston High as being full of dark-hearted racists. We see the videos of students throwing rocks and bananas at buses. But before forced busing, that kind of racism was not evident:

South Bostonians often pointed to the fact that blacks before busing had come often into Southie without incident. Adrienne Weston, an independent, tough woman originally from the West Indies, was one of two black teachers at Southie High in 1973. As Phase 1 began, she feared for her life, but during 1973-74 she said “it was good to teach here. The students did their work and no one called me ‘nigger.’” Of the mobs outside the school, she commented, “Those people out there are crazy, because they don’t like this being shoved down their throats.” (Boston Against Busing, p.118)

In Boston generally, before the forced busing, there was a voluntary program for integration that up to 600 black students participated in. A survey of parents reported:“their children have more white friends, that there is not a lot of prejudice or discrimination encountered at the new schools. With respect to this last distribution, only seven (or 10%) of the respondents felt that their children encountered a lot of prejudice, fifteen percent thought their children encountered some, while 70 percent thought their children encountered litttle or no prejudice or discrimination.”

Thus the entire liberal cure for racism, at least in Boston, was actually the cause of the most virulent racism. By forcing these groups together, and putting people in conflict over girls, basketball courts, spots on varsity, etc, the busing created friction and animosity.

The Power of the Media to Frame an Issue

One of the amazing things about journalism, is just how easy it is to tell two completely different and opposing stories using the same facts. The framing of an issue is the whole ball game.

Consider – what if I told you a story whereby:

1) An unelected magistrate orders the children of a community to be removed from their own neighborhood, and sent to detention centers where “it’s common knowledge that the lavatories in some of these buildings are manned by young toughs who demand money from kids that have to use them.” And where students of the minority race are ”huddled together for protection against roving extortion rings; fifty cents was the going price to avoid a beating."

2) The community, on paper a democracy, is overwhelmingly against this plan. But the unelected magistrate cruelly overrules the elected officials.

3) Agents of state of the state brutally enforce the edict. They bash the skulls of resisters:

The next night, the Tactical Police Force returned en masse and, after removing their badges, went in to even the score. In a matter of minutes they reduced the cigarette machine and jukebox to twisted rubble, demolished several shelves of bottles and glasses, and sent twelve customers to the hospital with assorted head injuries.

Police with vicious dogs accost the mothers who agitate against the plan:

One night, as she was coming home from the Powder Keg office, the Tactical Police Force charged up Bunker Hill Street, enforcing a 10: 00 p.m. curfew. Alice ran for home, but two officers of the canine squad cornered her and several other women in a project courtyard. She didn’t know which were more frightening, the German shepherds baring their fangs or the leather-jacketed cops growling obscenities. Even after the women ducked into a friend’s apartment, the police kept their dogs at the door, potent reminders of their determination to control the streets.

The police even go so far as to beat children who are singing God Bless America during a peaceful school sit-in.

When students again occupied the front stairs on November 21, the headmaster lost his patience. Turning to Captain MacDonald, he said, “We’ve lost control of this situation, Bill. I think it’s time for the police.” MacDonald addressed the students, warning them to go to class, leave the building, or face arrest. The demonstrators’ only response was a chorus of “God Bless America.” What happened next surprised even the headmaster. The front door burst open and in charged a platoon of the Tactical Patrol Force in their leather jackets, boots, and Plexiglas visors. Wading into the students, they heaved them down the staircase. Girls screamed. Boys who resisted got a billy club on the arm or shoulder. Sitting halfway up the stairs, Lisa McGoff was spared the initial charge, but soon cringing with fear, she permitted herself to be herded out the front door. The students huddled in small groups on the sidewalk, still dazed from the TPF assault and shaking with indignation. What right did the police have to violate their sanctuary? It was their school, wasn’t it? Didn’t they have a right to sit on their own steps?

This sounds horrible. What an evil magistrate! What vile people to steal money from kids using the bathroom!

The scenario I described above seems like it would make perfect material for an episode of Eyes on the Prize, about some of the abuses black people faced at the hands of evil conservative white people. It is not. It is the exact reverse. It is the story of conservative white people being abused by liberal whites and lower-class blacks. And my story above all comes entirely from excerpts from the history books about what happened to white families in Boston.

With a selective telling of the facts, what I have done is created an equal and opposite version of the PBS documentary. We are in a parallel universe, where the good guys are pure good, are the bad guys are pure bad, but is the exact opposite good guys and bad guys of the original documentary! And I created this opposite narrative entirely by using the sources of liberal journalists and academics.

The point of this exercise is that the media has incredible power to make either side look good or evil.

How Bad History Happens

Hopefully, by now I have convinced you that Eyes on the Prize is bad history. Let us now try to trace how such bad history becomes the official history.

The process starts with the “prestige media.” What is “prestige media”? Well, the pithy answer is that it is any media that has been assimilated into the Georgetown-Harvard axis. In Boston, in the 1970s, that meant the Boston Globe.

Any profitable and popular media enterprise becomes a target for ambitious, socially conscious young adults. Thus fresh Ivy League students seek to join such enterprises. Simultaneously, the owners of such enterprises, having achieved financial success, seek to fulfill the basic human need for status and acclaim. Thus, the leaders of such media outlets have a natural instinct to both mingle with the Harvard/Georgetown intelligentsia, and seek their acclaim.

In the 1970s, the Boston Globe was the most popular and influential paper. Even Southie residents who hated its politics had to buy it because they could not live without its sports section:

Yet the Globe’s sports page kept the paper popular in the antibusing neighborhoods, and the antibusers found themselves prisoners of the Globe’s hold on Boston’s consciousness. As one astute observer of the Boston scene put it, “The antibusers’ focus on the Globe was entirely rational. If it [an event] wasn’t mentioned in the Globe, it didn’t happen.” (Boston Against Busing, p. 156)

And it became even more popular when the FCC brought the hammer down on in its competitor, the Boston Globe:

The Globe had opened an impressive lead in circulation when in March 1972 came the decisive stroke it had sought for so long: completing fifteen years of litigation, the FCC found the Herald guilty of improper lobbying, revoked its license for Channel 5, and awarded it to a competitor. Stripped of its principal revenue producer, the Herald stumbled on for three more months, then sold out to Hearst, which merged the empty shell with its own daily to create the Boston Herald American. This left the Globe virtually unchallenged as New England’s dominant newspaper. (p. 494)

The editor of Boston Globe liked to hob-knob with the liberal elite at Harvard and he recruited Ivy League students heavily:

The capital of that world was across the river in Cambridge, whose dinner parties and salons Tom [Winship, editor of the Boston Globe] now frequented, forging friendships with John Kenneth Galbraith, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and others. Cambridge was the Massachusetts equivalent of Georgetown, where, ever since his days on the Post, Tom had hobnobbed with journalists like Ben Bradlee and Mary McGrory. All through the Kennedy and Johnson years, liberal intellectuals, politicians, and newsmen shuttled along the Cambridge-Georgetown axis and, increasingly, it was to those red brick enclaves that Tom Winship looked for his closest friends, his social values, his political commitments. Whatever he collected on that circuit was scrupulously recorded on a reminder pad, then scattered through the newsroom in a blizzard of story suggestions.

Tom was determined to inject some of this youthful iconoclasm into his own staff. For decades the Globe had been like a pudding, with a thin crust of Yankee editors, a thick custard of veteran Irish subeditors and reporters, and here and there a few raisins— an Italian, an Armenian, a Jew or two. Many of the reporters were sons of printers and mailers, for the Globe was a benevolent institution: the Taylors never fired anyone, and although they had fended off the Newspaper Guild, they always paid above Guild scale, with usually “a little something extra” at Christmas.

Seeking a different breed, he recruited young reporters at the Harvard Crimson and Yale Daily News. Soon the newsroom was filling up with earnest young men and women, bristling with mid-sixties visions.

..

The Sunday magazine produced an issue on the fiftieth anniversary of the Soviet Revolution (with contributions from Communist writers),

…

But boldest of all was the Globe’s decision to give its first political endorsement in seventy-two years. The occasion: the daunting prospect of Louise Day Hicks as mayor of Boston. Davis Taylor and many of his Yankee editors were New England “abolitionists,” quick to support the Southern civil rights movement. Although slow to act on the same principles in Boston, the Globe soon threw its full weight behind the struggle for school desegregation, fair housing, and equal employment practices. But its reaction to Mrs. Hicks’s 1967 candidacy grew from something more than a passion for racial justice. In part it was a matter of class. The huge marshmallow of a woman in her tentlike dresses was patently from a different social order— the frumpy world of the Irish middle class that the Globe had only recently left behind. Her election would make Boston look like a goofy city. Ben Bradlee would say, “Hey, who’s that idiot mayor you’ve got up there.” The Globe, at last on its way to national recognition, would be just another bush newspaper in a bush town. (Common Ground, p. 492-494)

It is also noteworthy that the people running the Globe were not of the same tribe as the ethnics in South Boston and Charlestown. Nor were they impacted by the busing:

Moderates and militants alike saw Globe editors and reporters as advocating a social policy with which they did not want to live, since most of them lived in the suburbs. Those who lived in the city, if they had school-age children, did not send them to public schools. Indeed, of the paper’s top twenty editors, all but two did reside outside of Boston, as did most reporters. Antibusers loved Billy Bulger’s crack that to telephone the Globe’s “urban team” after 5 P.M. you had to dial “1” first. (Boston Against Busing, p. 156)

The young liberals at the Globe had grown up watching the Civil Rights movement on TV. They had been conditioned to see black people as the good guys and a certain type of white person as the racist villain. They believed that progressive university graduates had a social mission to help eradicate this racism.

And thus, the Globe consistently supported integration, and underplayed the real concerns whites would have:

For more than a decade its coverage of Boston’s racial turmoil had been skewed toward the black community. When a black child was confined in a school cloakroom with tape over her mouth, the Globe kept the story alive for more than a week, using it to dramatize the plight of minority pupils in a white system. But when young Negroes disrupted a School Committee meeting, black leaders objected to the front-page coverage and the paper beat a hasty retreat. Unlike many papers which strictly separated news and editorial page operations, the Globe kept them united under Tom Winship. “We were pretty shameless in using the news columns to show how we felt,” recalls one reporter. “The Globe was on the side of the angels then, and all the angels were black.”

Television stations also faced political pressure to slant their coverage:

Meanwhile, black demands were reinforced by pressure from Mayor White, who had both institutional and political reasons to play down any violence that might develop in the autumn. In two meetings with media representatives and two more with “on-air talent” — none of which was publicly reported — White and his aides urged the press to handle racial incidents judiciously, avoid any language or pictures which might exacerbate tensions, and put the best possible face on desegregation.

These proposals found their readiest acceptance among radio and television executives, who viewed the committee as a convenient means of satisfying FCC requirements that they respond to community needs.

…

There could be little doubt that some institutions temporarily abandoned objectivity. The Herald American’s lead story on the morning school opened read like a sermon: “The safety of 94,000 children and the salvation of Boston’s historic standing as a community of reasonable and law-abiding families are at stake today as the city reopens its public schools.” Lovell Dyett, operations manager of the NBC outlet, put it most explicitly when he said, “We are going to use television to create an atmosphere of compliance with Judge Garrity’s order.”

And now Globe editorials were hammering relentlessly at the resisting white parents, warning them that their anti-busing position was not only illegal but immoral.

We think that just because there are no laws limiting speech, that speech will be free. But social pressure can be just as powerful as government pressure. And speech guidelines arrived at by a societal consensus, and enforced by social pressure, can be just as restrictive, perhaps more restrictive, as a guideline issued by a King and enforced by officials. And furthermore, while there are no direct laws in the United States controlling speech, in this instance we see government controlling speech through the back door, via subjective FCC requirements about responding to community needs.

Guilt by Association and Evaporative Insanity

When forced busing was first an issue, many respectable leaders, such as Mayor Kevin White or the famous Congressman Tip O’Neill, publicly expressed skepticism or opposition.

But then the interaction of the press and the resistance movement created a feedback loop.

When busing was forced down the throats of South Boston, some of those opposing busing behaved very badly. They threw rocks at buses full of children, they yelled nasty names, they threw bananas.

With the press being on the side of busing and of black people, the press was filled with images of these nasty and terrible resisters. Meanwhile incidents of black violence in integrated schools would be downplayed. Thus, people would come to associate opposition to busing with horrible, noxious behavior. With this association building, people like Tip O’Neill or Mayor White tried to disassociate from the anti-busing group. When the public perception is that only a vile person could oppose busing, only shameless and vulgar people will be willing to oppose busing. Thus the best people leave the movement, and the face of the movement becomes men like school committee man John Kerrigan:

More revealing of the posture of the committee was the emergence of John Kerrigan as its dominant figure in the late 1960s….his importance in the early and mid-1970s was a sign of how much uglier the resistance to the Racial Imbalance Act had become.

With Kerrigan, the macho style was as important as any substantive position on issues. He often went out of his way to be vulgar and obscene and especially delighted in shocking liberals with uninhibited racial derogation of blacks. His vituperation of journalists as “snakes” and “maggots” was almost comically opéra bouffe by comparison, as were his continual references to his own and others’ sexuality (he often wore a bowling jacket with the nickname “Bigga,” a reference to part of his anatomy). In December 1974, during a break at a hearing in Garrity’s courtroom, Kerrigan allegedly mocked a black TV reporter, Lem Tucker, by imitating a chimpanzee and saying: “You know Tucker? He’s one generation away from swinging in the trees. I bet he loves bananas.”

Hicks and Kerrigan fed off one another, but Kerrigan did differ from Hicks in the sheer opportunism of his antibusing career. He once said that the worst thing that could happen to him politically was to have Garrity reverse himself: “That would put me out of business.” During his run for district attorney a group of radical Progressive Labor party demonstrators came to Kerrigan’s house on primary day. The candidate himself came out smiling: “Oh boy, a demonstration … . You’re gonna win me this election. Why didn’t you come yesterday when we could’ve gotten more coverage?” A reporter for the Boston Phoenix observed the scene and wrote: “The Progressive Laborites were genuinely nonplused. Not in their wildest fantasies about capitalist politicians could they have imagined someone as profoundly cynical as John Kerrigan. Here was a man who took nothing seriously except his vote totals, and he freely admitted as much. He wasn’t a racist— black, white didn’t even enter his mind outside of politics— just a demagogue who said and did what he had to in order to win.

We get a feedback loop. We get an evaporative effect where all the good people slink away and only the crazy people are left openly resisting. Opposition to desegregation becomes indelibly associated with terrible people who throw rocks and call black news reporters monkeys. And the good people are now more and more prone to speak in euphemism or hide their thoughts, because they do not want to be considered horrible bigots. This desire, the desire to not be seen as a bigot, thus impacts everyone going forward who writes about the subject.

The Political Correctness Game of Telephone

So we see that respectable people desire to be very cautious when making criticisms of segregation, as they do not want to be seen as a bigot. Nor does a person want to offend others and land in hot water. Respectable people try to be “politically correct.” And this fear is not irrational paranoia – see this long list of people who have gotten harassed or fired for saying the wrong thing about race. Furthermore, both academia and journalists are overwhelmingly liberal. They have been immersed in a narrative whereby racism against black people has been the great historical problem of America, and they feel an obligation to frame issues in a way that won’t lead to more racism toward black people.

The combination of these factors means that in selecting facts to form a narrative, academics and journalists tend to downplay instances of black violence and overplay the fault of non-liberal whites.

When successive writers repeat and summarize a story, the effect of this slanting can be transformational. The entire real cause of the problem can be lost completely.

Consider the story of the flight of the Dorchester Jews, as told in Death of Jewish Community.

1. Deep in the book, in the late chapters, we read an onslaught of evidence that makes it clear that what caused the Jews to leave was violence. We hear stories of muggings, children being beaten on the way home of school, elderly Jewish men arming themselves while walking to the community center, a dentist who reports that he has treated dozen of patients with smashed teeth.
2. In the preface and conclusions, we see this spun as statements that take the form of, “The community was destroyed by the collusion of callous bankers and real estate agents who played on the fears of resident, made worse by the reality that this violence was sometimes real.” Making the real estates agents or the lenders a prime mover is insane. Banks lend to neighborhoods all the time and it does not cause the ruin of a neighborhood; the cause was the violence of the people moving in. An accurate summary would read: “The Jews were driven out of Dorchester when government planners enabled the moving in of a rival ethnic tribe. The worst members of this tribe delt an astonishing and appalling amount of violence upon everyone ranging from children to elderly men.” That is simply the most accurate description of the primary force driving Jewish people away.
3. In a longer piece on an NPR affiliate, crime is mentioned only in passing. Multiple paragraphs are spent denouncing the scare tactics of real estate agents. But what is left unsaid is that the scare tactics worked because they were grounded in reality. The Jews who remained did in fact face high levels of violence.
4. In shorter summaries, such as a paragraph on Wikipedia talking about Dorchester’s demographic change, there are the catch-words “red lining” and “white flight” but zero mention of violence by the people moving in and taking over the neighborhood. And this summary is how most people will hear the story.

Thus in going from the full history to a summary, the primary motive for white flight is completely removed! The game of PC telephone has performed censorship to a degree that would impress a Soviet commissar.

We see the same progression in the story of busing.

1. Deep in the academic history books it is obvious that mass forced busing failed because it either a) smashed together two groups prone to violence (ghetto blacks and lower-class whites) and made them fight over the same turf or b) smashed together ghetto blacks with passive middle class kids thus driving away the middle class kids due to the violence and low class behavior. It is also obvious that busing had no redeeming value on any level – it did not make people less racist, did not help blacks academic achievement, nor did not actually even achieve integration.
2. In the summary and conclusion of the book, there is mention of the above dynamic, but it is mixed in with blame for many other actors. There is praise for the good intentions of the pro-integration factor, praise for the ideal of integration, and blame for the school committee for being so intransigent for cynical political reasons. (But wait – since integration turned out so disastrous, they were correct to be so stubborn. And isn’t “cynical political reasons” just another way of saying “they were doing what their constituency wanted”? Isn’t that how democracy is supposed to work?)
3. And then when we get the PBS version of the story, nary a mention is made of the violence faced by white kids going to black schools. No mention is made of black violence in the schools during prior integration attempts, which is why white parents were so wary of integration.

The game of PC telephone strips away the true dynamics of the conflict, and turns the story into a simple good versus evil morality play.

Concluding thoughts and takeaways

1) Beware the power of framing. By highlighting different facts and interpretations, it is very easy to frame either side of an event as being good or bad. Thus, to really understand an event, you need to read intellectually honest sources.

2) Beware of the game of PC Telephone. Academia and prestige media sources – PBS, NPR, New York Times, etc – are full of writers who believe in the progressive vision. When reducing a complex issue to a shorter summary, they will generally choose facts in a way that fits the progressive narrative, either consciously or unconsciously. But this means that on issues where people worry about being politically correct, on any issue of race or sex, you simply cannot trust these sources. Time and time again, I find that as I compare the original sources to the popular summary, the full dynamic of the conflict has been stripped out by successive iterations of politically correct sanitization.

3) Beware the dangers of judges making policy. The original role of a judge in the American tradition was to be a neutral arbiter and interpreter of existing law and precedent. Over time that has changed. In the words of Justice Sotomayor, “the judiciary is where policy has been made.” With the cases that followed Brown vs the Board of Education and the succeeding cases, the Court was in the business of making policy. But it turns out that policy is complex, every situation is very different. The fashionable social science theories upon which the early desegregation decisions were based had already turned out to be incorrect by the time Garrity was ruling on busing in Boston. Yet Garrity felt himself bound by the precedent of the courts, and ruled accordingly.

4) It is crazy to believe both in coerced integration and mass immigration. In the original Massachusetts racial balance laws, any school with more than 50% minority enrollment was considered imbalanced. The only theory for the benefit of integration that makes sense is that by mixing a small number of minorities into a middle class white population, the minorities can assimilate into a wealthier culture and gain more opportunities in life. This does not work when mixing large numbers though, as each race and social class will then just associate with each other. Now, in 2016, thanks to mass immigration, the entire school population is approaching majority minority. Thus, even if there was perfect distribution of students, every school would be racially imbalanced by the standards of the 1960s.

5) We need to end our obsession with integration. While busing is less of an issue today, it still happens in many cities. The old laws and court rulings are still in effect. De jure segregation is forbidden, and any sort of de facto segregation is legally perilous.

And this last one is a big problem.

Think about it – what constitutes a good school for your own child? A good school is a school that is orderly and safe. A good school is where your child’s peers will be of similar intellectual abilities and maturity levels, so that slower kids are not left in the dust, and bright students are not held back. A good school provides a teaching style appropriate to the student. Slower students often need more back-to-the-basics or drill-and-kill style teaching. Bright students simply need to be freed to let their natural curiosity and nerdiness go wild. If you have good peers, the rest will follow. Good teachers will come to the school because it simply nicer to teach at such a place. The facilities will be better because the students won’t be destroying it, and the fellow middle class parents might even pitch in via fundraisers to fix any problems.

However, in the big, diverse cities, where both blacks and whites live, the whites and blacks are on two different planes. In New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, DC, etc, the white average on standardized tests ranges from two to five grade levels ahead of the black average.

That means, if you group students of similar achievement levels together, even if you are color-blind with regards to your process, you will get racially imbalanced classrooms.

The entire art of raising children in a diverse urban area is the art of finding a backdoor way of joining an ability and class filtered school. Parents either pay extortionary sums for private schools, endure long commutes from the suburbs, take out large mortgages for more expensive neighborhoods, cross their fingers for a magnet school lottery, or design charter schools with subtle methods of screening out lower-class kids.

In San Francisco – which is suffering an epidemic of childlessness – children are routinely forced to go to kindegarten miles away from home all in the interests of demographic balance. This is insane. Making a kindegartener travel miles across a big city in the hopes that putting that child next to a minority will somehow solve the racials problems is totally nutty. And of course it doesn’t work in creating integration. The system is so insane that upper-class couples move out of the city, go to private school, or don’t have kids at all.

If we were simply honest about what makes for a good school, honest about the idea that mixing lower-class kids and middle-class kids of two different races is not a moral imperative, is not necessary, is not even beneficial, then we could create affordable quality schools for everybody. But until we admit this, we are going to continue committing these follies.

UPDATE 2016/1/16: I made some updates to this post based on comments in this Hacker News thread.

Broadly speaking, there are only two major types of influential information sources in our modern world.

One, are the prestige progressives sources – NPR, the New York Times, academic journals, the Atlantic, the Economist, the entire university system. The defining characteristic of these sources is that they attract people who believe in a sense of social mission, and thus they select and frame their output to advance that misssion. Hence you will get 106 articles in the New York Times about the police shooting in Ferguson Missouri (which turned out not to even be an example of injustice). Meanwhile the predatory murder of professor Molly Macauley in Baltimore, killed while walking her dog, gets no mention in the New York Times. Why? It is because the writers believe police abuse and racism to be a big societal problem, and thus it is their duty to highlight specific examples. Whereas they also believe that highlighting instances of crime in a majority black city will only lead to further racism.

Whether or not their view in this instance is justified, the result is that the prestige progressive sources are heavily slanted. You only get the story that fits the narrative. Contradictory evidence will often be omitted. Isolated instances are turned into national news stories if writers think it reinforces the pre-existing world views. Meanwhile patterns of behavior that do not fit the zeitgeist – such as the doubling of the Baltimore murder rate since the riots – are ignored.

The other influential sources are the populist sources – Fox News, Infowars, Drudge Report, Glenn Beck, any unmoderated internet forum. These sources are sometimes called right-wing. And compared to NPR, they are. But as conservative insider John Ziegler notes, there is no symmetry with NPR. Executives at right-wing media outlets are not trying to advance a social cause, rather, they are just doing whatever it takes to sell.

As a non-populist, non-progressive, this leaves me somewhat alone. It is hard enough to piece together my own sources of quality information. It is even tougher to get other people to read beyond either populist or the progressive zeigeist. Nor is it clear where to send them – most of the information sources out there are simply terrible.

To help address this problem, I have created a new search engine called Counter Search. I started from a blank a Google custom search engine and then added to it a hand-curated list of about 80 sites and authors. Additionally, I added in hundreds of hand-picked links. You can read more about the sources I included on the about page. Now, if you want to get smart, alternative views on an issue like Brexit, immigration, or police shootings, you can do a quick search and read a variety of smart opinions.

The Counter Search site also includes reading lists of books and articles that can provide a one-stop introduction to counter-zeitgeist thought on a variety of subjects. If you want to understand intelligent points-of-view that go beyond the default views of academia, NPR, and the New York Times, then please check out the reading lists.

Here is my challenge to intellectually curious progressives: for six months integrate Counter Search into your reading habits. If you listen to John Oliver or read the Times on a hot-button issue, also do a search on Counter Search. If you do a deep dive on some issue like education or immigration, be sure also to check the corresponding section on the Counter Search links page. For every three books you hear about through your normal channels, try reading a book from the Counter Search book list. What if you take the challenge, and do not find yourself more informed? Well, I cannot offer you your money or time back, but feel free to email me and call me a blockhead and a scoundrel. And if you do find it valuable? Also freel free to email me so I can hear from happy consumers.

And if you are already immersed in the shadowy world of counter zeitgeist writings? Feel free to spread the word about Counter Search, so that more people can be exposed to high-quality heresy.

That’s enough of an introduction – go check out Counter Search now.

Despite being such a poorly defined concept, the charge of being a racist can be very serious. The word connotes being an odious, repulsive person. Esteemed African-American academic and linguist and John McWhorter notes that calling somebody racist is “about the worst thing you can call them.” It is like “calling somebody a child molester.”

