
East of Palo Alto’s Eden - erehweb
http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/10/east-of-palo-altos-eden/
======
lrvick
Decided to start over in the bay area last year with my wife. Our housing
criteria was: central to everything (I have locations of interest all over the
bay), Within walking distance of my job (Downtown Palo Alto), 1 bedroom, low
rent (under $2k/mo), 100Mb+ internet, and the ability to move in right away.
Everyone told me that was impossible.

EPA however met all that criteria perfectly. Landed on a Friday, picked out an
apartment over the weekend, and had the keys on Monday. Unlike many areas in
the bay, demand is fairly low in EPA and there are available apartments
everywhere.

Despite being a perfect fit for my needs, never did I realize what kind of
judgement I would get from so many people for living here. I get a shocked
expression almost every time I mention I live in EPA. Some people even get
angry. "Why would you drag your wife to place like that?!?!". Many people I
know when shopping for apartments themselves openly say there is no way they
could ever live somewhere so "unsafe" and just consider my wife and I to be
"lucky" or "living dangerously". The very idea that a white couple with a tech
job income would -choose- to live in EPA blows peoples minds. I used to just
tell people I live in Palo Alto to avoid the judgement, but now I happily
claim it and discuss the misconceptions. My wife and I are pretty happy with
all our ideals met. We won at housing by ignoring meaningless stigma and will
be squatting here for a while. Might even buy a house while the market is
still 1/4\. Property value here is sure to soar once people realize the
"murder capitol" age is distant history.

The stigma from past history is incredibly present, but the _reality_ is this
is one of the safest feeling places I have ever lived. (And I have lived a lot
of places)

~~~
michaelochurch
I lived in Baltimore for a year and a half. Oddly enough, the part of
Baltimore I lived in was far safer than, say, Williamsburg where knife attacks
and drug-related violence were still commonplace into the late 2000s (and
possibly later).

Baltimore's problem isn't the poor blacks. It never was. (Yes, there are some
in the drug trade, just as there are some low-income whites in it.) I feel
sorry for them, because they've been abandoned by the economy
(deindustrialization) and the politicians, and they almost never do any harm
to others. Its problem is the whites in the suburbs ("the county") who've
basically abandoned the city, going in for July 4th and New Years and an
occasional trip to the Aquarium but otherwise avoid never deign to live there
(and, therefore, don't pay taxes and leave the city poor despite being in one
of the wealthiest states in the country).

~~~
cafard
I worked in Baltimore at the end of the 1980s, not far from Penn Station. The
Monday Sun usually had a handful of murders to report from the weekend, and
there was a shooting (not fatal) across the street from our office one day.
The reputation for violence may be out of date now, but it was well earned.

Baltimore's disciplined voting habits have given it disproportionate power in
the state government. The late William Donald Schaefer appeared to regard
Maryland as a life support system for Baltimore, not just when he was mayor
but when he was governor. I doubt it will do as well under Hogan who is a)
Republican, and b) from Prince Georges County as it did under O'Malley.

But yes, there are perfectly fine parts of Baltimore.

------
bjones22
I grew up in Redwood City and maintain very close friendships with high school
teammates from EPA. This article caused me to make an account on hacker news
so I could share a not so unique, but perhaps unheard, perspective on what it
means to have a community like East Palo Alto (a.k.a. 'EPA') in the middle of
silicon valley.

EDIT: this post quickly digressed into a four page behemoth that was too long
to post in a single comment. It's long and I fear the formatting would have
been awful. I will put up a WP site sometime tomorrow so that I may edit it
and format it nicely. Below is a brief excerpt from the end. I'll make an edit
to this post as soon as the WP site is up.

\----------------------

If anything is to be taken away from my experience and these stories is that
the men and women who are forced to grow up in this environment live in
cyclical state of despair. A vacuum that requires quite nearly a winning
lottery ticket to escape.

For it to be located so close to the affluent areas of silicon valley is
practically criminal. It is eerily close to being the pit in which Bane grew
up in during the Batman movies, the one where he lived in a prison that could
see freedom and happiness just a couple hundred feet away.

If I make any sort of dime in Silicon Valley I fully intend to research and
hopefully participate in philanthropy that will contribute to problems such as
these.

I believe it becomes our responsibility when it is in our own back yard.

~~~
mc32
To me this community being next to an affluent community is neither here nor
there. It would not be better if it were in Yolo county. If I were in the same
economic position as a resident, I'd prefer to be close to an affluent area
--at least there are second and third tier jobs to be had not too far(probably
anyone who is able to secure a first tier job would no longer stay in the
community). But if you're in a trailer park in Yolo county, what are the
prospects there?

Also, let's not forget the myriad trailer parks which dot bay area cities and
towns. They're hidden behind freeway sound abatement walls so people forget
about them but they have it pretty tough as well.

~~~
bjones22
I was just considering the same point. While I didn't answer it in the first
draft of the accidental essay I just wrote, I'll include it in the second.

The jest is that by having two disparate groups so close to each other, it
encourages an us versus them mentality that discourages community members from
embracing some of the attributes of the other group (in the case of my essay
it would be education, because I write a lot about the different ethos that
students had depending on which region they lived in).

Regardless I believe your points still have a large amount of merit.
Especially the last which points out how those that are fortunate tend to
alternate between fads of 'caring' for various less fortunate groups, in this
case it is that of East Palo Alto.

~~~
mc32
I think your essay will end up being an interesting read. Not to derail things
much but perhaps the ethos is not so much from the place but from the parents.
In my experience new parents who care about education, if they can afford it
will move into an area with good schools perpetuating this virtue. Of course
there are some parents who have a lot of money and stay in locales with poor
schools but then send their kids to private schools. I know it seems like one
in the same thing but its not. Parent mentality and culture have a huge
influence on how education is perceived. Some kifs I grew up with --middle
class I'd say, saw school as something in the way of their fun. It was a
burden to some extent. But there were a few who saw it as a necessity down the
road to an imagined future of success. So parent influence and involvement is
key. Some parents think its the school's responsibility --no they are there to
supplement parental influence but they very well can't supplant it. You see
this in kids who despite parents talking down school seek to do well because
they see what their parents don't see or despite parents jealousy, etc.

Regarding the reporter's sincerity about caring, it's hard to tell, it could
be just getting brownie points on a topical issue or they may really care.
However if they actually really cared and wanted to make a difference doing it
from TC does not inspire too much credibility. Typically people who really
care move closer to the issue (meaning working on the issue constantly. If I
cared about feral cats then I'd be involved directly with doing something
about feral cats -- otherwise it's just a nice opinion.

------
mpweiher
While the article is an interesting read overall (didn't know about the
connection to "