If a racism charge sticks, the accused can face both social ostracization and real legal sanction. A racist view is beyond the protections of free speech. Rather, the law works to suppress such views. Every American company must obey the civil rights law and not allow a “hostile environment”. Employing a known racist could easily be construed as creating a hostile environment; the mere presence of a racist could be used as evidence against the company in a lawsuit. Companies thus face legal pressure to fire racists. Attempting to categorize someone as a racist is an attack on their livelihood.

Yet, in my opinion, when looking at the vast majority of accusations, the offending person or institution is not racist by a definition of racist that actually describes an evil, odious behavior. There is a motte-and-bailey tactic with definitions. The word connotes evilness under one narrow definition, but then the definition gets expanded so that it can be applied to any political enemy, thus associating them with evil.

Let us look at some of the expanded use cases where the word racism gets applied, and examine if the behavior is actually deplorable.

Consider ethnocentrism. Is it despicable if an Indian father wants his daughter to marry an Indian? Is it despicable if Chinese or Syrian shop owners hire employees from among their own ethnic groups? Is it bad if startups hire for “culture fit”, and want fellow employees to share enough of a culture so that they can spend their waking hours with people they like to hang out with? Is it bad if a white person wants to live in the SWPL/hipster/yuppie section of the city, a section that matches their own culture, and does not want to live in the black part of the city? Is it bad if a black student wants to sit at the lunch table with other black students?

Consider rational discrimination. Is it odious if a bar raises its beer prices on hip-hop night, because from past experience that bar has found the black customers on hip-hop night rarely tip? Is it terrible if a college somewhat discounts SAT scores for Asian applicants, because it does not want a campus with too many “grinds”? Should the Justice Department investigate and prosecute such colleges? Is it detestable if a white woman, living a few blocks from dangerous, all-black, low-income housing project, crosses the street at night when she sees two black men in hoodies walking toward her? Do we try to re-educate her to not be “racist”? Is it abhorrent if a black man gives a white police officer a hard time, because he assumes that the police officer is targeting him based on his race?

Consider belief in human biodiversity, or as it is known pejoratively, “scientific racism”. Is it evil to believe that differences in average levels of income and technological achievement between whites and blacks, between Europeans and Africans, is in part due to differences in average cognitive abilities? Or is it only evil if you believe that these average differences in cognitive intelligence are due in part to differences in gene distribution? If it is odious and ignorant to believe in a genetic contribution, how much of the difference do you have to attribute to genes to become a repulsive racist? 1% 20%? 40%? 60%? In a recent survey of academics studying psychology and cognitive science, 62% of respondents replied that the American black-white cognitive test score gap is at least 50% genetic. Are those psychologists odious racists?

Consider ethnically/racially charged comments. Is it despicable to call someone’s parent a “tiger mom”? Is it deplorable to describe a town as “full of red-necks” or “white trash”? Is it repugnant if an African-American Brooklynite complains about those “motherfuckin’ hipsters” taking over the neighborhood and wrecking the culture? What about a white man complaining about those “mother fuckin’ Mexicans” taking over the town and changing the culture? What if you ask an old Jewish grandfather about why he moved out of Dorchester in the 1970s, and he says, “those damn schwartzes, they were savages, they ruined our neighborhood”? Are we going to be embarrassed by his statement and disown his words? Does it matter if 40,000 Jews were actually driven out of their neighborhood by an epidemic of violence perpetrated by the bottom elements of the black population?

I do think that especially charged or insensitive comments should be toned down or suppressed in the public space. We live in a multi-ethnic society and if we want to avoid escalating tribal violence we have to be polite and respectful to each other. But if someone is angry and lets something slip? Or if some vulgar comment made in private becomes public? I’m not going to call for their firing or stop being their friend. They should apologize for being rude, perhaps face some mild sanction, and life moves on.

Progressive anti-racists sidestep the above complications by arguing that racism only applies when the act is committed by the powerful majority. There is some plausibility to this argument. There is little harm done if a white person can’t get hired at a Lebanese corner store because they are not Lebanese. But overall, this argument is overextended and outdated. As they say – it is 2016. We are fast becoming a country where people-of-color outnumber whites. That is already the case in my city. As I’ve noted before, racially charged violence by blacks against whites has been a very big problem in more recent decades. Where I live, such violence is a much bigger issue than the converse problem. Obviously, black people on average suffer greater hardship compared to white people, but the whole framework of racism and privilege is not useful in addressing this hardship. The rabid protests surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement, for instance, seems to have lead both to more dead black men and to the Donald Trump tribal counter-uprising.

Is there any use, then, for a term “racism” which connotes awfulness and evil? There are behaviors under the umbrella of racism that do deserve to be called evil – enslaving or plundering another tribe; slandering or scapegoating another tribe. But you don’t need the word ‘racism’ to call these things evil.

So what are we to make of the word “racism” in 2016? At this point we should acknowledge the actual definition of the word. Not the definition in the dictionary. Not the definition that you might like it to have. The definition that accurately captures how the broad population is actually using the word. The actual usage is this: racism is a hate-word for a person who is more than one or two degrees to your right on issues of race.

To a far left activist, all white people who are comfortable with the unjust status quo are racist. To a moderate liberal, people who believe in genetically rooted differences are racist. To a polite, genteel, cosmopolitan race realist/scientific racist, it is the vulgar racial separatists, nationalists or tribalists who are the real racists.

Given this actual definition of racist, we should stop using the word. If someone really is odious, you can call them that without the word racism. If someone is not evil, and you call their views racist, ironically, it is you who are a bigot under the original definition of the word: “One who is strongly partial to one’s own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.” Calling a view racist is a way to place that view outside of the bounds legitimate discourse, thus winning the debate without having to use reason or evidence. It is a way to shut down discussion.

And if someone calls you a racist? Do not apologize (unless you are forced to and are too weak to resist). Do not say, “No I’m not really a racist because I am X and a racist is Y.” The person just called you a hate-word. If someone calls you a son-of-a-bitch, you do not pull out a family photo to prove your mom was not actually a canine. Respond with nonchalance, humor, a sharp counter-attack, or by denying the validity of the word. But do not accept their framing.

UPDATE:

I want to write a little more about the politics of the word of “racism.” We have two political factions. We have the red faction which is mostly white middle America. And we have the blue faction which is a smaller, more elite slice of the white population, backed with the voting power of blacks and hispanics. The concept of racism is an ingenious invention of the blue faction. Here is how works. First they managed to create a separate, extra bad category of speech called racism and hate speech. Second, they defined racism in ways so that it only applies when speaking ill of members of their own political coalition. Third, they expanded the definition so that basically any criticism whatsoever of the blue coalition identity groups is racist (or sexists, or xenophobic), and thus out of bounds and not given the traditional protections of academic freedom or journalist fair dealing. Thus, the Daily Show or Colbert can run a minstrel show making fun of white middle America; but if the right made a similiar show making fun of the Democratic voting base, such a show would be racist and de facto illegal.

In political debates, the left argues, “We suffer from structual racism and thus need to elect the blue party and double-down on diversity programs, money for education.” (Note that all of these policy prescriptions are funnels of money and benefits to the blue-team voting base). The right then says, “What is your evidence that structual racism exists?” And the left says, “Look at how bad the schools are in black areas and how underrepresented they are at top companies like Google.” And if a person on the right then responds, “Well, that is not due to structual racism, that is due to culture and/or genes, here is the evidence…”, that person on the right is then branded a racist and has to fear for their career.

The entire bounds of debate is thus continually ratched in a leftward direction, to the advantage of the blue faction.

This same crooked game is played when it comes to policy and civil rights law. Courts and the Justice Department have wide discretion to alter policy based on findings of “disparate impact.” For instance if a fire department uses a written test to screen for new fire-fighters (where grading of the test is completely color blind), yet blacks do worse on the test than whites, courts can force the fire department to change the test. A commenter, Handle, once noted how this works out in practice:

If you’re the state of Texas, other things the Federal Appeals Courts have recently confirmed to be racist are:

1. Requiring people to present proper identification before voting, while still requiring them to present the same upon entering the courthouse.

2. Not drawing districts guaranteeing the election of NAM democrats.

Here’s what “disparate impact” really means: “Relatively more harmful to the vote-bank base of the Democratic party than that of the Republican party”. Since the Democrats have a higher proportion of non-Asian-minority voters, then anything which hurts them in that way will, necessarily have a simultaneous “disparate impact” on “minorities”.

So, logically, the real definition of “racist” is “not helpful to the Left”. If you’re not 100% in favor of the leftist worldview and agenda, you’re unavoidably and inevitably “racist”, no matter how anti-discriminatory or colorblind you are, what you do, or why you do it.

Until the right finds a way to stop playing with this stacked deck and neutralize the potency of this rhetorical distortion, then it’s going to lose. By semantic definition, it cannot win.

For anyone on the right to accuse members on their own side of racism, is thus playing Calvinball with Calvin. Your playing a game created by the blue faction, where that faction makes the rules, and uses those rules to enforce its own permanent political advantage.

Another blog adds his own definition:

I’ve had hour long conversations about how to define “racist”. But “racist” in common usage means “bad person who I can easily accuse of disliking black people in order to ostracize him”. That’s how the language game is played.

If someone is being evil or vulgar, call them evil or vulgar. We have very clear definitions of evil and moral badness from our historical tradition, starting with the Ten Commandments. But when you start calling people “racist” you have outed yourself as being fundamentally untrustworthy. You are trying to ostracize people based on a concept that was constructed purely for the political advantage of one faction. Ostracize people based on violations of timeless morality, but stop this game of ostracizing people based on a recently invented gotcha word, with an ever changing definition.

Today, I condemn two additional economic indicators: manufacturing output indices and productivity indices:

My criticism is simple and harsh: these indices do not convey useful, objective information about the real world. There is no reasonable way to mash together numbers with different units – such as tons of steel forged, silicon chips fabricated, and automobiles assembled – in order to get a single number that conveys meaning. The process of doing so actually destroys information. If I had the raw numbers about steel or car production, that would tell me something about the world. But if I combine them into one number – what does that number mean? What does it tell me about the world?

I am not anti-model nor anti-math. But for a model to be useful it must either a) be proven to be predictive or b) useful as an aid in reasoning and understanding. For the latter, as a test of whether a change in a model says something meaningful and useful about the real world, one can ask how a given change in the real world would affect the numbers coming out of the model. If the model is useful, it should be possible to calculate an answer. For instance, an expert in baseball statistics could tell me how a given pitcher’s FIP, WAR or PECOTA would change in result to a set of real world baseball game box scores.

So here is a set of questions for people who cite the manufacturing and productivity indices. Please cite official documentation when answering these questions:

1) At time A, the U.S. makes all of its CPUs internally. It makes 100 million CPUs a year. At time B, most of the CPUs fabs have been shipped overseas. It now only makes 10 million CPUs. But, these CPUs now have 20 times as many transistors, and operate at 2000MHZ instead of 500MHZ. How much has manufacturing output increased or decreased according to the government indices?

2) A bank replaces five bank tellers with an ATM machine. The ATM machine is built in China, using 100-man-years of labor. It will last for ten years. How much has labor productivity gone up or down in the United States, according to the official indices?

3) A school replaces four teachers with a computer program that automatically grades assignments. The school also adds two teachers due to a new special education law that requires the school to give extra help to the mentally challenged. These new special education teachers end up having no measurable impact on test scores. How much has the labor productivity in education changed? What if the new special education teachers increased test scores by 10%?

4) At time A, 25% of the cost of a Boeing airplane comes from importing parts made in Asia. The other 25% are U.S. labor costs, and the other 50% is materials. At time B, even more parts are made in Asia. The jet turbines are made in Asia, the electronics are made in Asia, the wheels are made in Asia, etc. But by cost, the same percentage of the plane is made in Asia. Thanks to new factories in China, the price of Asian goods has fallen, and thus twice as many parts can be imported for the same price. Has the manufacturing output of the United States gone up, gone down, or stayed the same?

I’m guessing you do not know the answer to these questions. I’m guessing that no one knows the answer to these questions. If you do know, please link me to the exact part of the methodology for these indices that shows the precise numerical calculation that could answer one of the above questions.

Note that in both scenario 1) and 4), a reasonable person would say that these are instances of the U.S. economy hollowing out. Yes, in case #1 the net total number of transistors being produced in the U.S. may have gone up. But the bottom line is that the U.S. went from making its own CPUs to importing its CPUs. America has gone from building stuff to importing stuff. Yet these cases, I have no idea if that “hollowing out” would be captured in the manufacturing indices. And you do not know either. And neither do the people who cite these statistics and say, “look the economy is not hollowing out, these charts prove it.” Thus the people who cite these amalgamated statistics are not contributing to the conversation, they are just adding noise.

I also often come across long blog posts where people are trying to reason about why these numbers have gone up or why they have gone down. But if nobody knows how these numbers are calculated, if nobody knows how real world events would impact these numbers, then how on earth can we speculate about the meaning behind the numbers?

The entire process of figuring out how the world works is a process of refining complex data into simple understandable models, and then building more complex models on top of those simple models. If you start from a model that nobody understands and that has no predictive ability, then you have just destroyed your ability to think. You are starting from nonsense.

And in fact, there is no objective way to calculate these numbers. These indices suffer from the same defects that afflict GDP and the CPI (see my criticism here). There is no mathematically sound way to combine multiple numbers that have different units. To do so is to turn mathematics into nonsense. Thus what actually happens is the statisticians constructing these numbers just invent various rationales for how to compare the dollar values of these goods over time, and then fudge and fix things until the numbers look somewhat plausible. The end result is equivalent to simply surveying a sample of government economists and just asking them to estimate, “How much more productive is the United States today than it was 30 years ago?” This whole process just disguises a survey as being an objective calculation.

My plea going forward is that if you want to discuss manufacturing or productivity, talk about objective numbers that are comparable across time. Talk about the actual tons of steel forged in the U.S., or the actual number of automobile engine blocks produced.

The reason he [Mark Zuckerberg] and most other startup founders are richer than they would have been in the mid 20th century is not because of some right turn the country took during the Reagan administration, but because progress in technology has made it much easier to start a new company that grows fast….Yes, there are a lot of people who get rich through rent-seeking of various forms, and a lot who get rich by playing games that though not crooked are zero-sum. But there are also a significant number who get rich by creating wealth.

The crucial assumption behind his defense is that startup founders like Mark Zuckerberg acquired their riches by creating wealth, not by winning zero-sum games. But to what extent is this actually true?

My answer: this is very messy. In reality, highly profitable businesses result from some degree of genuine wealth creation and some degree of capturing critical nodes in the web of market exchanges. Ownership of these critical nodes allows the business to extract lucrative rents.

To understand the messiness, let us use an example. Imagine that a rapid succession of technological advances has just made canal building much more viable. There exist certain geographic pathways which are optimal locations at which to build a heavily-traveled and very lucrative canal.

Now imagine five different scenarios:

First scenario: Imagine a landowner already owns all the land on a certain isthmus that is the prime location for a great canal. This landowner sells the land for a windfall of a billion dollars.

Second scenario: In this case a savvy real estate speculator is the first to see the opportunity. He buys up all the land in a critical isthmus from a collection of naive farmers for pennies on the dollar. Then he flips this land to a canal construction company for a billion dollars in profit.

Third scenario: A venture capitalist seizes the opportunity. He forms a canal company. He buys up the prime land at the critical isthmus, hires a bunch of laborers and engineers. He buys a bunch of machines. He organizes the digging of the canal. The total cost of building the canal is $250 million. The canal is a big success, customers love it. The canal is also wildly profitable. The company goes public for a market cap of $1.25 billion dollars, netting the capitalist $1 billion in pure profit.

Fourth scenario: In this scenario, there are several great paths for building a canal, and three different companies build a canal. Prices fall as the three compete each other. But one of the canals is run by an exceptional entrepreneur. He works 70 hour weeks making his company awesome. He is fantastic at managing an engineering team, maximizing efficiency, motivating workers, solving problems, and holding people accountable. Because of this, his canal never has breakdowns, and is extremely efficient. Ships choose to pay a substantial premium to use his canal, because it is so efficient. As a result, while the other two owners barely break even after expenses, his canal company is worth a billion dollars.

Fifth scenario: Same as scenario #4, except the entrepreneur executes so well, he drives the other canals out of business. Once they are out of business, he can charge monopoly prices. His profits triple.

It is clear that the first two capitalists have created no wealth. They just won a zero-sum game. Capitalist #4 has a much greater claim on being a true creator of wealth – his wealth comes from providing better service to his customers. But with capitalist #3 and #5, the situation gets very complicated. These guys both created wealth, but also won a zero-sum game.

Entrepreneurs such as Zuckerberg or Larry Page are like entrepreneur #5. They won because they out-executed their competition, and in doing so, created great value for consumers. Yet, in winning, they established ownership of a crucial node on the internet. They both own a near monopoly, and in doing so, are able to extract profits disproportionate to the amount of investment into their products. Are most of their riches due to out-executing and providing value? Or due to capturing this monopoly opportunity? It is impossible to say.

A lot of this debate comes down to either side taking an absolutist view. Silicon Valley’s detractors claim that most startups are much closer to the speculator of scenario #2. Detractors accuse founders and VC’s of being well-connected opportunists whose only skill is in the quickest to pounce on and capture monopolies. Paul Graham seems to view startups as being much closer #4 – as pure engines of wealth creation. But the truth is just that it is messy. Most companies are akin to scenario #3 and #5. Their profits are a very messy mix between earning returns on speculation and earning returns on superior execution.

The messiness also exists when we look at venture capital firms, not just individual startups:

Scenario one: A venture firm funds dozens of companies. Most fail. Perhaps the market opportunity just wasn’t right, perhaps the technology could never be perfected. But a few are wildly successful and earn massive profits. On net, the venture firm earns a modest return, just beating the S&P 500.

Note, that even though the individual success of one investment might be an example of winning a zero-sum monopoly, the venture firm as a whole is not making rent-seeking profits. If you taxed away the great profits from any individual investment, the venture firm would be net unprofitable, investment would dry up, and society might not get any more ground-breaking products.

Scenario two: Imagine a second venture firm. This firm got really lucky with a big bet early on. As a result, it gained fame and prestige. Now the best entrepreneurs seek out the firm first, so they can brag, “We’re funded by the same guys that funded Google.” The firm exploits this to build a network of successful companies. As a result of their brand and their network, the firm can give a 10% better chance to any company that chooses it over a competitor. Thus, any entrepreneur would make this firm their first choice. Thus, whenever there is a new opportunity for a monopoly, based on new technology or a new platform, this VC firm always gets to fund the best team that is attacking that space. As a result, the VC firm takes very total little risk, and is wildly profitable. The firm can simply coast on the existence of its brand and network, perpetuating great profits simply because it was profitable in the past.

Which model of venture funding is closer to the truth? Again, in reality, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Successful venture capital firms make money in part because of skill in allocating capital, and in part because of risk. But successful firms also have established market positions where they have a pipeline to exploit new market opportunities before anyone else.

Let us switch gears to view inequality from a philosophical basis. What is a “just” distribution of wealth?

Thinkers on the left have posed a number of different models. Marx believed in the labor theory of value and any profits beyond labor were unjust. Rawls believed that society should have a distribution scheme that would be chosen if we were to be born randomly.

In my opinion, these views are not helpful. They fail to incorporate the fact that some people are more skilled than others, that becoming skilled requires hard work to develop talent, that people take different risks, and that such hard work and risk taking has to be rewarded or else people will not do it.

On the other side, there is the conservative and libertarian view is that any outcome produced by voluntary transactions is fair. Wikipedia summarizes an argument made by libertarian Robert Nozick:

Wilt Chamberlain is an extremely popular basketball player in this society, and Nozick further assumes 1 million people are willing to freely give Chamberlain 25 cents each to watch him play basketball over the course of a season (we assume no other transactions occur). Chamberlain now has $250,000, a much larger sum than any of the other people in the society. This new distribution in society, call it D2, obviously is no longer ordered by our favored pattern that ordered D1. However Nozick argues that D2 is just. For if each agent freely exchanges some of his D1 share with the basketball player and D1 was a just distribution (we know D1 was just, because it was ordered according to your favorite patterned principle of distribution), how can D2 fail to be a just distribution? Thus Nozick argues that what the Wilt Chamberlain example shows is that no patterned principle of just distribution will be compatible with liberty. In order to preserve the pattern, which arranged D1, the state will have to continually interfere with people’s ability to freely exchange their D1 shares, for any exchange of D1 shares explicitly involves violating the pattern that originally ordered it.

But there is a problem with this theory. Basketball players and basketball team owners make a lot of money because they bargain collectively. Team owners negotiate TV contracts and other contracts as a league. Basketball players join a union to collectively negotiate a share of the league revenue. So if the owners and the players collectively bargain, why cannot consumers collectively bargain? Why cannot consumers bargain collectively for a revenue share?

Laborers bargaining have a special problem – the employer can hire scabs from outside the union. Thus to bargain effectively, a union would want to expand, and to encompase all laborers. When negotiating contract, the union would furthermore want to prevent the company from hiring any non-union labor, in order to prevent the union’s bargaining power from being undermined.

Furthermore the union needs to be coercive. The famous game theorist, Thomas Schelling, pointed out that it can be to one’s benefit to submit to coercion as part of a bargaining process. If all the union members vote to pass an edict that says that labor union muscle will break the knees of any defector who crosses the picket line, there will be no defectors, the union’s bargaining position is better, and the union is more likely to win a pay raise for all workers. Collective bargaining requires punishing defectors. The conservative argument that union coercion is anti-worker, is a bogus, concern troll argument that ignores game theory.

Thus for all workers in general to bargain effectively, you need a coercive union, encompassing the entire labor force, that demands a bigger share of total revenue – that sounds sort of like a democratic government instituting progressive taxation and redistributing money to the workers.

And of course, with collective bargaining, there is no hard-and-fast rule to determine what is a fair split. Hold out for too much and you might destroy the entire business. Surrender too early and you leave money on the table. And making sure the union bosses actual bargain in your interests is tough. For instance, arguably in the 1970s British labor acted as a giant union that bargained for too much, and almost brought the entire country to economic collapse.

So much for figuring out a “just” distribution from first principles.

So let us ditch abstract theory and look at this from the standpoint of naked self interest. Let us imagine the United States government as a giant union. How much should the people bargain for? What share of the national revenue should it tax and distribute?

Right now, in the United States, for the most successful startup founders, ~50% of their profits will end up in the hands of a government. This includes the corporate income tax, capital gains taxes, state income tax, and the Medicare millionaires tax. (There are many complaints that millionaires are under-taxed because capital gains taxes are lower than income taxes. But this ignores that capital gains are on top of corporate income tax, when you add two together, the total tax rate is higher than the highest personal income tax rate.)¹

If we raised the tax burden to be 100% on all income over a million dollars, then I think it is pretty obvious that the entire start up world would be annihilated. Even if the income limit was $10 million, startups would likely cease to be a thing. Angel Investors would have far less reason to invest, since it would be 9 out of 10 chance they lose money, and in the 1 in 10 chance they win big, their win is capped by taxes. Entrepreneurs would always want to sell out early to big companies rather than try to actually win a market, since they would gain no more by trying to grow huge. Big companies would just buy off dangerous startups, and their products would die. Thus startups would be a thing of the past. In such a world, products created by startups, ranging from Dropbox to the Mac to Google, likely would never have happened. We would all be running crappy IBM computers, and every upstart would be gobbled up, paid off, and shut down.

So if logically we know that at 100% income tax there would be very few startups, we know that for every increment between then we’ll lose some portion of the startups. The rate of decreasing startups with money might not be linear, but for lack of any better guesstimate, we can model it that way. If you raised taxes on income over a million dollars by another 10%, that would net around $75 billion dollars. ² Would you trade killing 20% of all future startups for the government having an extra 1.3% in total government revenue? Would you give up out of every five products you use, perhaps your Macbook, perhaps Dropbox, perhaps your Zipcar – so that the government would have 1.3% more funds?

Now as a startup entrepreneur I am completely biased about this issue. But still – I don’t think think this seems like a good trade.

Of course there could be more creative ways to tax inequality. Perhaps there could be a millionaires tax only on zero-sum professions – such as lawyers, professional athletes, and certain branches of finance. And absolutely there should be an elimination of all the shady means by which Wall Street plays “heads we win, tails the public bails us out.” But taxing startups does not seem wise to me.

Of course there is a final problem: the United States Government is neither a giant consumers union nor a giant labor union. It pretends to be a consumers union, but it is not. It is a leviathan, a hydra, a massive organism, largely unaccountable, unmanageable, driven hither and tither by a thousand different political factions. It has thousands of factions, all trying to gorge off its teat. If an additional $75 billion was going in a universal basic income check to all Americans, that might be useful. If it is going to be filtered into housing projects that wreck entire neighborhoods, or more subsidies for bloated college administration, then that is much less appealing.

Paul Graham noted in the original version of his essay:

So when I hear people saying that economic inequality is bad and should be eliminated, I feel rather like a wild animal overhearing a conversation between hunters. But the thing that strikes me most about the conversations I overhear is how confused they are. They don’t even seem clear whether they want to kill me or not.

Commenters called out this paragraph for attacking a “straw man.” Paul Graham has now rewritten the essay without this paragraph. But I think his original quote was exactly right. The conversation is in fact confused, and one of the most terrifying aspects is that there is no organized body with agency that has a specific set of demands that can be reasoned with and bargained with.

What is really happening in this debate is that the political left comprises a thousand different factions, each with their own pet issue. Some want student loan debt relief. Some want universal basic income. Some want a $15 minimum wage. Some want more money for schools. The Silicon Valley late-comers, who face long hours and absurd housing prices, envy the Silicon Valley winners and royalty, like Paul Graham, who have lucrative, entrenched positions. The only point these disparate groups can all agree on is to attack inequality. Attacking inequality is the lowest common denominator in left-wing politics, and perhaps any politics. So when anyone from these disparate groups denounces inequality, they get re-tweeted and re-blogged by the entire complex. That is also why the discussion is confused and why it is not clear what they actually want. There is no single, organized movement making these demands. And that is unfortunate, because instead of getting reasonable compromises that could make life better for everyone, we’ll probably get more messy kludges that distort incentives and that favor expanded bureaucracy over helping working folk.

First: If you raise the minimum wage high enough, jobs will be lost. If the average wage in a city is $30 an hour, and you raise the minimum wage to $60, you would literally make it impossible for most people to be employed. As a mathematical certainty, at least half the labor-force would be unemployed or on the black market.

Second: If we know that a massive number of jobs would be lost with a $60 minimum wage, then for each incremental increase up to $60 some portion of jobs must be lost. As the minimum wage rises to $12 an hour, to $18 and hour, and upward, some portion of the workers fomerly earning $8 simply cannot find work. The job loss won’t necessarily be linear with increases in the minimum wage. But as a matter of logical certainty, it must happen.

Third: If the minimum wage is raised an insignificant amount, then the impact on job loss will be impossible to measure. If only 5% of the population is earning minimum wage, and you raise the minimum wage by 10%, then the impact on jobs will be overwhelmed by statistical noise. This is especially the case because you would expect a very delayed response between a wage hike and unemployment. A firm is not going to instantly fire trained and well-functioning employees. Rather, the firm will be slightly quicker to fire, and slightly slower to hire new workers. There is much debate over various empirical studies, but the debate can never be resolved because it is fundamentally impossible to measure such small effects when there are so many confounding variables.

Fourth: Wages are not purely proportional to utility created. Rather, wages are a function of utility created and bargaining power. Some economists argue that if wages are too low, the answer is to give people skills to make them more productive, to enable them to take advantage of technology. But consider the rubbish man. He does take advantage of technology. Sanitation technology allows a few garbage men to cover a large territory and create a massive amount of utility. But he earns a poor wage because he is a commodity worker, he is replaceable. A sanitation worker’s income is proportional to his ability to unionize, proportional to his bargaining power. And becoming more efficient, having technology replace labor, can mean less bargaining power. For instance, junior lawyers make less money now, because there are far more law school graduates and the discovery work has been automated with computer searches. The fact is, we have a global glut of commodity labor. It is often the non-technological enabled jobs that still make the most money – such as the senior lawyer who has rare and intricate knowledge of corporate law. The modern laborer provides valuable services, they do leverage technology, but they earn low wages due to low bargaining power.

Fifth: It is theoretically possible to have a situation in which significantly raising the minimum wage has little negative impact on jobs. And I’m not talking about the monopsony model taught in econ textbooks. That model obviously does not apply in the real world. Here is my theoretical model:

Imagine the following situation: In a certain island, five landlords own a combined total of 50 acres of land. There is a labor pool of 100 farmers. At full output, each farmer has the potential to farm 1 acre and produce 50 bushels of wheat. Thus we have a substantial excess of farmers. What happens? The wages of farmers will tend toward subsistence. The landlord might only allow the farmer to keep 20% of their output, a mere 10 bushels. If a farmer objects, the landlord will fire him, and replace the farmer with a desperate unemployed person from outside the labor pool.

Now imagine that the farmers band together, form a union, and collectively bargain. They set a minimum wage across all the land of 25 bushels. In this scenario, all the farmers end up being better off. No farmers get fired, because the landlord still wants all the plots of land worked.¹

The minimum wage can raise wages if the employers are 1) highly-profitable 2) enjoy high barriers to entry 3) command at least a partial monopoly and 4) cannot easily replace workers with automation or outsourcing. In such a case, their output is not limited by labor. Thus if labor costs rise, they still produce the same output and employ the same number. The increased pay to labor will simply come out of the profits.

Sixth: The above theoretical possibility most likely does not apply to the specific cities that are looking to enact a $15 minimum wage. Many minimum wage jobs are at restaurants. Restaurants are generally not wildly profitable, so to pay their workers they will have to raise prices. If they raise prices, people will eat out less and just make dinner themselves. So some dishwashers at the remaining restaurants will earn more, other dishwashers will be fired as the restaurants close, and will find it very hard to find new work. To the extent that these cities already have nasty unemployment problems – in Philadelphia, for instance, 19% of black residents are currently unemployed – a higher minimum wage could make things much worse.

OK, so what do we make of all these somewhat contradictory points? Well let us step back. What goal are we trying to accomplish with a minimum wage? The goal is to transfer money from all those with a good bargaining position and high income, to workers with a poor bargaining position and low income.

But a minimum wage is a poor vehicle for accomplishing the goal of wealth distribution. Yes, some employers of minimum wage workers are wildly profitable. But many are not. Many are mom and pop stores, scraping to get by. Many big box retailers like Sears and Best Buy are treading water. To the extent that the wage increases get passed on to the customers, again, these customers are often not very wealthy. Meanwhile, wildly profitable companies such as Google, Apple, JP Morgan, and their wildly rich owners, do not bear any of the burden, as they employ few low wage workers.

There is a known way to redistribute money based on who actually has high-income: the graduated income tax. Also, there is a way to ensure that the minimum wage does not create unemployment: set a floor at which jobs are guaranteed.

Thus, here is the sensible way to do a minimum wage:

1. Permanently peg the minimum wage to be some percent of the average wage. We could make it 45% – which comes out to $15 an hour.² As total wages rise with inflation, the minimum wage will rise too.
2. Run weekly auctions of minimum wage labor. The laborer submits an application containing resume, skills, and references to the Employment Auction Agency. Retail stores, restaurants, landscaping companies, etc, would then review the applicants and submit bids for workers. The bids could be $15 an hour, $8 an hour or $2 an hour. Perhaps there could be bids of negative $1 an hour, (there do exist workers with such anti-social habits that they have negative value to an employer). The employer offering the highest bid gets the laborer on a three month contract.
3. Money coming out of progressive tax revenues then make up the difference. So if the employer bids $11, the government chips in $4 to make a total wage of $15 an hour.
4. The worker gets a three-month contract. The employer can offer to renew twice. After that, the worker must go back into the auction. (The community does not want to be subsidizing the worker forever if some employer is willing to take on more of the burden). If the worker is fired without cause, they get paid some amount of severance. The employer can also dock pay for standard offenses, such as disobedience, tardiness, or surliness.

Voila! Everyone gets a job. The idle workers in burned-out inner cities and rust-belt towns are all now guaranteed gainful employment. Those working minimum wage jobs now get a decent income. At the same time, no additional costs are imposed on mom-and-pop restaurants struggling to make payroll. The subsidy comes from those with the ability to pay. There are some details and special cases to be figured out, but I think the general idea is sound.³

Now, I certainly do not like taxes. I do not want to raise taxes. Most Americans do not want taxes raised. That is why minimum wage increases are so seductive – they offer the promise of pay increases without costs to anyone. So if we are doing this redistribution via tax dollars, where does the money come from?

First, one could use this to generally replace most existing welfare programs, ranging from housing projects, to Section 8 vouchers, to food-stamps, to disability payments. Since everyone is guaranteed a job paying a living wage, there is no need for any further subsidy. Even people on disability can be given a job. Those with physical handicaps can be paid to watch security cameras. Those with schizophrenia are not crazy all the time. Surely there is some safe job they could find dignity in – whether that be cleaning up sidewalks or tending gardens in city parks.

Second, the subsidy money could come from reducing funding for schools. In the past fifty years there has been massive increases in the total amount spent on schooling, and the number of years of schooling. The theory is that since more schooled workers earn more, investing more in schooling will raise all wages. It is becoming more and more clear that this theory was totally wrong.

The reality is that schooling is a red-queen race – more years of schooling are needed simply to stay ahead of everyone else. Schooling is rarely value-add, and even more rarely is it value-add in a cost and time efficient manner. College graduates earn more because a degree signals to employers that the holder is conscientious and smart. But if everyone gets more degrees, it just devalues the signal, requiring everyone to get an additional degree to stay ahead. Thus as more and more people go to college, the marginal college students finds themselves graduating and working for customer support at Verizon or as a barista at Starbucks. Sending more people to school does not create more high-paying jobs; it does nothing to solve the imbalance between those with specialized, high-leverage jobs and those with commodity jobs; it does nothing to solve the problem of a global surplus of commodity labor. (To read more about the analysis in the paragraph, there are lots of more detailed links in the footnotes).⁴

By rolling back education to the level spent in the 1970s – a period in which America dominated the world in technology and innovation – hundreds of billions of dollars could be freed up to directly and immediately accomplish the end goal of creating a good job for every worker.

So that is my day-dream: a good job for every American, guaranteed, with no perverse impacts of the minimum wage, and no additional taxes. It could be accomplished next year, without any downside.

But it will never happen.

First, it is extremely hard to get public support for such a plan. Why? Well, who tells the public what to think? Schools. Academia. And journalists trained by schools and academia. Like any institution, these institutions always message how important they are. They teach that all economic advances are closely tied to schooling. They teach that to defund school is to defund our children. You would not want to shortchange our children would you? Are you against investing in our future? What kind of monster are you?

Second, the unfortunate truth is that policies are not enacted out of some sense of the general benefit. The truth is that programs are mostly supported by their bureaucracies. Let me prove the point in two pictures:

Picture one is a chart of all the welfare programs in the United States:

Such a system is not a product of intelligent design or human reasoning about what helps people. It evolved in slip-shod fashion, with each bureaucracy expanding its own turf, jealously guarding its own budget, and creating its own dependents.

The second picture is a graph of how total, after-welfare income changes with increases in employment wages in one state. You can see that for many people there is a trap. When you get a job making more money, you end up with less total income, because welfare cuts out:

Again, this is crazy. If one were trying to design a program to help people, no sane person would design it this way.

Another example: if you are a progressive American, you probably lament how the U.S. lacks the universal health insurance that Canada has. You wish that the anti-tax, anti-government conservatives weren’t so powerful here. Yet – here in the United States, per-capita government spending on healthcare is actually equal to the government spending in Canada. ⁵ And spending here is substantially more than in Britain. The U.S. government actually spends 65% more per capita than Singapore spends entirely, including both private and government. And Singapore has some of the best life expectancy and healthcare in the world. Once again, the U.S. is simply massively inefficient in the way it spends money on its welfare state. And yet, it is stuck this way. Why? Because if the U.S. were to implement a policy to make its healthcare spending as efficient as Singapore, that means that total spending would drop in half. That means half the people in healthcare would lose their jobs. Thus, should any such policy be proposed, everyone from the doctor’s associations to hospital executies to nursing unions to drug companies will band together to stop it.

One final example from a local news article (and this is not an isolated example, I have seen articles like this in other cities before): In Philadelphia, the housing authority is proposing a massive project to build 1,200 new units of affordable housing. Except Philadelphia has tons of housing – the city has lost population over the last three decades. The cost per unit of this new construction will be around $440k. Meanwhile in the private market houses can routinely be rehabbed and flipped at a profit for $150k. Cost of new construction is generally under $200k. Thus the housing authority is spending way more than it needs to, 60%+ of the spending is wasteful excess over what is actually needed to produce good housing. Why? Because the agency doesn’t actually care about optimizing its spending to help people. Like all bureaucracies, it has fallen prey to Pournelle’s law: “In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.” (see my post on bureaucracy theory)

So imagine a plan was proposed: fund a universal jobs program via reducing funding for welfare and schools. What would happen? NPR and the New York Times would dispatch reporters to talk about it. They would interview policy experts (ie professors) and those working in the field (welfare case workers and administrators). Both would stand to lose enormously from my plan. Naturally, they would find all sorts of reasons for why the plan would be problematic and would cause all sorts of pain and strife. Popular support would be muddled and lukewarm at best, due to all this expert opposition. Few would risk their careers to push the plan through. The plan would die before ever coming to a vote.

So unfortunately, tragically, we are stuck. Our cities continue to suffer from low wages and high unemployment. The bureaucracy continues to expand and to solve none of these problems.

Now you might think it is outrageous for me to equate the Black Panthers with the KKK. Weren’t the Panthers fighting for the empowerment of a historically downtrodden minority? Am I some political hack trying to score points by making some bogus equivalency? Doesn’t Vox magazine tells us that, the most radical thing the Black Panthers did was give kids free breakfast?. Am I some ignoramus unaware of all the good work the Black Panthers did?

Well no, I do not think I am being unfair. If you think I am the ignorant one, please continue reading, I have some history to share. The source for this history is the book The Death of an American Jewish Community. It is written about Dorchester, Boston during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The book is based both on the connections of the authors, and on hundreds of interviews and newspaper accounts. The authors are hardly rabid right-wingers; both are liberal. One is a Boston University professor and the other a Boston Globe journalist.

Let us start with an excerpt about a Jewish shop keeper in the late 1960s, and his experience with the Black Panthers moving in across the street:

Like many businessmen and police officers who witnessed riots in Roxbury, Goldstein [the shopkeeper] was totally convinced that they were finely orchestrated proceedings rather than spontaneous bursts of rage. He claimed to have witnessed cash awards to schoolboys from leading members of the city’s black radical organizations for, as he called it, “outstanding performances in the category of urban rioting.” Since the welfare mothers’ riot, however, Goldstein had kept a two-foot length of pipe fitted with a bamboo handle near his cash register. Things had seemed particularly ominous since the Black Panthers had taken over a former dry cleaning store on lower Blue Hill Avenue for their headquarters. The storefront was plastered with revolutionary posters, including one labeled “Target No. 1: the Pig,” depicting a pig in a police uniform superimposed on a bull’s eye. The Hat Man had always maintained civil relations with his most radical customers, but he couldn’t abide the Panthers. With the Panthers, everything had turned upside down. Here, he believed, was a group of hoodlums who engaged policemen in deadly gun battles while their ridiculous white supporters prattled on about the pancake breakfasts the Panthers served to poorly nourished schoolchildren. In Panther lexicon, some hophead picked up for robbing a ma-and-pa grocery store was a “political prisoner.” The worst of it was that the Panthers had chosen his corner to sell their journals filled with antisemitic poetry: “Jew land, On a /summer afternoon/ Really, Couldn’t kill the Jews too soon/ Now dig, The Jews have stolen our bread/ Their filthy women tricked our men into bed…”

Goldstein moved instinctively for the length of pipe whenever one of the Panthers came into the store. He had vowed never to be shaken down by the antisemites. Once, they had threatened to burn him down and he had insouciantly tossed them a book of matches. One Panther seemed to take particular delight in trying to intimidate Goldstein. “Hat Man, one day I’m going to take care of you,” the Panther said, placing his hand threateningly in the pocket of his coat.

Threats like these mattered, they were not just silly bluster. In one instance, black activists used the threat of violence to try to get the Jewish community to transfer them a temple that was on the edge of a black neighborhood:

At 5: 00 A.M. Grossman was awakened by a loud knock at his hotel door. He shuffled to the door and opened it, revealing three black men he had never seen before. Only one man spoke. “We get the temple mortgage free or else we burn, baby, burn.” The men left abruptly, leaving Grossman shaken and confused. Later that day Grossman huddled with officers of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies and Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston in a meeting room at the Brighton Jewish Community Center to discuss the threat and their response to the riots. Led by Al Rosen, the federation’s public relations director, the leadership discussed the harsh anti-Jewish sentiments that had boiled to the surface in recent days. All were aware of the growing antisemitic statements emanating from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which attempted to place the blame for America’s internal problems on Jewish landlords and for its external problems on Zionism. Grossman learned that he was not the only federation leader to receive threats regarding the fate of Mishkan Tefila. Others in the room had received similar messages that day, such as “Put the temple in the hands of the black community or we’ll burn it down with Jews in it.” The Jewish leaders did not believe the threats were emanating from anyone involved with Elma Lewis. More likely, they believed, the source of the threats came from the Black Panthers or other radicals whose publications of late had been filled with openly antisemitic articles and cartoons reminiscent of Nazi propaganda.

And it worked – the Jewish group handed over the temple. The press was full of praises for the generous “gift”, while burying any mention of the violent threats:

On April 18 the lead story in the Jewish Advocate shouted out in unusually large type, “Jewish Gift for Negroes.” Boston’s major news media joined in to praise the transfer. The Boston Globe called the gesture “grounds for prayerful and universal rejoicing.” The New York Times, too, took note of the extraordinary generosity of Boston’s Jews. Congratulatory letters and telegrams poured in from the NAACP, the United Front, the Urban League, and scores of Jewish organizations. The Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the nation’s first Jewish federation, had charted new territory once again.

A young, idealist Rabbi moved into Dorchester. He had dreams of helping to revive the struggling community and bridge the divide between Jews and blacks. Shortly after he moved in, a few messengers greeted him at his house:

Shortly after arriving home, Zelermyer called his mother on the telephone. The conversation was interrupted by the chimes of the front door bell. Placing the receiver aside, Zelermyer, quite accustomed to unannounced visits from congregants, strode quickly to the door and swung it open. The two young men facing the rabbi were not congregants. One of the black youths, whose age Zelermyer estimated at seventeen, shoved a clumsily scrawled note into his hands. Zelermyer made out the words “lead the Jewish racists out of Mattapan” before the other youth, his face turned guardedly to the side, flicked what appeared to be a vial of white powder into the face of the startled rabbi. Zelermyer’s head snapped back from frightful pain. The assailants, having never uttered a word, dashed away as the rabbi, engulfed in blinding dust, leapt back and slammed the door shut.

After several minutes of frantic flushing, Zelermyer drove to the office of a nearby doctor. By the look of the wound, the doctor said, the substance was a strong and corrosive acid. It hit with greatest damage one-quarter inch below the rabbi’s right eye.

In the neighborhood as a whole, there was a rising tide of violence and disorder. Now, we do not know how much of this violence was committed by Black Panthers, and how much of it was by rogue individuals. But when we condemn the violence associated with the KKK, we do not always make a distinction between the violence committed by organized members of the organization, and violence committed by all those who are aroused by the culture of violence and hate. And we are correct not to make that distinction. When prominent organizations set the tone, many lone individuals will take advantage of the atmosphere to indulge predation.

And what was the result of the tone of violence in Dorchester? A Jewish Dentist who once practiced in Dorchester described the feeling in his old neighborhood:

Stone listed crimes against Jewish residents and business owners, including the recent shootings of two drugstore owners and a fellow dentist. “The elderly Jews live in fear for their lives and they are not wrong,” Stone wrote. “I know because my office is in Dorchester and I have to repair their broken teeth. I see the closing of the drugstores because of firebombings and severe beatings of the owners… When I see these bumper stickers ‘Save Soviet Jewry,’ I can’t see why we don’t give out stickers to ‘help Mattapan Jewry.’ I feel they are just as bad off and a lot closer to home.”

…

Shortly after dinnertime on the evening before Thanksgiving 1969, knots of elderly congregants began arriving at Congregation Chevra Shas, a modest red brick shul on Dorchester’s Ashton Street. Muggings had become so common of late that Dorchester’s elderly Jews scanned cabinets for household items that might double as instruments of self-defense. Because outrunning the young muggers was out of the question, survival, they believed, might depend on a good spritz of hair spray in the eyes of an attacker or a solid zetz on the nose with a ring of heavy metal keys….In recent weeks scores of elderly Jews had been beaten and one had been shot. Each week an average of thirty elderly Jews in the neighborhood suffered assaults or robberies. Many knew of neighbors who no longer left their homes, not even to attend the morning or evening services required of the observant.

One of the most heart-breaking stories was that of an old Jewish couple, trying to hold out in the neighborhood after all their friends had fled. For their refusal to flee, they were rewarded with a humiliating home invasion:

The largest of the intruders prepared a bed of wet garbage on the floor of Saul and Gertrude Pearlman’s living room closet before trussing the elderly couple back to back and tossing them in. “Get in there and stay in there, old Jews,” the man had told them. During the previous two hours the same man had held an enormous hunting knife at Saul’s throat while his two partners ransacked the eight-room apartment on Dorchester’s Kerwin Street. With the exception of a camera and a small amount of cash, the intruders were finding little of value. The discovery of a wall safe had prompted momentary excitement, but it yielded only mortgage and insurance documents and some precious family photos, all of which were contemptuously tossed aside. “Gonna kill you now, old Jews,” the disappointed intruder told the couple. The Pearlmans, married more than forty years, did not need words to communicate. In Saul’s eyes his wife could read the message to remain silent and not beg for their lives. Earlier, when the knife-wielder had ordered Gertrude to lie down on the couch and had covered her face with a towel, her husband had willed her not to speak. He felt somehow that if they did not speak they would survive.

Despite her husband’s protestations that the neighborhood was becoming too dangerous, Gertrude Pearlman had refused to leave Dorchester. Twenty years earlier, when they’d bought the spacious two-family Victorian, they had enjoyed living in the heart of Boston’s ninety thousand-strong Jewish community. By 1974, at the time of the assault, they were the only white family on their street. Gertrude had held religiously to the belief that white flight was cowardly and immoral. When the first black family moved in across the street ten years earlier, Gertrude welcomed them to the neighborhood with a basket of cookies and warm rolls. Saul, an oil burner mechanic, gave the heating system a once-over and warned the new family about a neighborhood oil distributor who poked holes in storage tanks and then billed new customers for costly repairs.

…

For Gertrude and Saul Pearlman, the dream of integration ended as they wriggled on their closet floor to free their binds. The assault, Gertrude recalled, “continued to play like a newsreel in my head.” The couple had adamantly refused to listen to the logic of neighbors who had fled to the suburbs. But now even their black neighbors were appealing to them to leave. “You’re older, Jewish, and vulnerable. It’s over for you here,” said a neighbor who had become particularly close to the couple. After the assault, arrangements were made for the Pearlmans to stay with out-of-town relatives. Before leaving, the couple visited the graves of loved ones at a Jewish cemetery west of Boston. After only a few days away, they mustered their courage and returned home. Stepping from their car, they saw three young men hacking away with axes at their basement door.

The Pearlmans moved from their home of more than twenty years in great haste.

The Dorchester Jewish community, a population of 40,000, fled and disappeared to almost nothing within two years. If this is not ethnic cleansing, I do not know what is. This is as bad as anything associated with any right-wing hate movement in the past fifty years.

And this violence still matters today. I myself walked through Dorchester a while ago. I was approached by two plainclothes who told me to get out of the neighborhood because it was the murder of capital of Boston and they said that I “didn’t look like I belonged.”

Now you might say that the Black Panthers deserve less condemnation, because they are not emblematic of a much bigger and greater pattern of white-on-black violence. Yet what is the pattern of racial disparities in violence? Statistically, in 2012/2013 there were 560,000 black-on-white violent crimes, versus 99,000 white-on-black violent crimes. That is a 5 to 1 disparity, an excess of 460,000 violent crimes against white people. For murders, there were 409 black-on-white homicides versus 189 white-on-black. That is a disparity of 200 murders a year. Extrapolated, that’s a rate of 2,000 a decade, 20,000 in a century. Compare that rate to the estimated 4,000 lynchings that occurred in the century after the Civil War. So no, I don’t think it is fair to say that we can downplay the Black Panthers, because they do not represent a broader pattern of violence. In the history of my lifetime, of my parent’s lifetime, that has not been true.

Furthermore, an argument that violence is justified due to slavery or historical oppression only makes sense if the violence is actually targetted against the oppressors. Were the assaulted residents of Dorchester oppressors of black people? No. Were they somehow responsible for the plight of black people? No. Do they bear moral responsibility for slavery or Jim Crow? No. Whatever the historical oppression that might justify violent resistance, a group that encourages terrorism and violence against complete innocents is itself a vile hate-group that should be denounced.

Of course, the worst problems of violence are within black communities. But here again, the Black Panthers influence was entirely negative. Their hatred and demonization of the police, their rhetoric of violence, and the murders and hit-jobs within their own ranks, all were gasoline poured into the fire of these communities. Their actions did not make these communities better, and they should be treated as a cautionary tale, not celebrated.

Finally I should note – I’m not actually asking you to boycott Beyonce. That’s not actually going to help anybody. I also think that words like “racist” and “hate group” have been stretched and abused to the point past all saving. Their use in modern politics is entirely one-sided and disingenuous, and I have no desire to start playing that game.

My reasons for relating this history are to help establish the following takeaways:

1. Racial conflict in this country has been a lot more complicated than whites oppressing blacks. Just as often it has been one group of whites and blacks forming an unspoken alliance in order to oppress another group of whites. If we actually want to solve problems of violence, ethnic conflict, and urban decay, we need to know the full version of what happened.
2. Liberal establishment media – (NY Times, Vox, NPR, PBS) – are continually very one-sided in this coverage. They will tell you all the bad things the KKK did, but will almost never relate stories like those above. They will freak out when a politician has the most tangential association with a right-wing “hate group” but ignore any much more direct association with left-wing groups like the Panthers. A lot of my friends don’t believe me when I tell them that the New York Times only gives one side of the story. The only way I can demonstrate this is by relating the side of the story that the Times is missing.
3. Friends and family ask me why I’m not registered to vote, why I’m so apathetic about left-right party politics. Sure the Democrats have their flaws, they say, but aren’t the Republicans one hundred times worse? Well, no. What happened in Dorchester was truly awful, and the ramifications of the violence in places like Dorchester still have a massively negative impact on people in those communities, and people like me who live on the borders of such communities. And that violence was enabled and encouraged, and is still enabled, by those on the left. Now I don’t think the Republicans are any solution – far from it. My interest is in finding a third way, and until then, I try to stay out of the day-to-day partisian fights.

Some of these books are quite controversial. Inclusion in this list does not mean I agree 100% with the book, nor is at an endorsement of everything the author has written.

Without further ado, my own list of worthy reads:

Governance, Politics, and Group Conflict

World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability
In ethnically diverse countries, certain ethnic groups have a tendency to rise to the top economically. If the wealthier ethnic group is a minority, the majority ethnic group often uses their demographic power to launch pogroms, confiscate assets, or worse. World on Fire chronicles a long history of this pattern of attack on market minorities.

The Rule of the Clan: What an Ancient Form of Social Organization Reveals About the Future of Individual Freedom by Mark Weiner
Humans have generally lived in either state-based societies or clan-based societies. This is an overview of how clan based societies function.

Government’s End by Jon Rauch
The author was a Washington D.C. journalist with a close-up view of the failures of both the Clinton healthcare plan and the Gingrich revolution. He makes a compelling argument for why politics is actually broken: the small concentrated interest always wins over the general interest. Democracy is not really the rule by the majority – but rule by hundreds of small factions, each stealing from the public pie.

Hardball: How Politics Is Played Told By One Who Knows The Game
An entertaining overview of some of the inside stories and calculated politics that went on in Washington from the 1970s through the 90s. The lessons given are applicable far outside of politics. My favorite chapter: Don’t get mad, don’t get even, get ahead. Sage advice for the modern world.

What it Takes: The Way to the White House
An account of the political campaign of the 1988 election that reads like a novel.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott
A chronicle of schemes by those who wielded power to organize, categorize, and rationalize the entire society. For instance, we own our own names to the needs of state tax collectors. Some such schemes worked, but others ended in disaster, as they wrecked the organic fabric that makes society function.

Nick Szabo’s Essays
An enlightening set of essays, on topics such as the origin of money or the development of property rights.

Jim’s Liberty Library by James Donald
A collection of essays from various authors on the subject of liberty. Have you heard the term “natural law” but wondered what it means, and if it still has relevance in a secular world? This collection contains a great explanation.

Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence by Dale Peterson and Richard Wrangham
Traces the origins of human violence by studying our ape relatives. It turns out that explaining why males go to war against other males is not difficult: war happens because it works. This book describes how gangs of Chimpanzee systematically murder other tribes in order to take over territory and steal females. The book also examines other apes, such as Gorillas and Orangatangs, and theorizes about why Bonobos differ from Chimpanzees. Overall, this is essential reading for understand human violence.

America: History and Government

The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 by Bernard Bailyn
A history of North America during the 1600s. An incredible tale of violence and bloodshed. Turns out, your grade school history was highly sanitized.

Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer
Traces the unique origins and culture of the four different Anglo groups that settled North America – the Puritans, the Cavaliers, the Scots-Irish, and the Quakers. Shows how the cultural divisions that exist in modern America trace their roots back to the various regions of England. There are hundreds of fascinating details and anecdotes about the early history of these American peoples.

Life of John Marshall by Albert Beveridge John Marshall was one of the most important early Americans, and he was in the midst of nearly every event in its early history: he fought in the early battles of the American revolution; survived Vally Forge; defended the new Constitutions when its approval was being debated in the Virginia legistlature; was a close ally of Washington; helped lead a militia to suppress revolts against the early federal government; and as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court handed down many important decisions for the early republic. Not only is this a biography, this is a complete history of early America, in which you see the lives and conflicts of the time in full color.

Outre Mer: Impressions of America by Paul Bourget
A French traveler’s account of the United States in the 1890s. This book is the closest thing possible to hopping in a time machine back to a century ago.

Master of the Senate/Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro
A masterful account of the rise of President Lyndon Johnson, covering his takeover of the Senate. The book reveals the machinations Lyndon used to obtain and manipulate the levers of power. It also provides a window to the politics and history of the time period.

The Power Broker : Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro
The central political myth of our time is that politicians are in charge. In fact, unelected bureaucrats wield massive amounts of power. This book is the biography of one such bureaucrat, Robert Moses, who used his position to transform the roads and infrastructure of New York City during the middle of the 20th century.

Out of Bondage by Elizabeth Bentley
The memoirs of an American communist agent, who was involved in conspiracies at the highest level. This is a riveting real-life spy tale. It tells a history that is often ignored – there was in fact a communist conspiracy, and it did touch the highest levels of American government.

Oxford History of the American People, 1965 edition, by Samuel Eliot Morison
A general history of the United States, giving a detailed overview of all the milestone events and people. If you find you have big gaps in your basic knowledge of American history, this book is a good one to give you the basics. This is history as it was written before recent progressive/liberal revisionism. It is a good book to use as a base, and then you can dig further and read both the more reactionary and more liberal critiques and revisions. But starting with liberal revisionism and only reading modern liberal revisionism, as is now common in high schools and colleges, will leave you with a very warped sense of American history.

Other Traveler’s Accounts of American History
Outre Mer is the best travelers account I have read, but there are other fine ones too. Traveler accounts are the closest thing we have to the reports of time-travelers, they often pick up on oddities that a native might notice. Some good accounts include Land of the Dollar, Life and Liberty in America by Charles Mackay, Journey to America by Alexis de Tocqueville, American Notes by Charles Dickens, Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties by M Ostrogorski.

Assorted Non-American History

The Europeans by Luigi Barzini
The memoirs of a cosmopolitan traveler and writer, during the years of Europe’s great upheaval. Filled with first-hand accounts of the changes in England, Germany and Italy, going from before World War II up and through the 1970s.

The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century by Robert Roberts
A detailed portrayal of the culture, public life, and home life of the working-class in early 1900s England.

Memoir’s of a Revolutionary by Victor Serge
A first-hand account of the rise of the communist movement in Russia and the course of the Bolshevik revolution.

Holy Madness by Adam Zamoyski
The fall of traditional religion during the enlightenment opened up a new world of radical idealists who wished to build utopias on Earth. This books tells the story of over a dozen revolutions that took place in the Western world from 1770 to 1870. The utter insanity of the time period shows the dark side of The Enlightenment and the Romantic Era.

Understanding Human History by Michael Hart
You have probably read Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel. At the very least you have been marinated in his ideas. Diamond uses pure geography to explain why some civilizations have beat out other civilizations. Michael Hart’s explanation is much more politically incorrect and thus you will never find his book in college book stores or your local library. You can read both Hart and Diamond, and come to your own decision about which scholar’s view seems more compelling.

Outline of History by H.G. Wells
A history of the world from the beginning of time until the end of World War I. If you have big gaps in your basic historical knowledge, reading the relevant chapters of this book is a quick way to fill them in. The prose and structure is a lot more engaging than a typical wikipedia article. It tells history as a story, rather than a set of facts.

Africa: A Biography of the Continent
Both a history of the origins of the human race, and of Africa and its people up to recent times. Contains fascinating insight on how the unique geography of Africa restricted the domain and development of humans in ways not found on other continents.

China in World History by S A M Adshead, Reshmi Dutta-Flanders
A history of China much heavier on “insight porn” rather than tedious details. Recommended by one of the biggest China experts that I know.

A History of Rome From Its Origins to A.d. 529, As Told By the Roman Historians by M Hadas
A short, 232 page history of Rome created by combining excerpts of Roman historians. It’s not a replacement for reading the historians themselves, but it will at least get you started on your understanding of Roman history.

Man, Women and Family

Models: Attract Women Through Honesty by Mark Manson
A guide for single men on how to attract women. While the book incorporates insights from the “game” community, it puts an emphasis on genuine self-improvement rather than telling readers to simply perform a shtick.

Married Man’s Sex Life Primer by Athol Kay
A guide for men in relationships on how to both establish harmony at home and keep the spark the alive.

Why Men Rule: A Theory of Male Dominance by Steve Goldberg
“The first edition of this book was lavishly praised by many authorities as the most formidable demonstration of an unpopular truth: males rule in all societies known to history or anthropology, for reasons arising from innate physiology, a brute fact that can never be conjured away by tinkering with social institutions. This new edition has been completely rewritten in the light of two decades of scholarship and debate, taking account of all published criticisms of earlier editions.”

Economics & Finance

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
This is a broad introduction to all economic concepts, from a very pro-free-market perspective (a perspective I find to be largely correct). If you know nothing about economics, or have never read a proud defense of capitalism and free markets, then this is a good place to start.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre
Fictionalized memoir of trader Jesse Livermore from the 1920s. This book is an entertaining read and it contains timeless lessons about the psychology of markets. But keep in mind that Lefèvre ultimately lost his fortune – so do not use him as a how-to guide.

Hedge Fund Market Wizards: How Winning Traders Win by Jack Schwager
A collection of interviews with investors and traders who made boatloads of money. Great, informative stories.

The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are (Still) Going Broke by Elizabeth Warren
Warren argues that when women entered the work force, the increased incomes of parents simply means they bid up the price of housing. Turns out that discretionary income of for families has not risen at all.

Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis
A time machine that takes you to the rise of the financial industry in the 1980s. An entertaining read.

The Great Depression: A Diary by Benjamin Roth
A time machine back to the years of the Great Depression.

A Random Walk Down Wall Street
Explains why trying to beat the market will most likely result in severe underperformance. Provides a simple investing strategy for the ordinary investor.

Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A book of incredible breadth, covering everything from economics to lifestyle choices to urban planning to technology. His central framework of trying to identify situations with convex outcomes (for good or bad) is extremely useful. Note that this is far from a perfect book. His tone can be annoying and smug and his advice sometimes seems more on the side of being self-serving, convenient, or simplistic rather than being completely truthful. But many things he say are both novel and true, and so the book is very much worth reading.

Fiction

Dune by Frank Herbert
A grand tale of wars and power struggles in the desert planet of Arrakis. Fantastic and imaginative world building.

The Foundation Saga
The great psychohistorian Hari Seldon has predicted that the empire will fall. A small foundation must be established to preserve and rebuild civilization. The book has a great premise and a fun, engaging story. It is more of a young adult fiction book, as the characters are simple, and the worldview is quite naive (I feel much harm has been done by academics that try to do psychohistory in real life). But overall, it has lots of interesting ideas, and is a fun, fast read.

Wool and the rest of the Silo Series by Hugh Howey An original tale, an intriguing and mysterious world, fascinating ideas, realistic and complex characters, and strong pacing that keeps you turning the page – this series is everything you could want from a work of fiction.

Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
A Wall Street bond salesman in the go-go 1980s runs into trouble when he is involved in a hit-and-run with a black teenager. This fictional story explores the themes of many news stories of the last few years, ranging from the corruption in Wall Street finance to the eruptions over the shooting of Trayvon Martin. But this book gets all the more credit for being written decades before those events happened. Tom Wolfe is an author who does his homework. He sat alongside bond-traders as research for the novel. The result is a fictional story that provides a window into real world dynamics.

Song of Fire and Ice (A Game of Thrones)
Two things to love about these books: First, when somebody does something stupid that should get themselves killed, they actually die. Second, the perils and pitfalls of leadership are portrayed in full. Unlike in most fantasy, a king does not have power simply by the fact of holding the scepter and having the title king. Maintaining the allegiance of vassals, building alliances, not being deceived by the courtiers – all these are part of the precarious and unending task of leadership. The books are also a good yarn of wars, magic, and dragons. Unfortunately, the novels lose steam after book three, at which point I stopped reading.

Human Nature and Psychology

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Explore the evolutionary and genetic logic that determines behavior in the animal kingdom. Animals face a wide array of choices: to fight, bluster, or run away; to cry to mom for food, or to stay silent so as to not alert predators; to fight with siblings or to share; to take care of a baby or to abandon it. All these behaviors can be understood better by understanding the logic of the selection of genes.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
Robert Cialdini studied combined studies of modern marketing with lessons from history into a book on how people are influenced. The knowledge in this book can help you both advance your interests and avoid being manipulated.

JayMan’s Blog Archives
JayMan’s blog focuses on a taboo subject: the role genes play in determining the differences in human behavior. His posts review the latest statistics and research about how genes impact everything from IQ gaps, to obesity, to child development, to political leanings. In my opinion, he can go a bit far in explaining everything with genes. But the topic is so under explored by mainstream sources, that reading his blog is a worthwhile corrective.

The Bell Curve by Charles Murray
The modern world allows great wealth to be created by and captured by those who are experts at manipulating abstract concepts. But this ability is not distributed equally. Charles Murray surveys the research on how IQ is linked to both income and other life outcomes. He shows that disparities in cognitive traits are a central fact that underlie much social phenomena of our time. This book provoked a public outcry when it came out. You can read the most sophisticated counter-attacks via the book Scientists respond to the Bell Curve. You can read rejoinders to the rejoinders in this long article, The Bell Curve, 20 Years After. My own take is that critics of The Bell Curve mainly point out the statistical limits to our degree of certainty – limits which Murray mostly already acknowledged. The critiques do not prove the overall conclusions wrong, much less do they prove the opposite conclusions. Statistics are always imperfect, but I tend to agree with Murray’s conclusions since (a) the raw data so overwhelmingly supports his theses, and (b) his conclusions match what I have personally observed in life.

Sociological Eye Blog Archives by Randall Collins
An assortment of fascinating articles, including: a theory of shooting spree killers, a discussion of the charisma of Lawrence of Arabia, and an analysis of why the Mona Lisa is so intriguing.

Career Skills

How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie
While the methods in the book can be overused, the general advice is sound. Every modern worker needs to know how to get points across without aggravating their boss, coworker, or client.

The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker
Just published recently, I found this to be a far more useful guide to writing than the more commonly recommended Elements of Style.

Lifestyle

Reddit Fitness Wiki, FAQ, and Community
If you want to lose weight, get into shape, and build a body you are proud of, the Reddit Fitness FAQ has you covered. Fitness is made much more complicated than it needs to be, because people are always looking for shortcuts. Reddit Fitness tells you how it is, with knowledge based off of hundreds of people posting their personal transformations. Join the community and get inspired and motivated.

365 Slow Cooker Suppers by Stephanie O’Dea
Slow cookers are an amazing life-upgrade. Prepare a week’s worth of delicious food with minimal effort and cost.

Education

The Long Crusade: Profiles in Education Reform, 1967-2014 by Raymond Wolters
A comprehensive and realistic overview of all the reform efforts in American education over the past fifty years. This should be mandatory reading for anyone in education policy – if you want to change the system, you need to understand where all the previous reformers went wrong.

The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of School Desegregation The Brown v. Board of Education decision is one of the most famous in American history. So what happened to all the schools that were impacted by court-ordered desgregation? Professor Wolters tells us the stories.

Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform Schooling in the United States has changed dramatically, in its goals, in its execution, over the past hundred fifty years. Diane Ravitch tells the story.

The World We Created at Hamilton High by Gerald Grant
The story of an American high school during the 1960s and 1970s, it covers topics such as integration, race relations, and the transformation of schools from the more staid and disciplinarian attitudes and policies of the 1950s to the looser attitudes of the 1970s. Crucial for understanding how our schools changed so much from the 1950s to today.

Startups, Business, and Management

Paul Graham’s Essays
After building and selling his own startup, Paul Graham founded a startup accelerator that has funded hundreds of startups. He is the world expert in the startup business, and his essays are all worth reading. Be warned though – much of what he writes has now become conventional wisdom, which means it is no longer enough to give you an edge.

Y Combinator Startup Library
A list of worthy readings from the premier startup accelerator.

Startup Class by Y Combinator president Sam Altman
The president of the investment firm Y Combinator taught a class at Stanford covering every aspect of running a startup. He invited in dozens of speakers, who in turn covered areas ranging from management, to marketing, to finding investors, to product development.

The Hard Things About Hard Things
A gritty account of being a startup CEO. Contains lots of nuts and bolts advice about problems that are not typically covered in the business literature, such as how to prevent politics in your company, or what to do when a star achiever stops working hard.

Zero to One by Peter Thiel
Based on a Stanford class that investor and former PayPal founder Peter Thiel taught about startups. Filled with insight and advice.

Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by Gabriel Weinberg
Compendium of dozens of techniques that startups have used to market themselves. Lays out a simple methodology for figuring out how to market your own product.

The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes
Not only is this one of the better books on sales, but it also contains great tips on management, productivity, and self-motivation. Be aware though, that some of the sales tactics may be outdated and off-putting when targeting more modern or sophisticated customers.

Marc Andreessen’s Startup Blog Posts
Andreessen founded Netscape and Opsware, and now runs a premier venture capital firm. This archive contains his best advice about startups and business.

Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston
A collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days.

Autopsy - Lessons from Failed Startups
Links to dozens of startup post-mortems in which founders and employees recount why their startup failed.

Venture Deals: Be Smarter than your Lawyer and your Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld
Comprehensive guide to the nuts and bolts of putting together a venture capital deal.

Great Deeds

The Anabasis by Xenophon
10,000 Greek warriors were hired by a Persian prince to help him fight a civil war. When the prince dies in battle, the Greeks must fight their way back through Persia to return to their homeland. Their leader, Xenophon, tries to hold the men together as they encounter challenge after challenge.

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolf
Story of the astronauts who participated in the early space program.

Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed by Ben Rich
Inside look at the Lockheed-Martin division that built some of the finest planes ever, including the U2 spy plane and the SR-71 Blackbird (the first plane to go Mach 5). These planes have not been surpassed, even today.

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
Tales from the early days of Google.

Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft
How Microsoft created a new operating system from scratch – Windows NT – which ultimately became Windows XP and the basis for their operating systems going forward.

“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character
The memoirs of the world renown physicists. Filled with tips on being smarter and insights about life.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb*
From an Amazon review: ‘“The Making of the Atomic Bomb” is a richly detailed epic, a table-shaking beast of a book that frequently sent me on evening walks to ponder and process the last few chapters I’d read. This is more than just a book about Hiroshima, Oppenheimer, and the Manhattan Project. We get an in-depth look at the early history of atomic physics, the personalities of key scientists, politicians, and military leaders, the complex political and military issues surrounding the bomb’s development and use, and the historic and social events that shaped its creation. This is NOT a beach read - better put aside two weeks and plenty of undivided attention before tackling it!’

Social Problems

Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy
An L.A. Times journalist reports from the front-lines of crime-wracked Watts and Compton about interactions between the police and the neighborhood. The book contains a vivid portrayal of both the people committing the violence, and the police dealing with the aftermath.

American Millstone: An Examination of the Nation’s Permanent Underclass
A collection of articles from the Chicago Tribune in the 1980’s about the plight of the black underclass.

American Police Systems by Raymond Fosdick
Fosdick extensively studied both the European and American police systems during the 1910s. His findings about the problems of crime and bad law enforcement are still relevant today. His critique of the American crime problem could, unfortunately, be applied to today without needing much updating. Chapter 2 and Chapter 10 are especially topical and interesting.

Devil’s Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit by Ze’Ev Chafets
A writer born in Detroit returns to the city after being away for decades. A wrenching account of what the city once was, and what it has become.

Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980, by Charles Murray
An exposition of how the social policy of the 1950s and 60s broke up families and enabled the great rise in crime. A good statistical companion to read along with American Millstone. (I recommend American Millstone if you only have time to read just one).

Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh
A University of Chicago grad student walks into a dangerous housing project, starts following around a local gang leader, and writes about the experience.

Classics

(I have gone light on the classics here, since I don’t have anything especially unique to contribute. If you want more good ones, the late Larry Auster had a great annotated reading list of the classics)

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon*
We who live under the umbrella of the American hegemony, can benefit from reading of the decline and fall of one the great past empires.

The Peloponessian War by Thucydides One of the first real histories ever written. Written by a general who lived through the events, it covers the war between Athens and Sparta in the 400s BC.

The Rise of the Roman Empire by Polybius* Learn about the rise of one of histories great empires from someone who was there and actively involved.

Lives by Plutarch*
From Larry Auster: “All the Lives that I have read are good, but for some reason the life of Marcus Crassus (the member of the First Triumvirate who defeated the Spartacus slave rebellion) made the strongest impression. The spectacle of a successful, extremely wealthy, powerful man, suddenly in middle age getting a brainstorm to win glory and empire and going off to Mesopotamia to fight the Persians and ending up defeated, humiliated, and dead.”

The Bible
It has tales of our most ancient history, wisdom and moral codes that echo down through the ages, and is the base text of three of world’s great religions. This is essential reading for any educated person.

The Iliad and the Odyssey*
The earliest tales from our Western tradition.

The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
One of the first great works of English literature, and also a window into that time period.

Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard II, King Lear by Shakespeare Great literature, chocked with insights about human nature, and an essential part of our Anglo-American heritage.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen A portal into the world of the 19th century.

The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A first-hand account of the terror and purges of early Soviet Russia.

Nicomachean Ethics and Politics by Aristotle*
Aristotle was one of the first great philosophers, he had hundreds of data-points to work with from observing Greek cities, and his ideas on virtue and politics still hold up today.

American Political Classics

50 Core American Documents: Required Reading for Students, Teachers, and Citizens
These are the documents that form the basis of our modern American government. They are often cited and often debated. If you want to be involved in these debates, you really must read the originals so that you can make your own judgements about their interpretations.

Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson*
Jefferson is one of the most influential thinkers of the early American Republic, and his ideas set the tone for much that would follow. Read him in his own words.

Alexander Hamilton: Writings*
Hamilton represents the great Federalist thinker of the early Republic, and the great opponent of Jefferson. Between reading him and Jefferson you can get a full sense of how the founding generation thought about the American experiment.

Counter-Whig History

In America, we are heirs to Whig history. The Whig interpretation of history is a four hundred year narrative in which Western civilization progressed from the darkness of monarchy, aristocracy, stasis, inequality, bigotry, and anti-empiricism, toward a world of freedom, democracy, progress, equality, and scientific enlightenment. All mainstream history today is Whig history. Even conservative history, as interpreted by the National Review or Heritage Foundation, is 99% Whig history, with only dissent when it comes to the most recent events and revisionism. For instance, no mainstream conservative is openly on the side of the Tories or Loyalists on the question of the American Revolution.

Not only is Whig history the official narrative, we rarely even read the views of the non-Whigs. Whether we take a typical AP History class or endure the Yale Directed Studies survey course, we do not read what the losers and reactionaries had to say.

One hypothesis is that the Whigs were in fact the good guys, and good has consistently prevailed over evil. A second hypothesis is that the Whigs were almost always the bad guys, and that evil routinely triumphs over good, and then writes histories to make their faction not seem so evil. A third hypothesis is that sometimes the Whigs were the good guys, sometimes they were the bad guys. Sometimes they won, sometimes they did not. But whoever won wrote the history books, and painted themselves as good guys, painted themselves as the friends of liberty and equality, painted themselves as heirs to the Whig tradition, whether it was true or not.

If you genuinely love history, I encourage you to sample some readings from the other side, the losers, the non-Whigs. As you read, keep the all three hypotheses above in mind. On events ranging from the English Civil War, to the American Revolution, to World War I, to the Red Scare, it is time to hear the other side of the story, the side of the story that you never before read. You may end up eventually renewing your faith in Whig-history – but at least by reading the other side your views will now be in full color. You will have replaced the cartoon version of history’s bad guys with a three-dimensional version.

The Counter-Whig history tour guides

Our starting place for counter-whig history is the blog Unqualified Reservations, written by a pseudonymous character by the name of Mencius Moldbug. Moldbug grew up with inside knowledge of American government – his father worked in the foreign service, his mother was a high official in the energy department, his step-dad was a Capitol Hill staffer. After success at a startup, he took a multi-year sabbatical, during which he spent $500 a month on old books. During this period, he single-handedly created the field of counter-whig studies.

Here are some of his posts that are most approachable. Be warned, some people find Mencius too long-winded, and find that he makes too many weird sci-fi references. If you find him unreadable, perhaps try one of the books from the General Counter-Whig History series below:

Introductory Moldbug Posts

• How I Stopped Believing in Democracy
• An Actual Letter to a Liberal Friend
• The iron polygon: power in the United States
• Why there’s no such thing as “liberal media bias”
• Mediocracy: definition, etiology and treatment
• Secession, liberty, and dictatorship
• From Cromer to Romer and back again: colonialism for the 21st century
• Our planet is infested with pseudo-atheists
• Castes of the United States
• The BDH-OV Conflict

Moldbug Sequences

Once you have a sample above, I recommend reading one of his multi-post sequences:

• An open letter to open-minded progressives
• A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservation.

Both are also available as ebooks (here and here).

There is vast trove of additional posts, go to the following web page to get a full index categorized by subject: http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/

Foseti’s Books Reviews

A second tour guide is the blogger Foseti. The best way to sample him is by doing a google search for book reviews on his web site, and then picking through ones that seem interesting.

General Counter-Whig Histories

Holy Madness by Adam Zamoyski
The fall of traditional religion during the enlightenment opened up a new world of radical idealists who wished to build utopias on Earth. This books tells the story of over a dozen revolutions that took place in the Western world from 1770 to 1870. The utter insanity of the time period shows the dark side of The Enlightenment and the Romantic Era.

Understanding Human History by Michael Hart
You have probably read Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel. At the very least you have been marinated in his ideas. Diamond uses pure geography to explain why some civilizations have beat out other civilizations. Michael Hart’s explanation is much more politically incorrect and thus you will never find his book in college book stores or your local library. You can read both Hart and Diamond, and come to your own decision about which scholar’s view seems more compelling.

Popular Government by Henry Sumner Maine
Written by a 19th century British jurist and historian, this book is an analysis and critique of democratic government. His view is that outside of Britain and America, democracy has been an unstable and ephemeral form of government.

Liberty or Equality by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Kuehnelt-Leddihn marshals the strongest possible case that democratic equality is the very basis not of liberty, as is commonly believed, but the total state. He uses national socialism as his prime example. He further argues the old notion of government by law is upheld in old monarchies, restrained by a noble elite. Aristocracy, not democracy, gave us liberty.

Leftism: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse
“Kuehnelt seeks to redefine the political spectrum. His background as an Austrian nobleman gives him a perspective on politics that is very different and unique compared with the vast majority of Americans. Kuehnel also openly writes from a Roman Catholic viewpoint and pro-Christian viewpoint. He defines as ”leftist“ as any movement that emphasizes ”identitarianism“ (i.e. sameness) and either the total rule of the state or ”the will of the people“ over the populace’s affairs.”

On power, its nature and the history of its growth by Bertrand de Jouvenel
Jouvenel frames history as a conflict between centralized power and local power. The essential conflict is the high (central power) promising the masses that it can free them from the oppression of the middle (aristocrats, Church, clan authority, village leaders, etc.) But when central power wins, the masses find themselves with a new master, and one that is not necessarily better.

The Machiavellians by James Burham
Burham argues that it is the cynics and realists who protect freedom – not the naive idealists.

World Wars

Wedeymer Reports by Albert Wedemeyer
“I’m not sure there’s anybody who can better help us understand what happened during World War II than General Albert C. Wedemeyer. He was involved in the planning of the European strategy at the highest levels. Before the conclusion of the war in Europe, however, he was sent to China to lead the US efforts. As he puts it, “many American officers were to experience the close-up phases of warfare more intensively than I, but few were to have my opportunities to see the whole war.” And to talk strategy with Churchill, FDR, Chiang Kai-shek, the Chicom leaders, and many others.”

World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals by Murray Rothbard
“It is not an exaggeration to say that the progressive movement during the late 1800s and early 1900s was the story of an insane religious cult taking over the American institutions of power. Murray Rothbard makes a compelling case.”

Road to War 1914-1917 by Walter Millis
Walter Millis worked mainly as a newspaperman for the New York Herald Tribune, and wrote books about current affairs, especially world conflicts. In this book he looks at the United States from the time war was declared in Europe in 1914 up until the time the US got involved in the fighting herself. He doesn’t much like what he sees. Although America declared neutrality at the beginning of hostilities in Europe, she was actually supporting the side of the Entente (England, France, Italy) from the start. Thus, while most of the country didn’t want America in the war and President Wilson had promised to keep the country out of it, because the country had from the beginning “chosen one side over the other,” she was inextricably drawn in.

How Diplomats Make War by Francis Neilson
This was written by a member of the British Parliament in 1915. He resigned shortly after publishing it. “Neilson’s thesis was that Germany didn’t bear some unique guilt for the war; there was plenty of blame to go around, but ultimately its rests with the arms buildup and secret diplomacy of Britain. His reconstruction of the history of 19th-century diplomacy provides incredible detail to fill out this thesis, even as he never loses sight of the big picture.”

The Roosevelt Myth by John Flynn
In the liberal view, Roosevelt is the greatest president. Flynn presents the complete opposite view, arguing that Roosevelt was closer to a mendacious, corrupt dictator who brought centralized, near tyrannical government to the United States. He sometimes goes overboard with argument, but his book is a necessary corrective to the usual hagiographies.

The 20th Century Anglo-American History

Out of Bondage by Elizabeth Bentley
The memoirs of an American communist agent, who was involved in conspiracies at the highest level. This is a riveting real-life spy tale. It tells a history that is often ignored – there was in fact a communist conspiracy, and it did touch the highest levels of American government.

Chronicles of Wasted Time by Malcolm Muggeridge
Muggeridge had a front row seat to the great events of the 20th Century. He hob nobbed in high places in British society, was a foreign correspondant in Stalin’s Russia, traveled through Nazi Germany, and fought in the British military during war. His story is one of continual disillusionment with his previous socialist ideals.

Radical Son by David Horowitz
Horowitz went to Berkeley, published Ramparts and published other progressive works with Peter Collier. He also fell in with the Black Panthers and particularly with Huey Newton. Soon, his political transformation. As he tells it in the book, the transformation was essentially a realization that the New Left was no different than the Old Left. If there was one turning point for Horowitz, it came when the Panthers killed his friend (and Panther member) Betty Van Porter. Just as the Old Left protected horrible crimes, so was the New Left.

Radical Chic and Mau Mauing the Catch-flakkers by Tom Wolfe
“These are two long essays dealing with Race in America in the late 1960’s. Radical Chic is the more famous of the two. Imagine the scene as Leonard Bernstien and his wife throw a cocktail party in their posh Manhattan Apartment with members of the Black Panther Party as the guests of honor. Wolfe was present at this strange event and offers a play by play of how Radical became all the Chic in the New York social scene…briefly.”

Memoirs of a Superfluous Man by Albert J. Nock
“Albert Jay Nock, perhaps the most brilliant American essayist of the 20th century, and certainly among its most important libertarian thinkers, set out to write his autobiography but he ended up doing much more. He presents here a full theory of society, state, economy, and culture, and does so almost inadvertently.”

Detroit an American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff
“Back in his broken hometown, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Charlie LeDuff searches through the ruins for clues to its fate, his family’s, and his own. Detroit is where his mother’s flower shop was firebombed in the pre-Halloween orgy of arson known as Devil’s Night; where his sister lost herself to the west side streets; where his brother, who once sold subprime mortgages with skill and silk, now works in a factory cleaning Chinese-manufactured screws so they can be repackaged as ‘May Be Made in United States.’”

Slaughter of the Cities by Michael Jones
From the 1940s through the 1990s, many of the major cities in America lost half their population, and often 60-90% of their white population. What happened? Michael Jones writes an account of the minority WASP elite using urban renewal to break up white ethnic neighborhoods, and destroy Catholic ethnics as a political power.

It Didn’t Start At Watergate
“The press has been, and still is, more likely to cover the failings of their ideological opponents. As Lasky continually illustrates, media favorites were seldom scrutinized and never were these miscreants taken to task. Documented throughout with private testimony, Commitee testimony, news accounts and some government agency reports, Lasky’s reportage dips far back into the vindictive actions of Franklin Roosevelt. We are led through the Truman administration into both the unethical and illegal acts of the Kennedys. Finally capping this accounting of dirty tricks with a near out of control LBJ. Many of the lesser participants are studied.”

Pre-1900 Anglo-American History

Behemoth by Thomas Hobbes
“The dialogue opens with the student asking the master how it was that a monarch as strong as Charles I should ever have had to face a rebellion. The master relates that a growing opposition to the crown was promoted by seven factions, each of them for their own ends and not in concert, who stoked the fires of rebellion. These factions were: Papists, Presbyterians, Independents including other sects of religious faith, those who were corrupted by their reading of the Latin and Greek classics, centres of commerce and trade such as London, those with no means of support who saw the war as a way to profit, and the lack of understanding as to the important role played by the monarchy in society.”

True History of the American Revolution by Sydney George Fisher
Written in 1906, it presents the history of the American Revolution from a more even-handed perspective than I am used to reading. The resulting history is more believable than the classic story and, in many ways, more interesting. The most interesting aspect of the “true” history is that Mr Fisher paints the struggle which we commonly view as between England and America as a struggle between Whigs and Tories. Initially, the English troops were led by General Howe, while the navy was led by his brother, Admiral Howe. Both were committed Whigs. Whigs, at the time, were sympathetic to American independence. Chapter 8, on the American Reign of Terror, is also fascinating reading, as this part of history is normally left out of the civics class version.

Democracy and the Party System in the United States by Moisey Ostrogorsky
There is a lot of myth-making about our great democratic traditions in America. This colorful account of democratic politics in the 19th century shows that the truth about democracy was very different than the civics class version.

Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction

Shall Cromwell have a statue? and Tis Sixty Years Since by Charles Francis Adams Jr.
Charles Francis Adams Jr.’s bio includes: being born the grandson of president John Quincy Adams; graduating from Harvard, fighting in the civil war on the side of the Union; earning the rank of colonel; running the Union Pacific Railroad; chairing the Massachusetts Park Commission; and serving as president of the American Historical Association. These two pieces describe his reflections and views on the Civil War, with the perspective of many decades gone by.

Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made by Eugene Genovese
“In his best-known book Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974), Genovese examined the society of the slaves. This book won the national Bancroft Prize in History. Genovese viewed the antebellum South as a closed and organically united paternalist society that exploited and attempted to dehumanize the slaves. Genovese paid close attention to the role of religion as a form of resistance in the daily life of the slaves because slaves used it to give themselves a sense of humanity. He placed paternalism at the center of the master-slave relationship. Both masters and slaves embraced paternalism, though for different reasons and with varying notions of what paternalism meant.”

Reconstruction in South Carolina by Daniel Chamberlain
A southern view of reconstruction written in 1901. Chamberlain denounces reconstruction as being the act of partisans and selfish politicans, who wished to use corrupt means to buy the black vote, looted the state treasuries, and tried to ensure a permanent national Republican majority.

Colonialism, Post-Colonialism and Third World

The English in the West Indies; or, The bow of Ulysses by James Anthony Froude
The Victorian era historian, James Froude, tours the British West Indies and gives his thoughts on British colonialism.

Robbery Under Law by Evelyn Waugh
Written in 1939, Waugh describes the descent of Mexico into a third-world mess. “So party politics were introduced with pleasant expectations of candidates competing with benevolent projects and a party loyalty finding expression in coloured rosettes and rotten eggs. The result has been twenty-five years of graft, bloodshed and bankruptcy.”

Chief of Station Congo by Lawrence Devlin
This book is the memoir of the American CIA station chief in the Congo during and after independence. He describes a country that instantly descends into chaos and farce, which is completely devoid of any type of leadership.

Bitter Harvest by Ian Smith
Ian Smith was the last president of Rhodesia, before it turned into Zimbabwe. Here he tells his own side of the story, of how his country was betrayed by the international community, with ultimately disastorous results.

Freedom at Midnight
Foseti writes: “I’ve been searching for good history books on India or China for a long time. This book is the first one I’ve read that I would call good. The book is a history of the end of British rule in India and the creation of the modern states of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The story is told through people: Mountbatten, Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah (possibly Patel, as well) are the main characters whom the story revolves around.”

From Third World to First: The Singapore Story by Lee Kuan Yew
The former dictator of Singapore tells his own account of how Singapore transformed into one of the richest and most orderly states in the world.

1. Numbers such as GDP or CPI should be treated as subjective judgements, produced by political actors subject to biases and pressure. They are not as objective facts about the world. Regard the GDP number as having the same truth-value as an opinion survey of government economists.
2. GDP numbers are the beginning of an argument. If GDP numbers conflict with someone’s subjective judgement, one must consider whether the GDP numbers are fudged or leave out some important aspect of quality of life. Debates over the “real” value of GDP or CPI are silly, because quality of life judgements cannot be reduced to a number.
3. For all the practical purposes for which GDP is used, better numbers exist or could be devised.

Composition Problems

The Bureau of Economic Analysis calculates Nominal GDP by totaling the dollar expenditures of every person and organization in the United States. Note that the Nominal GDP number is a measure of the supply and velocity of money – it has nothing to do with the production of goods.

The government adjusts changes in Nominal GDP (the total expenditures/income of the nation) by the change in a price index to create a number known as Real GDP. This is the number that supposedly measures economic growth.

The first problem with Real GDP is the composition of the price index. This problem alone is big enough to invalidate use of GDP as a metric. To create a price index, the statisticians create a basket of goods, then track changes in the prices of those goods. This basket changes over time as consumers buy different products over time.

The trouble is that the basket excludes a) all goods that are produced but not traded and b) all goods that the economy can no longer produce at all, for whatever reason.

There is a famous example from Paul Samuelson who noted that if a man married his maid, then, all else being equal, GDP would fall. Or if a nanny has a child and quits her nanny job to take care of that child, GDP falls, despite the total amount of child care being produced remaining the exact same.

The most glaring absence from the “goods basket” is leisure time. And in fact any non-economic good is excluded: working on the house, taking care of children, doing private research, writing a book to distribute for free over the Internet. Nor is the quality of goods measured. Every time I walk down the main street of my city, I lament how every new building is so ugly and drab, compared to the gorgeous ornamental work of the buildings 100 years ago. GDP does not tell us how much we have lost in our ability to create beautiful buildings.

Futurists in the 1800s used to imagine that as society grew richer, people would work short weeks and dedicate most of their time to leisure, learning and the arts. In such a scenario, GDP would actually be stagnant or declining, as GDP statistics would not measure increased leisure. In policy circles, officials think that greater GDP is always good. But we have no idea if that is actually the case – we might be better off under scenarios where GDP is falling.

The astute reader may object, “But GDP is not trying to be a measure of well being, it is supposed to be a measure of output, to be weighed in policy decisions against other factors.” But this retort is incorrect. GDP does try to measure of well being because there is entire system of “hedonics” and quality adjustments built into the price index. These hedonic measure try to measure how much the good has improved well being.

GDP does not measure actual output of real goods. It just measures money flows and changes in a price index. If the entire industrial base atrophies, manufacturing disappears, and a country survives off of exporting its currency like 16th century Spain, the GDP and CPI statistics will not reveal the problem until it is far too late to fix.

Finally, economists and policy wonks do in fact unthinkingly focus on raising GDP without considering whether it ought to be raised. Just pick up a random academic economics paper or read a Federal Reserve report to Congress. These documents mostly discuss what factors or policies will raise Real GDP. They never discuss the scenarios in which raising GDP is actually desirable. The policy papers rarely concern the trade-offs with other factors such as leisure time, commute time, community, environment, etc. These cannot be measured, and thus get excluded from policy considerations.

Exports and Imports

The price index used by GDP excludes all imported goods. This has some logic to it. The U.S. GDP number is supposed to measure the output of the U.S. If the U.S. imports all its wool, and the price of wool rises due to a sheep epidemic in Australia, then the rising cost of wool does not represent a decline in American output.

But the logic of excluding import prices collapses upon further inspection. Imagine a nation has a thriving export industry making airplanes. The U.S. manufactures and exports the planes to Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia ships back oil. Now let us say that due to bad management the quality of American airplanes declines. Saudi Arabia switches to buying European made Airbus planes, and the American companies go out of business. What will happen? Nominal national income (NGDP) in dollars of the U.S. will be the same (remember, nominal national Income is simply a measure of the supply of dollars and people’s desire for cash balances, it has nothing to do with goods produced). The price of oil will rise significantly. The U.S. has fewer desired export goods to exchange for oil and thus the dollar must weaken against Saudi’s currency. The price of other goods will rise a bit due to increased oil costs, but not as much. Thus if you exclude oil from the price index, you would miss out on a huge huge drop in the production of quality export goods. And in fact, this has happened over the last decade as GDP continues to climb despite the relative lagging of the U.S. manufacturing base.

So we have good reasons for excluding imports from the price index, and good reasons for including imports. Which is correct? The economist at the Bureau of Economic Analysis tries to patch it up the best they can, and kludge a number together.

The reasonable person must admit: “We do not know.” We cannot reduce a nations output to a single number. Any attempt to do so will simply combine dozens of different assumptions that will react or cancel each other out in weird ways, giving you a resulting number that is completely useless.

And we are still not done yet.

Substitutions

If the price of steak rises, consumers will shift their consumption to another good, perhaps ground beef, chicken or tofu. This will in turn change the weightings used by the CPI and GDP, so that the more expensive good, now being consumed less, will get weighted less. The CPI allows limited substitution, while the GDP is a full substitution index. These different assumptions can have dramatic differences in the resulting numbers.

The various indexes attempt to correct for these substitutions, but these corrections are impossible. Any attempt to do so is just making up numbers. If, for instance, steak consumption declines as steak prices rises, it is impossible to determine why steak consumption declined and what people switched to. Maybe steak consumption declined because it was found that red meat caused heart disease, and thus peoples quality of life has improved as they are healthier. Perhaps chicken or tofu is a perfectly adequate substiute and people are just as well off as before. Or perhaps consumers stopped eating steak because they could no longer afford steak, and quality of life has in fact declined. No numbers can tell us the answer. The GDP Deflator and CPI make a different choice in how to handle these changes, but neither choice is better than the other.

During a general economic decline, society will gradually lose the ability to produce the goods it once used. For instance, modern buildings lack the gorgeous decorative art of older buildings. Such masonry and art is too expensive to produce, since we sent all our young workers into college to learn how to be businessmen and lawyers instead of being artisans. This decline has made us poorer. But this will not show up in the numbers, since the price of ornamental masonry work will not show up in the GDP deflator calculations.

Infrastructure

The GDP calculation measures the dollar value spent on infrastructure, but does not measure the amount actually produced. If the government pours money down the drain into wasteful and corruption-ridden projects, this will show up in the figures as net production.

The GDP numbers do not include depreciation. So if existing infrastructure is crumbling faster than it gets replaced, GDP might show the country as actually growing while in reality things are falling apart.

If the entire city of Detroit gets destroyed in riots, fires, crime waves, and ethnic cleansing, and is left in ruins, this catastrophe not show up in GDP numbers. In fact, GDP might actually increase since the destruction would spur the creation of new housing (which does show up in the numbers) and the average home price might actually fall (reducing the GDP deflator) due to violence making the neighborhoods unlivable.

Quality and Hedonic Adjustments

Both the Consumer Price Index and GDP deflator rely on adjustments for quality. On the surface, there is some plausibility to these adjustments. Cars have risen in price since 1970, but they have also improved greatly in quality. We now have air bags, crunch zones, better mileage, greater durability, etc. If you just look at price, you may think that purchasing power has dropped when in fact it has risen.

But few of these improvements can be quantified. Try answering for yourself: How much better is a 2010 desktop computer than a 2002 computer? 4.3 times better? 1.7 times better? 20% worse? If you cannot answer this number numerically, for yourself, how can anyone answer it, especially for the entire country?

The 2010 computer has three times the processing power, so is it three times better? But most people will never use this processing power, so for them the quality is the same. Those who hate the latest Windows and swear by Windows XP might argue that the quality has actually declined. The answer is entirely subjective.

The BEA uses several methods for adjusting price indexes based on quality. All of these methods have a surface plausibility, but upon a deeper examination they are completely invalid.

Method one is overlap pricing. For a brief period of the year, an appliance company might sell both the 2009 microwave model and the 2010 model at the same time. The price difference between the models can be used as the hedonic adjustment. This method is complete absurd. New products often sell for more even if they are not really any better. New game consoles sell for huge premiums upon release, but quickly fall in price. A new release movie costs more to see than a movie in a second run theater, that does not mean the new movie is better, it is just novel. With overlap pricing, it is impossible to determine how much of the increased prive is due to the novelty premium and how much is due to real quality improvements. Overlap pricing strategies actually measure the how the producer is extracting profits by charging more to people who show-off their status by buying the latest thing. There is no predictable relationship to overall increase in quality.

Method two is the explicit quality adjustment method in which the government tracks the amount spent on improvements. For instance, if a car company spent $100 per model adding a new support beam for safety, that would be counted as $100 worth of quality improvements. Again, this is invalid. Just because a company spent $x dollars on improvement does not mean it actually increased quality that much. This number also has the potential to exclude various items the car company might subtract from the car. The new oven might have a slick digital interface, but perhaps some of the internal parts have been replaced by plastic. Nor it is easy to distinguish improvements that are marketing gimmicks from actual long term quality improvements. The CPI excludes money spent on cosmetic changes like new paint colors and reshaped bumpers. But take the example of the Lexus that can parallel park itself. Is that a valuable long term quality improvement, or really just a gimmick that allows its rich owner to show off?

Method three is to measure some component of the product - such as processing speed or gas milage – and detect how much it improves. Again, this is often invalid because it is not possible to relate something like processing speed to an overall quality value for the product. Doubling the processing speed of the computer has no hedonic impact on my mother’s ability to send email to her friends.

These problems are not merely academic. Quality adjustments have a dramatic impact on the numbers.

From 1996 to 2010, the average sale price of an American car rose from $16,901 to $23,182 (37%). The Ford Taurus rose in price from $18,545 in 1996 to 25,018 in 2010. The cheapest Ford rose in price from $11,430 (the escort) to $13320 (the Fiesta). The cheapest Honda rose in price from $9,980 (the Civic) to $14,900 (the Fit).

Depending on the measure we use then, the prices of cars rose by 22% to 49%.

Yet from the CPI index for automobiles from January 1996 to April 2010 actually fell’ by 1.5%. In other words, the government decided that the 2011 cars are around 35% better in quality than the 1996 cars.

Compare the 1996 Ford Escort specs to the 2011 Ford Fiesta Specs. The new model has similar gas mileage, no greater trunk space, no more seats. The new model does have more horsepower, but that’s not going to get you to your destination any faster. There of course various improvements – side airbags, antilock breaks, power locks, better crunch zones. But do those advances make the 2011 car 17% better? Or on the other hand – not dying is a really, really valuable thing, so maybe the 2011 is much more than 17% better.

What is amazing though, is that if you restricted your price index to using the straight-up price numbers, and use gas milage, car space, and speed to calculate hedonic changes, then that price index would show that there has been no economic growth in the automobile sector. Growth is wiped out. The assumptions used by the BLS thus create the economic growth. Change the assumptions and you get very different growth numbers. When you hear on the news, “the economy grew by 2% annualized last quarter” remember that behind those numbers are a group of government statisticians subjectively deciding that cars got 2% better.

In other areas, the price index calculations may dramatically understate improvements in purchasing power.

A few years back, Google scanned nearly every out-of-copyright book available in the great libraries of the country. A treasure trove of millions of books is now available at my fingertips. As a student of history, this is immensely valuable to me. But such a benefit cannot be quantified, and is not included in the GDP or the CPI.

My ability to enjoy the mass media from any time period is amazing – I have near unlimited quantities of reading material music, and videos to watch all for a tiny fraction of my income.

Should the CPI include this? No. There is no way to quantify the benefit of this media production.

The web site ShadowStats does their own calculation of CPI numbers excluding all hedonics, and using the pre-Boskin commission methodology. They estimate of CPI is nearly double the official number. Is this estimate more correct? No, the entire endeavor is senseless.

The point is not that GDP numbers are overstating growth or understating growth. The point is that GDP numbers have no objective meaning whatsoever. The GDP calculation is basically a very fancy and obfuscated way of doing a subjective survey or poll of the BEA statisticians. The numbers are very sensitive to the assumptions you make, and a wide range of plausible assumptions can be used, each producing a very different GDP number. The GDP flunks a sensitivity analysis and is therefore useless. If the number seems close to your intuitive sense of how fast the economy has grown, it is because the calculations were fitted to match your intuitive sense.

Adjusting the data

Every year the BEA makes adjustments and revisions to previous years GDP data. For instance, the growth numbers for Q3 2002 were revised downward in three successive revisions. The end result was changing the growth rate from 3.3% to 2.2%. In the 2009 comprehensive revision, the growth rate for 2008 was changed from 1.1% to .4%.

Economist Jeremy Nalewaik has pointed out that GDP tends to be adjusted in the direction of the GDI estimates (GDP and GDI should be identical, GDP is calculated by adding up expenditures while GDI is calculated by adding up incomes).

Again, the point is not that these adjustments are right or wrong. The point is that the results are extremely sensitive to the assumptions and adjustments made. The end result is that GDP numbers will simply replicate what the people doing the adjustments think it should look like.

Composition problems with the Consumer Price Index

The CPI excludes the price of housing. Instead they use owner-equivalent rent. The claim is that since money paid for a home is actually income for another person, it is not necessary to include the home price in the index. But this claim applies to the price of every good. Money you pay for oil goes to the shareholders of the oil company. Money you pay for services is someone else’s income. The net result of excluding housing was creating a much lower inflation estimate for the past decade.

We all know that from 2006 to 2010 the housing market crashed. Across the nation housing prices dropped dramatically. The Case-Shiller index reported that home prices fell by 31.5%. Yet the CPI index for housing costs (based on equivalent rent) actually ‘‘rose’’ by 7.7%. Again, by using a different methodology, the CPI produces a wildly different number.

The issue becomes even more complicated when you include foreign investment. Imagine China is implementing a mercantilist policy. An American spends cash to buy goods exported from China. The Chinese recycle the money earned from exporting goods to America into buying mortgage backed securities. The American takes out a big mortgage to buy a house, mortgage bought by the Chinese. The American is effectively borrowing from the Chinese in order to fund current consumption. The net result is that America is a net seller of home equity and in return has recieved goods. The price of homes will be pushed up. In the GDP statistics this will actually show up as economic growth (since the cheap Chinese goods will push down the GDP deflator). But in reality, there has been no growth, the U.S. is simply selling off its own wealth and getting poorer.

“Give me four parameters, and I can fit an elephant. Give me five, and I can wiggle its trunk”

To recap, we have identified a half-dozen different ways in which subjective and arbitrary model changes dramatically alter the GDP number, and even change its direction. Yet still we have this intuitive sense that the GDP numbers look correct.

I do not know exactly what goes on in the minds of those at the BEA. But I assume it is no different than what goes on with a college social science major trying to write a thesis, or a marketing department trying to figure out product ROI numbers for marketing reports. That is, they keep adjusting until the numbers look plausible.

As we noted, there are huge range of adjustments that go into making the GDP. Everything from excluding oil imports, to including paid child care but not household child care, to the various hedonic adjustments are all subjective fudges. The art of model construction is that you keep tweaking these adjustments until you get something that “feels right”. While this sounds nefarious, and it is nefarious, the economist might not think so. For he assumes that it is possible to boil down the economic output to a number. He also assumes that the plausible adjustments are the best possible. Therefore, any tweak to those adjustments to make it “feel right” is a tweak towards greater accuracy, it is fine tuning.

One analyst at a government agency in Canada writes:

Much of our time is spent “forecasting,” which basically means making a common-sense appraisal of what some indicator or variable will do in the coming years, and creating a statistical model that confirms it. The second step adds nothing of value to the prediction - the math is just there for show, a means of impressing the innumerate by camouflaging shot-in-the-dark guesses in rigorous clothing.

Forecasting is a different field than compiling GDP statistics, but this quote shows the general mindset that exists.

The problem is that one cannot boil the economy down to single number. The result of this entire process is numerology. They are data mining a pre-determined conclusion. Numerology is when people calculate numbers from the Bible to get results. Since the Bible is so big, you can get pretty much any number you want. Similar with GDP. The space in which you can make adjustments and tweak variables is so great, you can get any result you want. So the fact that the numbers say GDP grows 2% a year is not adding any new knowledge about the world. The GDP calculation is a deeply complicated model that simply spits back the assumptions of the model’s creator.

In the 1990s, Congress felt that social security payments were too high, and they wanted to balance the budget, so they assigned the Boskin commission to redesign the formula. Now there is some validity to this. In my unbiased opinion as younger, working-age person, retirees were getting too much. But this was not because the CPI was “overstating” inflation. It was because a) the components of inflation that were rising the fastest affected seniors the least. Healthcare premiums were rising, but seniors get covered by Medicare. Housing costs were shooting up, but far more seniors are sellers than buyers. But in changing the CPI numbers to stop overpaying seniors, the statisticians demonstrated that the CPI is a political number that is simply adjusted until it produces the desired result.

GDP and developing countries

The use of GDP statistics becomes even more ridiculous when studying developing countries. Yale economist Chris Blattman writes:

Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the World Development Indicators have annual infant mortality data for most countries in Africa for most years? It should. Most of that data is interpolated, and the rest is (as often as not) close to made up. It’s not just the human development indicators. You wouldn’t want to be inside the sausage factory that is the GDP calculation in Chad.

A commenter on his blog, Mona follows up:

As someone who, another lifetime ago, worked on the World Development Indicators, I can corroborate the claims in that last paragraph!

Often GDP numbers for developing countries look plausible. But that could just because the number was fitted to be plausible. If the GDP number counters your intuition, you certainly cannot treat the GDP number as authoritative. Since we cannot trust the GDP number over simpler statistics and our own subjective observations, there is no reason to use the GDP number at all.

What is the overall bias in the “Real” GDP number?

To review, the Real GDP number derives from nominal national income adjusted by a price index. Nominal income is a measure of monetary inflation – it is a measure of the supply and velocity of money. Thanks to excluding certain classes of goods such as oil imports and real estate, and thanks to including hedonics, the price index is less sensitive to growth in the money supply than is national income. So in any period of monetary inflation, the economy will appear to be growing, while in periods of monetary stability the economy will appear to be shrinking. What this means is that the Real GDP number has a built in bias that makes policy makers confuse inflation with growth. Policy makers might think the economy is growing – as in 2006. But in reality the purchasing power of the average worker is eroding as the newly created money and credit is going to the well connected, while the price of oil and food rises.

Futhermore, due to the mechanics of the modern business cycle, inflation will be associated with high utilization of economic resources (ie, low unemployment) while deflation will be associated with recessions. This is another nasty problem in economics whereby there are several orthogonal forms of “economic growth” get badly mixed up. There is the “growth” that occurs when exiting a downturn – this “growth” is an increase in utilization as idle resources go back to work. This kind of “growth” can in certain circumstances be stimulated by printing money. Then there is the growth due to the invention of new technologies and products. This growth has very little to do with monetary inflation. Unfortunately all these mixed definitions leads to smart people writing hopelessly confused essays where they mistakenly try to apply policies to stimulate technological growth toward the goal of stimulating utilization growth.

Is the GDP statistic good for anything?

As we said, “GDP” refers to either Nominal GDP’ or ‘Real GDP’. ‘Nominal GDP’ is a misnomer. It is a measure of the flow of dollars, not of production. However, comparing the Nominal GDP’ of Country A in 2010 to the Nominal GDP’ of country B in the same year can be useful. Because there is an exchange rate between the two countries, comparing any cross section of income – whether that be nominal GDP, median income, wage of the average McDonald’s worker, or total taxable – will give a reasonable comparison of quality of life. Of course, there is still much room for fudge, such as purchasing power parity adjustments or potential double counting in the GDP calculations.

The so-called Real GDP number is nearly useless in all circumstances. Real GDP attempts to put a dollar price on the change of output overtime. But since there is no exchange of goods between 2010 and 1970, this can only be calculated via the tortuous statistics that I discussed above. These statistics simply replicate what the economists want to find, they do not add any information, and only create opportunities for being misled.

When you pull back the curtain behind all the adjustments, the Real GDP number is simply equivalent to a survey asking government staticians, “how much richer does your country feel today than in the past?” So if you know absolutely nothing about a country, reading the results of such a survey or of Real GDP can tell you what the consensus government opinion is. But from the point of view of analysis, or for guiding any policy decisions, the number should always be avoided. It would be much more honest to simply state a subjective opinion than to use a complicated, subjectively calculated number that pretends to be objective.

How to replace GDP and CPI

The last argument of the GDP/CPI supporters is that, “GDP/CPI may be imperfect, but it is the best number available for (insert use case here).”

There are no such use cases. The calculations have become too complicated and twisted to redeem any use out of the resulting number.

In some cases we must accept that the attempt to use any number is fundamentally flawed. But in many cases there is actually a replacement number that is far more sensible for the given purpose. Let us go through each use case one by one.

Measuring changes in well being: the Basic Living Index

Is there any way we can measure well-being numerically?

Creating some sort of “national happiness number” is an impossible task. It will contain all the problems of measuring GDP and then some. It will bury the underlying data and create endless arguments that it is not taking into account x, y, or z.

The best way to measure changes in well being over time is to do the following:

Create an index where you have precisely defined set of goods in the basket that maintain their definition over the time period that you are measuring. For instance, the basket might include:

• 100 dozen eggs
• 200 pounds of ground beef
• 300 pounds of flour
• 350 gallons of gasoline
• enough heating gas for a year
• the cheapest car that can legally drive on the highway, cost amortized over its lifetime
• a home of 1,500 square feet, in median-income metro area, 30 minutes commute from downtown

The goods should be weighted by the actual, typical consumption over the course of the year. Then the total cost of buying one year’s worth of the good should be divided by the median wage of a 30 year old male worker. The basic living index now has a precisely defined definition that is true across the entire time period: “The number of hours you must work to meet your basic needs of food, shelter, clothing, heat, and healthcare.”

Then leave everything else to subjective discussions and interpretations. Do not try to turn subjective things into a number, rather, leave them for the reader to decide. Each person can on their own evaluate subjective claims such “car prices have not fallen but we now have airbags” or “We have more access to music now, but the live music sucks.”

Monetary Control

The primary number the government should use for monetary control is total nominal national income. Total income is simply a measure of the supply and demand for money. If the supply of money increases, national income will rise as a person will have more money to spend. If demand money for falls, by definition, the price at which a person is willing to exchange money for goods will rise, and thus national income will rise. The IRS has a very strong interest in getting an accurate and complete accounting of total income, without double counting. And in theory, national income can be estimated from payroll taxes and corporate earnings reports, thus making it much more up to date and accurate than Nominal GDP (which in theory is the same, but the numbers don’t always track together).

The second number the government should use is an index of the prices of alternative stores of value. If the price of other stores of values are all rising with respect to dollars, that is a good sign that people no longer trust the currency. An index of alternative stores of value would include: central city real estate, farmland, stocks, oil, and gold.

Illustration

Sometimes you wish to adjust prices for the purpose of illustration. You may be reading a book that cites the price of a movie ticket in 1910. What does that price mean to someone today? The best way to adjust the price is by using a measure of wages. Median wage is good if the number is available. Otherwise use the wage of a typical laborer or artisan. A wage number is less susceptible to fudge factors (although still not perfect), and is more directly aligned with what you actually want to know. If you are adjusting a price for illustration, you are trying to figure out what the price means to you. Showing a price in terms of hours of labor is more meaningful and impactful than adjusting it by some mysterious price index.

Indexing Social Security

Social Security should be indexed to nominal national income. In fact, the way to solve the entire social security crisis is to simply state that 12.6% of national income will go to social security, and whatever that income buys, it buys. If the economy produces fewer goods because seniors retire, there is no inflation adjustment possible that can give those seniors the promised income. If the cost of living increases because the economy is shrinking, everyone must bear the pain. Conversely, if the economy grows really fast, there is no reason to exclude seniors from this windfall by reducing their income.

To the extent that a changing dependency ratio is a problem, the fix should be to make part of social security income come from the tax payments of your own children. So if you had four children you get a larger payout than if you had zero children. This is fair, since social security is not actually an insurance or savings program. It is a socialization of the age-old method whereby children support their elders in retirement. But as with all socialization, it creates an incentive to freeload. The childless retirees are essentially freeloading off of the work of those who raised the next generation. Thus the childless should get less than those with children.

Comparing cross country wealth

Let us say we want to compare the wealth of two countries. The best number to use is some sort of income measure adjusted for exchange rate. One method would be to find the wage of a typical worker – carpenter, taxi driver, factory worker, secretary or whatever – and use that to find an average nominal median wage, and then multiply by the population. If the country has accurate measurements of total income, then that could be used. But for third world nations, where no good national income numbers exist, a typical wage method will give more meaningful numbers.

Simple statistics can also be more illustrative than complex calculations. Good numbers to look at include: the Big Mac index, percent of population with indoor plumbing, percent of population with electricity, or typical income in terms of purchasing gasoline, eggs, flour, or automobiles.

But you must also mix in personal observation. No number will tell you the misery caused by soot-filled air or overcrowding in slums.

Measuring the start and end of a recession

Use the unemployment rate to measure the start and end of recessions. Recessions are fundamentally a crisis of utilization, and thus to measure recessions, measure the utilization of labor. Using the unemployment rate will eliminate the absurdity of people saying the recession is over when the unemployment rate is still at 10% and rising. Any other measure of utilization is also useful, such as automobiles manufactured as a percentage of peak output.

Measuring national output

For some purposes – such as military planning, or studying the history of economic development in a country, or gauging the depth of a depression – it is useful to measure actual physical output. In this case the various industrial outputs should be measured directly. Compile a list of differnt for all industries – miles of railway, tons of steel, cargo containers shipped, KWH of electricity produced, airplane flights made, the total horsepower of all machinery, bushels of wheat, phones per capita, etc. The units on these figures are the unit that you are measuring. There is no way to convert the units to dollars and compare the results across time period. Instead just compare the output directly.

Final thoughts on GDP and the use of metrics

The GDP and CPI numbers are foundational to a vast number of academic papers. The numbers are woven into discussions and assumptions of economics. Thus to denounce the numbers as useless is to put myself in opposition to nearly all of academic economics.

But I believe such a view is justified, as noted for all the reasons above. Academia is not disciplined by external forces that make it truthful. Nobody gets fired for producing papers that are so obscurant that they can never be disproven. In any such situation, we should expect that falsehood will accumulate over time.

In working at a growing software company, we used various numbers for measuring product usage and customer satisfaction. But the numbers that worked best were the simple numbers. One executive, an MBA and former consultant, tried creating a hugely complicated “customer success model” to run the customer support department. It was a mess, it got gamed, and the department improved when that executive was replaced.

While we appreciated good data, we found it important to follow a few rules-of-thumb:

• Focus on simple, objective numbers that measure the really important things. For us it was the cancellation rate, monthly sales, % of people using the product, and overall recurring revenue.
• Subjective, speculative, projections should be done with a spreadsheet or a program. But again, keep it simple, stupid. The art of the program is not to spit out a single answer, but to allow you to model how changes to different assumptions will impact your business. A spreadsheet should be tinkered with in order to give you a holistic understanding of what drives the business.
• Do not be data driven, be data advised. Data works best as a double-check of assumptions or as a way to uncover hidden problems. Numbers should not be the north star. As the Dropbox founder says, “You cannot A/B test your way to the iPhone.” If you push to hard on metrics, people will game them, or they will focus on myopic issues rather than creating a strong product and great brand for the long-term.
• Most of the important things cannot be measured numerically.

The last point is the clincher. Family life, community bonds, the aesthetics of your neighborhood, the stress of a commute, clean air and water, the pleasures of walking through a tree-lined village or a town park, a gaggle of laughing kids running around outside, respect in the workplace, feeling useful at a job – none of this can be measured as part of GDP. And yet these are the most important things. The GDP obsession must end, as it only misguides us.

The reigning ideology of the United States is democracy. We celebrate the victory of democracy over monarchy every 4th of July. We learn a historical narrative of how America followed a long, ascending path toward being more enlightened and democratic. During the time once allotted for an opening prayer, students now pledge allegiance to the republic.

American ideology thus divides the world into democracies and authoritarian regimes. Democracies are good, authoritarian regimes are bad. The United States does whatever it can to undermine authoritarian regimes. The U.S. grants money to the “democratic” opposition, broadcasts pro-democracy information, demands pro-democracy concessions during trade negotiations, harbors and glorifies dissident leaders, and occasionally wages war against autocracies.

This dichotomy is pure cant. It is a stunningly poor model for understanding the nature of government. It was a bad model of the world for Romans to group together Berbers, Parthians, Celts, and Germanics all as one type of people, “barbarian.” Similarly, it makes no sense for us to group together all non-democratic regimes as being one type of government, “authoritarian.”

Let us examine the errors in the democracy versus authoritarian framing.

Error #1: In practice, being a “democracy” has little to do with popular power

In common usage, being a “democracy” means that the government is allied with the United States and accepts the soft power of the State Department and associated international institutions and NGO’s. Germany of 1910’s had mass suffrage elections that really mattered. Germany of the 2000’s is mostly ruled by unelected bureaucrats in the EU and in the German civil service. It is arguable which is more “democratic.” But by U.S. ideology the answer is black and white: the Germany of 1910’s was an authoritarian regime that was illegitimate and had to be destroyed.

True popular rule is impossible, in the same way that rule by an 11-year-old monarch is impossible. A majority of citizens or a child monarch can go through the motions of ruling. They can sign off on policies, they can throw tantrums and occasionally force others to react. But the machinery of government and the real power will be in the hands of savvy, full-time operators. Power will reside with those who have the knowledge, skills, and connections to actually get things done. The Iron Law of Oligarchy applies.

Error #2: It is nonsense to group together all non-democratic regimes as one category for the purpose of analysis.

There are a plethora of non-democratic systems: monarchy, fascist dictatorship, aristocratic republic, merchant republic, corporate oligarchy, military tribunal, colonial viceroy, socialist dictatorship, communist party junta, property holders republic, timocracy, civil service system, tribal elders system, etcetera. These systems are as different from each other as they are different from any democracy. The government of Hong Kong and the government of North Korea have virtually nothing in common. The sins of North Korea in no way delegitimize the non-democratic government of Hong Kong.

There is a common form of argument that goes: authoritarianism is bad because Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and Communist North Korea were authoritarian and did horrific things. Country X (Hong Kong, China, etc) has an authoritarian government. Therefore it is bad. This argument is fallacious. Imagine the following chain of logic: Heathenism is bad because heathens like the Aztecs engaged in human sacrifice. Buddhism is heathen (ie, non-Abrahamic). Therefore Buddhism is bad. Such a logic chain is absurd, yet people make similiar claims when talking about authoritarianism all the time.

Believers in the dichotomy also put far too much emphasis in formal designs and written constitutions. They accept the American mythology that the nation’s success was due to the genius of the written Constitution. Believers ignore how much of the Constitution was contingent on the particular debates, culture, and power blocks of America during that time period.

In reality, much of the success of a government is due to the role of the particular leaders, particular people, and particular places. If you have a mostly illiterate nation, divided 60%/40% into two tribes, then majoritarian democracy is a really, really bad idea. But if you have a homogeneous, educated, and savvy populace, with a network of private institutions, and a high-trust culture, then many forms of government will work quite well. Much of the purported success of democracy is really survivorship bias. Countries with the most human capital and strongest civic institutions can survive the chaos and demagoguery that comes with regular mass elections. Lesser countries succumb to chaos, and then dictatorship.

That Churchill (mis)quote

It is particularly irksome when someone responds to a critique of democracy with the statement: “Well, as Winston Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

First, this is actually a misquote. Churchill was actually giving a speech in favor of protecting the undemocratic House of Lords, and he was quoting general sentiment, not making the claim himself. His quote goes (emphasis mine): “Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Second, it is not at all obviously true. Is the universal suffrage government of Philadelphia really better than the merchant republic government of Venice, or the corporate oligarchy of Hong Kong? The argument needs to be made. Those repeating the “least worst” nostrum do so without any sort of actual thought.

Third, there is no one form of government that is “better” in all particular circumstances. There are many local optimums to the problem of government, depending on the path dependent evolution of that particular nation.

Error #3: The dichotomy framing causes us to misdiagnose the maladies of our time

According to the dichotomy, democracy is the font of goodness, dictatorships are the source of badness. Any example of corruption or tyranny in America is always an example of not enough democracy. If we are unfree, it must be that somehow the government has become dictatorial. The cure is always more democracy.

The historical narrative is that evil government acts are usually orchestrated top-down by someone with absolute power. Lord Acton is oft quoted: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

While such top-down evil has happened, in most of the worst instances of tyranny, the oppression was due to insecurity of the leaders at the top, factional fighting, mobs, or a security apparatus operating outside the authority of top-down command-and-control. The oppression is often sideways and peer-to-peer. There is often a sense in which the entire thing is outside of any person’s control. The revolution devours everyone, even its own, without anyone able to stop it or inject sanity. The oppression is neither due to the wishes of the majority, nor to the wishes of the top down ruler. Rather the tyranny is at the hand of fractured, unaccountable parties that are wedded to the instruments of power.¹

Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Historical Examples of Tyranny

With the above noted, let us examine some historical examples of tyranny, and note how they often do not fit the narrative of being top-down, command-and-control, abuses of absolute power.

Tyranny in Revolutionary America

The American narrative is that the English monarchy was evil and repressive, and that the American patriots were fighting for liberty. What this narrative omits is that the American rebels engaged in orders of magnitude more offenses against liberty than the colonial British government committed.

Chapter 8 of Stanley Fisher’s True History of the American Revolution is a stunning account that should be required reading for all those interested in a more accurate version of reality. Here is an excerpt:

The loyalists were becoming more decided and outspoken, and events seemed to be increasing their numbers. The rough element in the patriot party looked upon them as enemies to be broken up and disorganized as quickly as possible. Disarming parties visited loyalist houses and took away all the weapons; and it was a method well calculated to check union and organization and prevent the loyalists from taking advantage of their numbers. Such a method would not perhaps be so effective in modern times when fire-arms are so cheap and easy to procure.

In their scattered, individualized condition they became more and more the prey of the rough element among their opponents. Everywhere they were seized unexpectedly, at the humor of the mob, tarred and feathered, paraded through the towns, or left tied to trees in the woods. Any accidental circumstance would cause these visitations, and often the victim was not as politically guilty as some of his neighbors who, by prudence or accident, remained unharmed to the end of the war.

Those patriots of the upper classes who for many years had been rousing the masses of the people to resist the principle of taxation and all authority of Parliament were now somewhat aghast at the success of their work. The patriot colonists, when aroused, were lawless; and, while clamoring for independence, violated in a most shocking manner the rights of personal liberty and property. In the South, as soon as the rebellion party got a little control, a loyalist might be locked up in the jail for the mere expression of his opinion; and in the North, too, when the rebellion party got control in a county they were apt to use the jail to punish loyalists.

In Berkshire, Massachusetts, in that same summer of 1774, the mob forced the judges from their seats and shut up the court-house, drove David Ingersoll from his house, and laid his lands and fences waste; they riddled the house of Daniel Leonard with bullets, and drove him to Boston; … Men were ridden and tossed on fence-rails, were gagged and bound for days at a time; pelted with stones; fastened in rooms where there was a fire with the chimney stopped on top; advertised as public enemies, so that they would be cut off from all dealing with their neighbors. They had bullets shot into their bedrooms; money or valuable plate extorted to save them from violence and on pretense of taking security for their good behavior. Their houses and ships were burnt; they were compelled to pay the guards who watched them in their houses; and when carted about for the mob to stare at and abuse they were compelled to pay something at every town.

There is much more, go read the whole thing, it is free online.

A more recent book Holy Madness by Adam Zamoyski covers both the American Revolution in addition to other revolutions from 1770 to 1870. I highly recommend reading the whole book. Here is Zamoyski writing about tyranny in the American Revolution:

Coercion and bullying of loyalists turned into legal persecution after the Declaration of Independence. Committees of Public Safety established themselves in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, passing sentences in kangaroo courts. Passive loyalists were deprived of their civil rights. They were prohibited from collecting debts, buying or selling land, or, in some cases, practicing their professions. Loyalists who spoke out or published their opinions could be fined, imprisoned and disfranchised. Those considered to be dangerous were imprisoned, ill-treated or exiled. With time, confiscation of property became general. In outlying or frontier areas, lynch law replaced such niceties. Even so, large numbers flocked to serve in loyalist units. Rebel slave-owners took preventive measures, locking up their slaves and even deporting them from the vicinity of loyalist areas or British garrisons. But the blacks nevertheless rowed out to British ships, joined loyalist or British forces, and fought with enthusiasm against the rebels.

In the end, Zamoyski writes that the revolution “helped purge the colonies of active loyalists, many of whom were killed, and a further 80,000 of whom emigrated.” So much for fighting for life, liberty and property.

Do you recall the extent of this reign of terror from your PBS documentaries and grade school history? Like I said, every country has its cant and its origin myths. America is no different. The greatness and purity of our democratic revolution is our origin myth.

Tyranny in Maoist China

The cult of Mao was also not entirely a top-down affair. The top leadership instigated the cult, but it spun out of their control:

As the cult spread and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution deepened, however, the party lost control over its symbols. Leese refers to this as the period of “cult anarchy;” I would compare it to the point at which monetary authorities lose control of the money supply, leading to runaway hyperinflation. Different factions of Red Guards started using Mao’s image and words in incompatible ways, and new cult rituals emerged from the grass roots, sometimes from the enthusiasm of the genuinely committed, sometimes seemingly as protective talismans against the uncertainty and strife of the period. Everybody appealed to Mao to signal their revolutionary credentials, but there was no longer anyone capable of settling disputes over the credibility of these signals. Mao himself wasn’t much help; whenever he spoke at all, his messages were often cryptic and didn’t really settle any important disputes. The cult was now a “Red Queen” race of wasteful signaling, rather than a carefully calibrated tool of mobilization or discipline, driven by a complex combination of genuine desires to signal loyalty and identity and fears for one’s security. (Leese notes that failure to conform to the arbitrary protocols of the cult put people at risk of being sentenced as an “active counter-revolutionary” and documents many cases in which minimal symbolic transgressions resulted in incarceration or even death).

By 1967, for example, statues of Mao first started to be built, something that CCP leaders, and Mao himself, had discouraged in the past, and still officially frowned upon. The statues were typically built by local factions without approval from the central party, and they were all 7.1 meters high and placed on a pedestal that was 5.16 meters high, for a total height of 12.26 meters. (26 December = Mao’s birthday, 1 July = the Party’s founding date, 16 May = the beginning of the cultural revolution. People arrived at this precise convention for the statues without any centralized direction, merely through a signaling process). Later “Long Live the Victory of Mao Zedong Though Halls” were built on a grand scale, again without approval from the central party. Billions of Chairman Mao badges were produced by individual work units competing with each other, which were themselves subject to size inflation as the larger size of the badges came to be associated with greater loyalty to the CCP Chairman, … badges with a diameter of 30 centimeters and greater came to be produced,” Zhou Enlai would grumble in 1969 about the enormous waste of resources this represented. Costly signaling demands kept escalating; some people took to pinning the badges directly on their skin, for example, and farmers sent “loyalty pigs” to Mao as gifts (pigs with a shaved “loyalty” character).

Tyranny in Russia

There is a myth about the Soviet revolution; a myth that evolved to fit the narrative of authoritarianism is evil, and democracy good. The myth says that the Tsar was a vicious and tyrannical autocrat who oppressed his people and crushed dissidents. His iron fist only generated more anger, which resulted in a violent revolution. This revolution had promise, but unfortunately it was taken over by tyrannical, dictatorial leaders such as Lenin and then Stalin, who themselves became even more tyrannical than the Tsar.

This narrative has flaws on multiple counts. First, the Tsar was hardly an iron fisted autocrat. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn writes:

One might easily imagine a bearded man with a newspaper under his arm walking across a street in St. Petersburg in 1912. Who is he? A deputy of the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Party-in other words, a Bolshevik sitting in the Duma. What sort of paper does he carry under his arm? Pravda. Where did he buy it? There, at the street corner. Of course, before 1905 people were less free, but Vyera Zassulitch, who tried to assassinate the police prefect Tryepov, was acquitted by a jury. Trotsky described how delightful Russian jails were, with what respect political “criminals” were treated by their wardens. Lenin suffered ssylka, exile in Siberia,but simple exile merely meant that one was forced to live in or near a certain village, received a meager pension but was still able to read, write, hunt, and fish. Life in Siberia around 1900 was no worse than life in North Dakota or Saskatchewan at that time. A friend of mine has even seen the copy of the letter Lenin’s wife wrote from Shushenskoye to the Governor in Irkutsk protesting against the insufficient staff she had been allotted.

Nor should one have wrong conceptions about the agrarian situation. At the time of the outbreak of the Revolution in 1917 the peasantry owned nearly 80 percent of the arable land, whereas in Britain more than half of the fertile soil belonged to large estates. (Yet Britain had no violent agrarian movement and Russia had.) Illiteracy was down to about 56 percent, and the schools were multiplying by leaps and bounds. …As a matter of fact, Russia before the Red October was Europe’s “Eastern America,” a country where social mobility was greater than anywhere else, where titles had by no means the nimbus they had in the West, where fortunes could be made overnight by intelligent and thrifty people regardless of their social background. And if one knew how to speak and to write one indeed had total liberty even before 1905.

Simon Montefiore writes in his seminal book, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar:

In 1902, Stalin won the spurs of his first arrest and Siberian exile, the first of seven such exiles from which he escaped six times. These exiles were far from Stalin’s brutal concentration camps: the Tsars were inept policemen. They were almost reading holidays in distant Siberian villages with one part-time gendarme on duty, during which revolutionaries got to know (and hate) each other, corresponded with their comrades in Petersburg or Vienna, discussed abstruse questions of dialectical materialism, and had affairs with local girls. When the call of freedom or revolution became urgent, they escaped, romping across the taiga to the nearest train.

This kind of exile is hardly the punishment of a cruel and vicious tyrant. In fact, if one’s goal was to undermine the Tsarist regime and to strengthen the revolutionaries, it would be hard to design a better system of exile. No regime can treat its enemies so lightly and survive. And it did not.

The narrative of Lenin and Stalin having “absolute power” and thus being corrupted absolutely is also false. We imagine them to be Darth Vader like figures, who could wave their hands and have their subordinates dispatched for disobedience. But before 1935, this was not true. If you read histories, writings, and memoirs, you realize that the leadership was quite fractured, the killings were quite distributed, there were many different committees, each person unsure of their own power.

Lenin was an evil man who gave fiery speeches urging mass killings. But he did not control these killings like a CEO controls a business. He was more in the position of an arsonist or a mob leader. He wants the local communities to come up with their own ways of killing the wealthy. And they did. Lenin wrote:

No mercy for these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working people! War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals; war on the rogues, the idlers and the rowdies!

Thousands of practical forms and methods of accounting and controlling the rich, the rogues and the idlers must be devised and put to a practical test by the communes themselves, by small units in town and country. Variety is a guarantee of effectiveness here, a pledge of success in achieving the single common aim—to clean the land of Russia of all vermin, of fleas—the rogues, of bugs—the rich, and so on and so forth.

As Gregory Maximoff writes in The Guillotine at Work, the revolution went far beyond Lenin’s control:

But something happened which Lenin could not altogether foresee, something which he did not want to happen: while waiting for the tidal wave to subside (and against these elemental forces he was at first quite powerless), he saw that the seizures of enterprises—-industrial and commercial— by the workers went too far, having in fact made a clean sweep of the rather feebly rooted Russian capitalists, industrialists and merchants.

Revolutionary Victor Serge writes in his memoirs that Lenin made an effort not to appear as a top-down dictator:

He was warm, friendly, genial, talking as simply as he could. It was as if he was determined to emphasize with every gesture that the head of the Soviet Government and the Russian Communist Party was still just another comrade – the leading one, of course, through his acknowledged intellectual and moral authority, but no more than this, and one who would never become just another statesman or another dictator. He was obviously concerned to steer the International by persuasion.

Was this just an act? I don’t think so. If you have to act like you’re not a top down leader, that means you actually cannot give direct orders and command publicly, which means you cannot rule like a CEO or a general. The stories of the Red Terror show many elements of distributed tyranny. We have local commanders abusing their power. We see many examples of the madness of crowds, when all people get trapped in signaling how loyal they are to communist goals, and no one can say, “Stop! This is madness” because to do so would get them killed.

Here are a few more vignettes from Victor Serge:

After having had the last Oppositional sympathizers in the Moscow factories arrested, [Mikhail Tverskoy, who was an agent of the GPU] came to us in Leningrad in order, he said, to “help us reorganize.” Without our being able to stop him, he speedily set up a shadow organization consisting of fifty or so workers, only to have it rally noisily to the “general line” within two months, while those who resisted were thrown into jail. This police maneuver was repeated in all working-class centers. It was made easier by the moral confusion of the Communists. Oppositionists and officials outbid each other in loyalty to the Party, the Oppositions being by far the most sincere. Nobody was willing to see evil in the proportions that it head reached.

Another episode shows the power of a local commander:

I remember what happened one day when I was tramping through the snow with one of the regional military commanders, Mikhail Lashevich, an old revolutionary for the last thirty-five years, one of the architects of the seizure of power and a fearless warrior. I talked to him of the changes that had to be made. Lashevich was a stocky thickset man whose face was fleshy and covered with wrinkles. The only solution he could envisage for any problem was a resort to force. Speculation? We’ll put a stop to that! “I shall have the covered markets pulled down and the crowds dispersed! There you are!” He did it too, which only made matters worse.

Serge wrote about the mindset of the leaders:

Finally, the victory of the revolution deals with the inferiority complex of the perpetually vanquished and bullied masses by arousing in them a spirit of social revenge, which in turn tends to generate new despotic institutions. I was witness to the great intoxication with which yesterday’s sailors and workers exercised command and enjoyed the satisfaction of demonstrating that they were now in power!

Much of the killings were done by the secret police and “judiciary” system: the Cheka and its successors the GPU and the KGB. If you read the wikipedia article about the Cheka, it is a maze of different committees, bodies, leaders, and factions. The Cheka is pulled various ways by the fights of the various parties early in the revolution. Each city has its own Cheka, carrying out its own ends: “By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had been created in various cities, at multiple levels including: oblast, guberniya (”Gubcheks“), raion, uyezd, and volost Chekas, with Raion and Volost Extraordinary Commissioners.”

Helmut Andics writes in his general history, Rule of Terror:

The campaign against the Kulaks flooded the prisons . The documents of the Smolensk Party Headquarters, captured by the Germans during World War II, vividly illustrate the conditions prevailing at the time. Things clearly became too much even for the GPU. In February 1930, a report complained that practically everyone was arresting everyone else. Anyone connected with the collectivisation acted as policeman on his own account. Another report suggests that the Committees of Poor Peasants and the Workers’ Brigades brought from the towns were following the motto: ‘Drink and eat – it all belongs to us!’ The wave of arrets threatened to bring on anarchy. In May 1933 Stalin and Molotov issued a secret order against all those ‘who wish to carry out arrests, but strictly speaking have no right to do so.’ This more or less put an end to the arbitrary exercise of private justice. Organized Mass Terror, however, went on and now acquired economic importance.

Victor Serge writes of the Cheka: (emphasis mine)

Already the Cheka, which made mass arrests of suspects, was tending to settle their fate independently, under formal control of the Party, but in reality without anybody’s knowledge. The Party endeavored to head the Cheka with incorruptible men like the former convict Dzerhinsky, a sincere idealist, ruthless but chivalrous, with the emaciated profile of an Inquisitor: tall forehead, bony nose, untidy goatee, and an expression of weariness and austerity. But the Party had few men of this stamp and many Chekas: these gradually came to select their personnel by virtue of their psychological inclinations. The only temperaments that devoted themselves willingly and tenaciously to this task of “internal defense” were those characterized by suspicion, embitterment, harshness, and sadism. The Chekas inevitably consisted of perverted men tending to see conspiracy everywhere and to live in the midst of perpetual conspiracy themselves.

Again, the Cheka was not under the control of a Darth Vader-like dictator. It was not under the control of a bunch of evil oligarchs.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn describes an episode that again demonstrates the madness spiral. Note that the presiding secretary is as much a prisoner to the system as the people he is presiding over. If he was a real corporate executive, this would not have happened. It was because no one was in control that this could happen:

Here is one vignette from those years as it actually occurred. A district Party conference was under way in Moscow Province. It was presided over by a new secretary of the District Party Committee, replacing one recently arrested. At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name). The small hall echoed with “stormy applause, rising to an ovation.” For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the “stormy applause, rising to an ovation,” continued. But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from exhaustion. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin.

However, who would dare be the first to stop? The secretary of the District Party Committee could have done it. He was standing on the platform, and it was he who had just called for the ovation. But he was a newcomer. He had taken the place of a man who’d been arrested. He was afraid! After all, NKVD men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see who quit first! And in that obscure, small hall, unknown to the Leader, the applause went on —six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly—but up there with the presidium where everyone could see them?

The director of the local paper factory, an independent and strong-minded man, stood with the presidium. Aware of all the falsity and all the impossibility of the situation, he still kept on applauding! Nine minutes! Ten! In anguish he watched the secretary of the District Party Committee, but the latter dared not stop. Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers! And even then those who were left would not falter… . Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved! The squirrel had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel. That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he had signed Form 206, the final document of the interrogation, his interrogator reminded him: “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!” (And just what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to stop?)

By the late 1930’s, Stalin had gained control and was much more of a classic top-down dicator. Stalin of course was a very nasty fellow, and engaged in much brutality himself. But, it is a mistake to think of dictatorship being a cause of the brutality. Rather, a war, a revolution and a cult rebellion caused the breakdown, and once that process started, only a nasty and brutal leader would ever emerge on top.

Regicide rarely increases liberty

The misdiagnosis of repressive dictators means the treatment is all wrong. America demonizes dictators such as Saddam in Iraq, Assad in Syria, or Qadafi in Libya and supports efforts to overthrow them. But these efforts do not result in liberty, they result in civil wars and more tyranny.² Liberty rarely comes from revolution. Historically, liberty comes from 1) local civic groups and militias protecting their own rights 2) the settling of new frontiers and 3) strong regimes mellowing out over time.

The tragedy is that just as a regime starts to mellow and relax, that process allows agitators to arise and cause trouble. Louis XVI was much more liberal than his grand-father. Thus, paradoxically, Louis XVI was the one overthrown for being a tyrant. He tolerated Voltaire and other anti-monarchist liberals and he played along with the mob rather than firing on them immediately. Zamoyski writes:

On 17 July [1789] Louis XVI drove into Paris without pomp, virtually unattended and simply dressed. He came to the Hotel de Ville to meet the representatives of the Paris Commune, who proffered him one of the tricolor cockades. He received it with ‘sensibilité’ and pinned it to his hat. When he had gone, the representatives voted to erect a statue to him on the site of the Bastille, whose demolition had begun. Without a vote, and without a decree, the tricolor cockade was adopted overnight as the emblem of the nation — to be sported even by the monarch, who had never worn any emblem other than a crown on his head.

In his surrender, he signed his own death warrant. Note that this is not how Deng Xiaoping treated the Tianming protestors. Note that the Chinese regime still survives and the country prospers, while the French regime was destroyed and the country embroiled in chaos, bloodlust, and war mongering. Yet our American ideology says that Deng Xiaoping was the villain for firing on the mob.

To this day, millions of Parisians celebrate the storming of the Bastille as being some great statement about the triumph of liberty. Who was imprisoned in the Bastille? Zamoyski tells us:

When the Bastille’s cell doors were thrown open on 14 July 1789, no more than seven prisoners emerged. Four of them were judicially convicted forgers. Two were lunatics, one of whom believed he was Julius Caesar, and they soon found themselves locked up again at Charenton. The seventh was the Comte de Solages, whose sexual depravity had so alarmed his family that they procured his incarceration.

National myths, indeed.

The English Civil War in the 1640s provides a similar example. As Brinton Crane writes in the Anatomy of a Revolution:

Nothing can be more erroneous than the picture of the old regime as unregenerate tyranny, sweeping to its end in a climax of despotic indifference to the clamor of its abused subjects. Charles I was working “modernize” his government, to introduce into England some of the efficient methods of the French. Strafford was in some ways but an unlucky Richelieu.

But once the Parliamentarians defeated him in battle and lopped off this head, the usurping legislators proceeded to institute a tyranny far more extensive than any king had carried out – including going so far as to ban Christmas!

Tyranny and the Catholic Inquisition

Even our common beliefs about the Catholic Church and the Inquisition appear to be false. The narrative is that before the enlightenment, liberalism, and democracy, people were repressed by an evil Catholic Church. But it turns out that most religious violence is peer-to-peer, and the Catholic Inquisition was often an attempt to moderate and control this instinct:

One of the most enduring myths of the Inquisition is that it was a tool of oppression imposed on unwilling Europeans by a power-hungry Church. Nothing could be more wrong. In truth, the Inquisition brought order, justice, and compassion to combat rampant secular and popular persecutions of heretics. When the people of a village rounded up a suspected heretic and brought him before the local lord, how was he to be judged? How could an illiterate layman determine if the accused’s beliefs were heretical or not? And how were witnesses to be heard and examined?

The medieval Inquisition began in 1184 when Pope Lucius III sent a list of heresies to Europe’s bishops and commanded them to take an active role in determining whether those accused of heresy were, in fact, guilty. Rather than relying on secular courts, local lords, or just mobs, bishops were to see to it that accused heretics in their dioceses were examined by knowledgeable churchmen using Roman laws of evidence. In other words, they were to “inquire” — thus, the term “inquisition.” … Most people accused of heresy by the medieval Inquisition were either acquitted or their sentence suspended. Those found guilty of grave error were allowed to confess their sin, do penance, and be restored to the Body of Christ. The underlying assumption of the Inquisition was that, like lost sheep, heretics had simply strayed. If, however, an inquisitor determined that a particular sheep had purposely departed out of hostility to the flock, there was nothing more that could be done. Unrepentant or obstinate heretics were excommunicated and given over to the secular authorities. Despite popular myth, the Church did not burn heretics. It was the secular authorities that held heresy to be a capital offense. The simple fact is that the medieval Inquisition saved uncounted thousands of innocent (and even not-so-innocent) people who would otherwise have been roasted by secular lords or mob rule. .. The power of kings rose dramatically in the late Middle Ages. Secular rulers strongly supported the Inquisition because they saw it as an efficient way to ensure the religious health of their kingdoms. If anything, kings faulted the Inquisition for being too lenient on heretics. Kings justified this on the belief that they knew better than the faraway pope how best to deal with heresy in their own kingdoms. These dynamics would help to form the Spanish Inquisition — but there were others as well. Spain was in many ways quite different from the rest of Europe. Conquered by Muslim jihad in the eighth century, the Iberian peninsula had been a place of near constant warfare…In 1483 Ferdinand appointed Tomás de Torquemada as inquistor-general for most of Spain…

The first 15 years of the Spanish Inquisition, under the direction of Torquemada, were the deadliest. Approximately 2,000 conversos were put to the flames. By 1500, however, the hysteria had calmed. Torquemada’s successor, the cardinal archbishop of Toledo, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, worked hard to reform the Inquisition, removing bad apples and reforming procedures. …. Staffed by well-educated legal professionals, it was one of the most efficient and compassionate judicial bodies in Europe. No major court in Europe executed fewer people than the Spanish Inquisition. This was a time, after all, when damaging shrubs in a public garden in London carried the death penalty. Across Europe, executions were everyday events. But not so with the Spanish Inquisition. In its 350-year lifespan only about 4,000 people were put to the stake. Compare that with the witch-hunts that raged across the rest of Catholic and Protestant Europe, in which 60,000 people, mostly women, were roasted. Spain was spared this hysteria precisely because the Spanish Inquisition stopped it at the border. When the first accusations of witchcraft surfaced in northern Spain, the Inquisition sent its people to investigate. These trained legal scholars found no believable evidence for witches’ Sabbaths, black magic, or baby roasting. It was also noted that those confessing to witchcraft had a curious inability to fly through keyholes. While Europeans were throwing women onto bonfires with abandon, the Spanish Inquisition slammed the door shut on this insanity. (For the record, the Roman Inquisition also kept the witch craze from infecting Italy.)

Dear reader, if the mob accuses you of being a witch, would you rather be tried by the mob, or by an Official Inquiry of trained legal scholars?

Tyranny in Modern America

More and more folk are realizing that America is not the unique bastion of liberty that grade school and PBS documentaries portray it to be. But Americans are still trapped in the beliefs that tyranny in America is due to the lack of democracy, that the oppression is a result of an “imperial executive” or a dictatorial conspiracy of some sort. Right-wingers demonize the “liberal elites” and “central planners.” Left-wingers demonize corporate oligarchy.

But most offenses against liberty in modern America are not top-down. The violations of liberty occur due to a tangled web of government and private power. Violations occur at the hands of a thousand different independent bureaucracies, lobbies, monied interests, judges, activist groups, prosecutors, criminal gangs, bullies, mobs, civil servants, and politically protected private citizens, each working their own agenda.

When a police officer roughs up an innocent youth who happened to be standing on the wrong street corner, that is not a top-down order from a dictator. Rather, it happens because the police officer has civil service protection. A mayor or police chief cannot fire a cop the way a CEO can fire a surly customer support representative. The tyranny comes from a vacuum of top-down authority.

In places where the police and authority are absent, there is rule by violent gangs. Sudhir Venkatesh described how gangs in Chicago collect taxes and brutally enforce their rule. In Baltimore, when the police withdrew after six cops were arrested for the Freddie Gray incident, murders doubled and the streets are no longer safe. In inner-city schools, violence comes at the hands of other students, because the court system prevents teachers from touching unruly students to break up fights. If official authorities refuse to use violence, then they will cede the streets and hallways to disorganized, bottom-up violence and oppression.

Repression of free speech also happens peer-to-peer. Saying anything that anyone can plausibly construe as being racist or sexist now puts you at risk of losing your job. Examples can be as trivial as the two programmers who were fired because they made a slightly off-color joke about “dongles”, (apparently, such a joke was sexist and threatening). See this long list of people who were bullied or purged from their job for believing the wrong thing.

When it comes to the difficulty of opening a factory, again, the friction does not come from a top-down dictator. It comes from a broken system of property records so you don’t even know who owns the vacant lots you want to buy. It comes from going through a half-dozen community boards, negotiating hundreds of regulations, dealing with a half-dozen agencies ranging from the EPA, EEOC to OSHA.

This kind of democratic repression is nothing new. Here are two quotes from Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s excellent book Liberty or Equality. First he quotes Tocqueville:

I do not know a country where there is in general less intellectual independence and less freedom of discussion than in America. .. . In America the majority builds an impregnable wall around the process of thinking. The Inquisition was never able to prevent the circulation in Spain of books opposed to the religion of the majority. The majestic rule of the majority does better in the United States; it has removed even the thought of publishing them.

The second quote comes from the American James Fenimore Cooper, author of The Last of the Mohicans, who wrote in the 1830’s:

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny …… Although the political liberty of this country is greater than that of nearly every other civilized nation, its personal liberty is said to be less. In other words, men are thought to be more under the control of extra-legal authorities, and to defer more to those around them, in pursuing even their lawful and innocent occupations, than in almost every other country. .. . It is not difficult to trace the causes of such a state of things, but the evil is none the less because it is satisfactorily explained

Protecting liberty is a hard problem that will require hard, clear thinking to solve

Figuring out how to protect liberty is a really, really hard problem. Figuring out how to reform the sclerotic and increasingly totalitarian American system is also a really hard problem.

We will not be able to solve these problems if we lump together all non-democratic alternatives into the same category as fascism, and call them evil and illegitimate. We will not be able to solve these problems if we cling to childish, black-and-white notions about the nature of government and tyranny.

There is much to be learned from alternative systems. The Venetians had a massively successful aristocratic republic. Their system used a combination lottery and election to help avoid the corruption and public choice problems that plague majoritarian systems. Perhaps such a system could be useful in a country filled with tribal strife.

Perhaps hybrid arrangements might give us the best of all worlds. City management could be franchised to for-profit companies, just as the owner of building complex hires a property management company. The company would be hired by the city council to efficiently manage the parks, roads, zoning, sanitation, and public works. But the company would not have the power to pass laws. If the government wants to make it a felony to unlock your smartphone, the law would have to pass a referendum of all citizens. Such a system like this might be able to combine the efficiency of hierarchical share-holder management, with even greater protections for liberty than our current system.

The point is not that we should have a revolution and install a dictator. The point is not that everything would work great if we just had the one true system. The point is that we need to think practically about what governing systems would work well for our own cities, states, and countries. We should stop being seduced by every activist mob that claims it is fighting for the people. We should stop lighting fires in foreign countries, and stop fomenting revolution against decent or improving regimes, just because they don’t conform to our ideology of democracy. We should use our faculties of reason, ground our political knowledge in history and psychology, and reform our government systems based on what is likely to work, not based on what is ideologically pure.

I am becoming increasingly concerned that sending children to college is dangerous for their intellectual health. I am afraid that instead of being told how to think, students are being told not to think. They are being ideological role models, not intellectual role models.

Had someone expressed such sentiments to me fifteen years ago, I would have dismissed that person as a paranoid right-wing nut-job. I infer that in the meantime either I have turned into a paranoid right-wing nut-job or there has been a significant erosion of intellectual integrity at American colleges, or both.

I am inclined to believe that it was rapid erosion of intellectual integrity. I think that the last 15 years have witnessed a change in the demographics of the professoriate. Professors with intellectual integrity have aged out or otherwise departed.

Kling is not alone in this thinking. Even the New York Times is publishing opinion pieces decrying the rise of “trigger warnings”, safe spaces, and the banning of speakers.

But what these complaints ignore is that intellectual narrowness in academia has been a major problem for many decades. The devastating real world consequences have already happened.

Professors have been investigated or forced out for taking politically incorrect views about race or sex as far back as the 70s and 80s (although it does seem to be more frequent, and for lesser offenses recently). And for every professor purged, how many were simply quietly rejected by hiring committees or tenure committees? How many were screened out in grad school due to writing papers with a conservative bent? How many never entered academia in the first place, since they knew the odds were stacked against them?

Paul Graham, a Harvard PHD familiar with academia noted that: “In order to get tenure in any field you must not arrive at conclusions that members of tenure committees can disagree with.” That was my observation too. When I was in college a decade ago, a smart, popular, young conservative scholar admitted privately that he could never get tenure due to his conservative views. He is no longer in academia.

Years ago, Swarthmore professor Timothy Burke wrote advice about grad school:

I know that some people will object and say that even the most odd-duck graduate program can find a place for its students. But honestly, I have been on the other side in way too many grant competitions, job searches, panel selections and so on. In a tournament economy with hundreds of highly qualified competitors, just one thing that irks one judge or evaluator is enough to knock you out of the race. If it’s a consistent thing, e.g., something that rubs up against an orthodox way of defining a field or discipline, it’ll knock you out of most races…

Academic institutions endorse faculty diversity, but the conversation about diversity usually boils down to fixed identarian formulas, to improving the percentage of recognized groups, not to diversifying the kinds of experience (and passions) that professionals can bring to intellectual work. I feel intuitively that the generation of faculty just ahead of me, people from their late 50s to 70s, are more diverse in this sense if not racially so. I know considerably more first-generation scholars whose passionate connection to intellectual work got them into academia in that generation than in any younger cohort. The question is whether I should encourage someone who I think hasn’t been exposed to all the insider rules and codes to go on to graduate work. There’s no way I can make up for all that in one conversation or even several. The best I can do is tell someone bluntly that they’re going to be at a disadvantage and that they’ve got to do their best to break the code every chance they get.

In another piece, professor Burke writes:

Graduate school is not education. It is socialization. It is about learning to behave, about mastering a rhetorical and discursive etiquette as mind-blowingly arcane as table manners at a state dinner in 19th Century Western Europe. Graduate school is cotillion for eggheads.

Some commentators believe that the stifling of campus discourse has been exaggerated, that there will always be some example of crazy in a nation of thousands of universities. Others believe that it is not that bad now – but that it is a slippery slope.

On the contrary, it seems to me that we are already far down the slope. The intellectual discourse has been restricted for decades. There have already been devastating real world consequences, impacting the lives of tens of millions of people.

In college, I took multiple classes on urban decay, race, social problems, and the plight of the inner-city underclass. The standard explanation was that red-lining, deindustrialization, and white flight had isolated the urban poor and concentrated poverty. The consensus solution was to reintegrate the underclass with the middle class suburbs, either via Section 8 vouchers and/or by merging the suburbs with the cities. The most not-fully-left-wing writer we were exposed to was Jane Jacobs, who blamed the government planners of the 1960s for building housing projects that were hard to monitor, broke up communities, and concentrated poverty.¹

As a student, I bought into these theories. It never really occurred to me that there were other more compelling explanations that I was missing. I remember feeling a bit of anger toward my parents for living in the suburbs and leaving the impoverished in the inner cities to suffer.

A few years later, I came across an Atlantic Monthly article called An American Murder Mystery. This article shocked me and dramatically changed my views:

At this point, he still thought of the stretch of Memphis where he’d grown up as “quiet as all get-out”; the only place you’d see cruisers congregated was in the Safeway parking lot, where churchgoing cops held choir practice before going out for drinks. But by 2000, all of that had changed. Once-quiet apartment complexes full of young families “suddenly started turning hot on us.” Instead of the occasional break-in, Barnes was getting calls about armed robberies, gunshots in the hallways, drug dealers roughing up their neighbors. A gang war ripped through the neighborhood. “We thought, What the hell is going on here?” A gang war! In North Memphis! “All of a sudden it was a damn war zone,” he said. … Lately, though, a new and unexpected pattern has emerged, taking criminologists by surprise. While crime rates in large cities stayed flat, homicide rates in many midsize cities (with populations of between 500,000 and 1 million) began increasing, sometimes by as much as 20 percent a year. In 2006, the Police Executive Research Forum, a national police group surveying cities from coast to coast, concluded in a report called “A Gathering Storm” that this might represent “the front end … of an epidemic of violence not seen for years.” The leaders of the group, which is made up of police chiefs and sheriffs, theorized about what might be spurring the latest crime wave: the spread of gangs, the masses of offenders coming out of prison, methamphetamines. But mostly they puzzled over the bleak new landscape. According to FBI data, America’s most dangerous spots are now places where Martin Scorsese would never think of staging a shoot-out—Florence, South Carolina; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Reading, Pennsylvania; Orlando, Florida; Memphis, Tennessee.

He [criminologist Richard Janikowski] began mapping all violent and property crimes, block by block, across the city. “These cops on the streets were saying that crime patterns are changing,” he said, so he wanted to look into it…The inner city, where crime used to be concentrated, was now clean. But everywhere else looked much worse: arrests had skyrocketed along two corridors north and west of the central city (the bunny rabbit’s ears) and along one in the southeast (the tail). Hot spots had proliferated since the mid-1990s, and little islands of crime had sprung up where none had existed before, dotting the map all around the city.

Memphis demolished its first project in 1997. The city gave former residents federal “Section8” rent-subsidy vouchers and encouraged them to move out to new neighborhoods. Two more waves of demolition followed over the next nine years, dispersing tens of thousands of poor people into the wider metro community.

If police departments are usually stingy with their information, housing departments are even more so. Getting addresses of Section 8 holders is difficult, because the departments want to protect the residents’ privacy. Betts, however, helps the city track where the former residents of public housing have moved. Over time, she and Janikowski realized that they were doing their fieldwork in the same neighborhoods.

About six months ago, they decided to put a hunch to the test. Janikowski merged his computer map of crime patterns with Betts’s map of Section8 rentals. Where Janikowski saw a bunny rabbit, Betts saw a sideways horseshoe (“He has a better imagination,” she said). Otherwise, the match was near-perfect. On the merged map, dense violent-crime areas are shaded dark blue, and Section 8 addresses are represented by little red dots. All of the dark-blue areas are covered in little red dots, like bursts of gunfire. The rest of the city has almost no dots.

Betts remembers her discomfort as she looked at the map. The couple had been musing about the connection for months, but they were amazed—and deflated—to see how perfectly the two data sets fit together. She knew right away that this would be a “hard thing to say or write.” Nobody in the antipoverty community and nobody in city leadership was going to welcome the news that the noble experiment that they’d been engaged in for the past decade had been bringing the city down, in ways they’d never expected. But the connection was too obvious to ignore, and Betts and Janikowski figured that the same thing must be happening all around the country. Eventually, they thought, they’d find other researchers who connected the dots the way they had, and then maybe they could get city leaders, and even national leaders, to listen.

In another article, property managers and landlords describe the problem with Section 8 tenants:

“Section 8 tenants are much more difficult to deal with,” says Mark Engel, president of Langsam Property Services Corporation, which rents out 1,700 Section 8 apartments in five- and six-story apartment buildings throughout the Bronx. “The families are fragmented. There are no husbands, and so there’s not as much control over the children. So there are more damages—graffiti, breaking appliances, leaving garbage out in the hallways, breaking the entranceway door.” Another Bronx landlord, who leases 700 apartments to Section 8 tenants, agrees. “A lot of those most eligible for the subsidy,” he says, “are the least appreciative and the least sensitive to their obligations as tenants—either to owners or their neighbors.” They can create truly bad environments. “I’m dealing right now with a tenant, a 29-year-old single mother with five kids and one on the way,” he offers by way of example. “There’s loud music, teenagers congregating in the hall. The apartment’s in chaotic shape—hygiene bad, housekeeping a disaster.”

The experiment was performed. The results came in. Mixing the underclass into the suburbs did not improve the behavior of the underclass. The consensus theory of academia was proven false.

In retrospect, this should have been predictable. In the decade since graduating, I have done a lot more reading on the topic. The reasons for the policy failure of Section 8 are actually blazingly obvious. Uplift via integration had already failed multiple times before. The forced school integration of the 1970’s did little to close the gap in test scores. The original housing projects of the 1950’s were actually originally mixed race and mixed income, yet the bad behavior of the underclass drove away the middle class. Works of ethnography, such as Canarsie by Jonathan Rieder, provided counter-evidence that was completely ignored. Having the middle class in proximity did not magically uplift the underclass. Furthermore, if you look at actual ethnic groups that have been uplifted, such as the Irish in the 1800’s, you see that uplift does not require integration; it requires enforcing old-school values.

A better sociology education would have had us reading American Millstone about the black slums in Chicago, and then comparing it to Robert Roberts’ book, The Classic Slum, about Salford, England in the early 1900’s. Both slums had massive problems of poverty and inequality. Yet the murder rates in Salford, England were 100 or 1,000 times less, the social problems not at all comparable. Why? If you examine how old-school churches, neighborhoods and schools functioned there are certainly lots of clues. The collective works of Charles Murray have a lot of compelling evidence for alternative theories. But such books are never taught in academia.

The general theory, that simply moving lower-class people of ethnic group A into proximity of middle-class people of ethnic group B, and that somehow the traits of group B will rub off on group A, is ludicrous. Perhaps the policy might work to some extent, if ethnic group B had strong institutions and rules that it could impose on group A. It might work if ethnic group B had churches teaching old-school morality; schools where nuns could slap your wrist for misbehaving; respected neighborhood cops who could deal a little tough-love street justice; and welfare officers who would require strong household discipline in return for handing out checks to those on welfare. But none of this is allowed in the modern world. So when ethnic group A moves in, they continue to engage in the same unruly behavior as before, and there is no force that shape them up, no force to forge them into well-behaved members of society. It is magical thinking to assume that the traits of ethnic group B will rub off on A, without giving group B any tools to enforce their values and mores.

Here is an email written by a resident in a town that saw an influx of Section 8 tenants:

How can we get them to clean up the trash overflowing in the front yard, turn off the loud music after 10 PM, as well we have seen them drinking and smoking pot in their front yard, and children running in the streets after 11 PM or 12 PM! We cannot stay up until 1 or 2 AM listening to their music since we have jobs and have to pay our rent and utilities, why do they not have to work? The neighbors have all but given up on the police, after calling many times they last stated to one of our neighbors they would not come out to our neighborhood any longer unless it is an emergency.

The theory was that these middle class residents would uplift the incoming, lower-class tenants. Yet how on earth are they supposed to do that when the lower-class tenants are not subject to any form of discipline, when the police ignore all complaints?

Thus, here we are in 2015 and the government is doubling-down on these same policies. The Obama administration is launching a new effort to increase the amount of vouchers and to further penetrate the rich suburbs. Worse, the administration has also launched investigations and lawsuits of school systems for punishing black students at a higher rate than white students. This is despite the weight of the evidence says that black students, unfortunately, commit violations at a much higher rate than other students. So to create equality in total punishment numbers, schools will have to be much more permissive toward black student offenses. In total, the the government is moving group A into proximity of group B, while at the same time stripping group B of the tools needed to better the behavior of group A. Such a policy is a disaster for all involved.

Why is the Obama administration trying these same failed policies? In part, because this generation of policy leaders were educated in universities where they were taught the same thing I was taught: underclass pathologies were a result of black people not living near middle-class white people. Any explanation involving culture, incentives, institutions, or God forbid, genes, was filtered out decades ago. The consensus academic opinion – that integration was the only answer – should have been seen as ridiculous. What other ethnic group, in all of history, has needed to live near a second ethnic group in order to do well in school or in order to not shoot each other at ridiculously high rates? Yet I believed this academic consensus, my classmates believed it, and most of my classmates who are now in policy positions still believe it.

College fifteen years ago was already poisonous to intellectual health. Had there been no courses on urban problems, leaders could make up their own mind by observing the facts with their own minds. Instead, we learned all sorts of theories about why 2 + 2 equals 5.

And so the intellectual narrowness of academia is not some recent phenomenon. It has been ongoing for years, and the results have been devastating. The wrong policies have been put in place, time and time again, and tens of millions have been subjected to unnecessary violence and disorder. The real crazy to worry about is not the obvious crazy, the crazy that makes headlines. Even 15 years ago most students did not buy into the arcane nonsense of critical theory and post-modernism. The dangerous crazy was that of my urban studies class, which was just sane enough to be taken as truth, but in reality has led to very bad policy decisions.

Yet each generation seems to accept the craziness of the past generation, even when balking at the craziness of the new generation. We think that in the past, academia was on track, and that those who opposed progress were crazy, right-wing nut-jobs. But we dissidents think that this time, this new generation – well – they have gone to far and have gone crazy. There is a certain Cthulian horror when suddenly you realize that many of the nut-jobs in the past were actually right. Many were slandered retroactively, not because they were wrong, or evil, not because they made bad predictions, but because they lost and the winners wrote the histories. There is a horror in realizing that you are just like them, this cycle has played out before, and that your children’s generation will see you as the nut-job.

Universities are leeches designed to extract as much money from students and taxpayers as possible, in order to make life as pleasant as possible for high-level professors and administrators. They exist to benefit themselves. Universities publish an unending stream of self-serving propaganda, saying how if only we spend even more on schools, we will have more economic growth and lower inequality.

The Federal Reserve is a corrupt tool of the financial interests. It exists to serve rich bankers at the expense of the hard working citizen.

The Silicon Valley elite capitalists, such as investor and YC founder Paul Graham, or founder Mark Zuckerberg, wish to increase high tech immigration so that their companies can pay lower wages for workers. They are talking their book.

These statements strike us as being crazy and misguided. And for good reason. I have met some of these elites. While I cannot peer into Paul Graham’s or Mark Zuckerberg’s soul, they never struck me as being Scrooge McDuck capitalists, trying to crush their workers to squeeze out every last penny. Long ago, I had a small group lunch with the now president of Yale. I never got the sense that he was dying to make parents take out second mortgages to fund his latest vanity project.

Virtually every reputable economics professor views the Federal Reserve as a benevolent agency, trying to what is best for the country and the economy in a tough world. The economics profession is a small world. If there was a conspiracy, if behind closed doors the Federal Reserve officials were saying “suck it, plebs,” the professors would know it. If the professors were all covering up the conspiracy, someone would leak the inside information. In these days of wikileaks, unnamed sources, data breaches and tell-all memoirs, it is harder than ever to keep secrets.¹

Thus, outsiders discredit themselves when they make accusations of conscious conspiracy. Any person of even mid-level status knows that the statement is flatly false. They know that the accused elites genuinely do seem to care about helping people. They know there is no conspiracy. Thus they discount the self-interest theory and pay no further attention.

This is a troubling problem. Because in fact, all three statements above, are, in a sense, true.

At issue, is what we mean by “intent.” When we say that a university schemes to take as much money as possible to further its own interests, the actual scheming or intent can occur at several different levels:

1) Conscious intention. What the people involved actually think about and reason about. What are they say to each other behind closed doors.

2) Subconscious intent. Much mental calculation happens in the subconscious. Motivated reasoning seems to be the default human thought process. Our subconscious calculates what is to our advantage, and then crafts arguments to defend the advantaged belief. Humans have evolved to be very good at detecting lies and insincerity. Thus the most successful lie to advance your own interests, is the lie you actually believe yourself.

3) Memetic intention. Memes were a concept invented by Richard Dawkins to refer to “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.” The theory is that ideas can replicate themselves, just as genes do. A living thing is a thing that replicates, therefore, memes can almost seem to be living things. A memeplex is a group of memes, like an organism is a group of genes. They evolve and mutate. Just as we say a “virus tries to find ways evade white blood cells” we say a “memeplex tries to make those who attack it low status.” For example, I doubt that the Catholic bishops who came up with the concept of “mystery of faith” did it as a cynical ploy. But it is a great way to for a memeplex to shut down questioning of the memeplex’s own premises, thus enabling it to spread. The intent is not always conscious on the part of individuals, it is a product of natural selection.

4) Empathy and social network self-interest. Social networks exist. People are more likely to have empathy for people within their own Dunbar number. People are more likely to helpful to members of their own network. So even if there is no overt conspiracy, if all your friends are bankers, then obviously you are going to be more attuned to the problems of bankers than the problems of the common man. When you design policy or advocate policy, the design of the policy will be guided by the advice of bankers.

5) Institutional intention. Let us say some members of an institution believe that the institution has outlived its purpose and that their jobs are wasteful. Other members have the sincere but delusional belief that the institution is carrying out a grand mission. The deluded believe that acquiring more resources and growing the institution is of vital importance for the good of the world. The disillusioned members end up quitting or finding some quiet niche. The true believers fill the leadership ranks and end up doing whatever it takes to expand the institution. Furthermore, the people and departments that are good at getting funding and good at promoting the brand, expand and get more leadership, regardless of whether that funding was actually good for society. Thus even while the all members of the institution believe they are doing good, due to selection effects, the institution as a whole acts a self-aggrandizing organism.

This last dynamic was defined as Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

Some government bureaucracies have the very nasty dynamic that when they screw up, they create bigger problems, and thus get more funding to solve the bigger problem. Often, no one gets fired. The leaders of the problem-creating department now have more employees and thus more status and authority. Thus the system actively rewards those who work against the stated goals of the institution (again, they are not intentionally subverting the institution, they are often deluded).

The word “intent” breaks down because we do not have a handy English word to describe subconscious, institutional, or evolutionary intent. Many low-status outsiders observe the institution acting like a vampire, but they do not understand the internal dynamic, so they assume that the selfishness is conscious, when it is not. Their mistaken analysis of the internal dynamic makes them look like cranks, even though the overall observation is correct.

Because intent is so complicated, it hardly makes sense to even analyze it. To judge an institution, watch what it does. Look at the pressure that shapes its decisions.

Consider the pro-immigration Silicon Valley capitalists. I doubt Paul Graham fantasizes about bringing in hordes of programmers to push down wages, so that he can make an extra buck. That is ridiculous. But, he spends most of his time with startup founders and other investors. His grand thesis is that what is good for startups, is good for the country where the startups live (I generally agree with this thesis). So naturally, out of pure empathy, he feels pain when the founders recount some trouble getting a visa for themselves or a key employee. The social circle of elites like Graham, Zuckerberg and Gates include few workers who have been squeezed out of their jobs by H1B’s. So the concerns of ordinary tech workers are reduced to a footnote and omitted from the FWD.us plan-of-action.²

Consider the Yale president. President Salovey will want to champion some noble new initiatives. That is the role he was hired for. But how to pay for it? If he cuts funding for some diversity program he will have protesters at his door. If he cuts a department, professors will be outraged. If he cuts the new gymnasium renovations, they’ll lose out on matriculation from rich and prestigious elite students. Thus the pressure is always to get more money, to grow, to expand. The pressure is to raise tuition, seek more government grants, seek more tax benefits from running a giant real estate conglomerate. Does President Salovey ever lay in bed, trying to sleep, thinking to himself, “You know, the primary benefit of Yale is really having a monopoly on a social network. It is wrong to exploit that social network, to make parents take out second mortgages to get access to it. Maybe we should charge less. We could do without the new electronic media center.” Perhaps he does think that. But there is no pressure to make him act on such thoughts.

Consider the Federal Reserve. It is incorrect to claim that the Federal Reserve is run by the banking industry in a command and control manner. But the two are very cozy. The door revolves. And even if you eliminated the revolving door, the banking industry has real power because of the information asymmetry. The bankers know the mechanics of the financial system, and thus when the system breaks, the bankers get to make the plan to fix it.³ Thus policy plans that originate in the banking sector are often the policy plans that get passed. And look at the results. There were trillions in bailouts for Wall Street. Many financiers net gained from the entire boom-bust cycle, while the ordinary citizen has net lost. Inflation has run higher than the interest on CD’s, thus taking away money from ordinary Americans each year. Favored institutions get loans at low rates to buy up coveted property. Local banks and shops struggle to compete. If you observe the results, the conspiracy theorists have a point.

Consider media companies. Do journalists get promoted for making good predictions and fired for making wrong predictions? Do clicks and advertising dollars correlate with truth value? Do foundation grants and donations from the wealthy correlate with truth value? If not, why should we expect these institutions to be giving us an accurate view of reality?

The bottom line is do not judge any person or institution by what they say. Watch what they do. Find where the pressure is. Trace their social network. Who gives them advice? Who do they want to impress? Examine where the incentives lie. Examine the selection process by which people or departments or ideas get promoted. In the long term, an institution is forged by pressure, not by lofty goals and intentions. Thus the conspiracy critique is often simplistic and naive, but effectively true.

So how do we resolve this? If all institutions only exist to benefit themselves, how can we ever have anything good in life?

The only way is to align incentives is to make it so that an institution only prospers if it actually serves its beneficiaries.

Paul Graham wrote a fine essay about how startups only do well if they make something other people want. Startups need to be good to survive. The key principles that make this work in the startup world are exit, choice, and open entry.⁴ If customers can choose another product, if a competitor can pop-up and offer something better, than a company will only succeed by producing a high quality product or service.

How to fix the incentives of a financial regulator? The regulator and the bank deposit insurance company should be one. Even better, have multiple insurance companies. Bailouts would be paid out of collected insurance premiums. The insurer would charger higher premiums for more risky practices, just as any insurance company does. The insurance company would refuse to cover banks that had complicated derivatives that the insurer did not understand. If the insurance company does a bad job and runs out of funds, the equity stakeholders and the entire management structure get wiped out. The company executives should have their bonuses clawed back from the last decade. Over time, the institutions would then select for managers who could balance risk and reward, who could support lending without making catastrophic mistakes that result in a bailout.⁵

How to fix the incentives of universities? For starters, create a separation between education and credentialing. If the two are legally combined in the same institution, the institution has no incentive to actually educate, but has much incentive to keep raising tuition, in order maximize the intake from its gate-keeping role. Force colleges to keep student loans on their own books. Don’t have the government take the loans off their hands. Even better, replace funding via general tax revenue with funding for a particular school based on a tax of the alumnae of that school (after all, why is it fair to have those who did not go to college, who often make lower incomes, pay taxes to support the universities?). Make it so that the school only gets paid if it actually raises the earning power of its graduates.

Sometimes an industry is a natural monopoly. Consumer choice is impossible. In that case, you must put the institution directly under the control of its beneficiaries. If you are running a government healthcare service such as Medicare, do not put it under the control of Congress, because Congress is pushed around by the doctors lobby and the hospitals lobby. An individual votes for their Congressman based on dozens of different issues, and thus cannot vote on Medicare alone. Due to the logic of collective action, the concentrated interests have more influence. Thus the existing system has many conflicts of interest, for instance, doctors play outsized role in determining the payment guidelines. To make Medicare work for the beneficiaries, have a board of trustees that is directly elected by all people receiving Medicare. The board’s sole role would be to administer Medicare for the benefit of the recipients.

Insiders generally know the details of how things work, but are often blind to the over-arching pattern of who is winning and who is losing. They are often quite deluded about the divergence between stated intentions and actual results.

The outsiders can see these patterns, but don’t understand the details, so come across as cranks when trying to do analysis. Should the outsiders gain authority, they have no real power, because they do not know how to work the levers to operate the machine. They don’t even know where the levers are. When they try to fix the machine, they get duped, get discredited, and end up out of power again.

An aim of this blog is to combine the outsiders skepticism with some of the knowledge I have learned from being a fly-on-the-wall in the corridors of power. My urge to insiders is to examine your results, and not just your intentions. My urge to outsiders is to read insider accounts and learn how the machine works, so that you do not sound like whiny cranks when you write critiques.

Let’s start with the term ‘artificially’—what does that actually mean? OK, but how would we establish whether the equilibrium interest rate is “artificially” low or high? There’s really only one set of criteria, which (AFAIK) were first modeled by the economist Knut Wicksell. He referred to the natural interest rate as the rate that would lead to macroeconomic equilibrium.

To us heterodox, non-state sponsored econophiles, the natural price of anything is the price based on the supply and demand of a free market. The interest rate is simply the price of future money. The natural interest rate is the rate that equalizes supply and demand between those who wish to consume or spend on capital goods now and those who are willing to forgo the current use of money for greater consumption later.

Saying that interest rates are “artificially low” is not to say anything particularly novel or interesting. Interest rates are massively influenced by both the actions of the Fed and Byzantine set of subsidies from the rest of the government, (such as the state sponsored agencies that sop up mortgages and student loans, government mandates that require pension funds to own bonds, etc.). Thus all interest rates in the modern financial system are “artificial.” Particularly low interest rates are thus “artificially” low.

Semantics aside, let me address the Scott’s other points:

If rates were artificially low in the UK, then we ought to see either high inflation or high productivity growth. But both of these variables are growing very slowly.

There is no fundamental reason that this needs to be true. The existing financial system is massively complex. So to understand the mechanics, let us use a simplified model:

Imagine an economy where the government prints money to increase the money supply by 2% a each year. The government issues the newly minted money in the form of tax rebate checks. There is no Fed nor any other government intervention in lending. This is a very simple free market economy. Interest rates sit at 5% due to the intersection of supply and demand for future money.

Now the government changes policy. It still prints out 2% in new currency each year. But it now distributes the new currency by lending it out, by auctioning off loans. If the government injects massive amounts of money on the supply side of a market, it will drive the price down. By injecting massive amounts of cash into supplying new loans, the government drives down the price of loans, drives down the price of present money. Interest rates will fall, interest rates will be “artificially low.” Yet, the same total quantity of new money is injected into the economy. In this model, the new money being loaned out comes at the expense of money that would have been refunded to tax payers. After this intervention, average tax payers no longer get nice tax refunds with which to remodel their kitchen. Instead, they will borrow money at these super low rates to remodel their kitchen.¹ So the same amount of money chases the same total production. Neither productivity nor inflation rises. All in all, interest rates are much lower, interest rates are artificially low, but the overall measures of the economy remain the same.

Wicksell’s theory is hogwash. There is not one rate of interest that maximizes employment. In reality, the economy can adjust to many different interest rates. What causes disequilibrium, unemployment, and recessions, are the particular bugs and poor designs of the banking system, which create cycles of debt inflation and then debt deflation. To help counteract these cycles, the Fed tries to intervene in interest rates. But these interventions are not necessary due to some fundamental laws of economics, they are triggered by particular bugs in our particular system.

If rates were artificially low, then attempts to raise them should be successful. But recent attempts by central banks to raise rates have all gone poorly.

The Fed cannot raise nominal interest rates, because the rates have been too low, for too long. It is as simple as that – existing firms and people are addicted to the current rates. Raising the rates will be like quitting heroin.

My general theory of the business cycle is that depressions are caused by a collapse in paper net wealth, a collapse in balance sheets. People see their home equity fall, their stock prices going down, etc, and realize they are not as rich as they thought they were. The immediate reaction is to delay spending on durables, construction, luxuries, anything that can be delayed. This causes unemployment as those industries lay people off, due to lack of need. The layoffs and falling stock prices causes more panic, often feeding upon itself.

During each economic cycle, the Fed has responded with lowering interest rates, each time making the economy more dependent on debt. For instance, a new and very unhealthy phenomena in the past few years is for companies to issue debt to buy back shares. If interest rates rise, companies will have to stop the practice and pay the debt down. This will be very painful for stock prices.

So, in 2015, if interest rates were raised:

• Construction projects financed by low interest rates would be deferred or aborted
• Debt payments would increase, companies profit margins would get squeezed, companies would have to tighten their spending a bit
• Housing prices would decline
• Share buy-backs financed by borrowing would come to a stop. And remember, simply the withdrawal of existing buyers causes stock prices to fall.
• Bonds become more attractive relative to stocks, causing people to shift money into bonds, and stock prices to fall

The net result will be a fall in stock and home prices making people feel poorer. You will have a stoppage in construction projects causing unemployment. When people feel poorer, they cut spending, especially in durables and luxuries. Producers of those items cut jobs, since they are producing and selling less.

So in all, the existing production structure is dependent on the current low interest rates. If interest rates were raised, you would get a nasty recession. Hence the Fed is scared to raise interest rates.

This dependency on low interest rates have nothing to do with any “real” economic factor such as the limits of growth or Baumol disease or anything else. It is purely based on the structure of paper wealth, the structure of existing debt contracts.

The hard libertarian view is that we should suck it up, allow interest to rise to their natural rate based purely on time preference, sans intervention by the Fed, and endure the pain of the heroin withdrawal.

In my view, there is a methadone option. The government could raise interest rates, but at the same time prop up paper wealth. It could buy up stocks (and retire the shares) to keep stock prices up, issue more home buying tax credits, allow corporations to replace short term debt with long term debt at the current low rates, etc. If done carefully over a couple years, there could be a transition to higher rates without too many ill-effects.

In reality, the government has neither the talent, will, political cover, nor asabiya to pull off the methadone option, and so we are stuck.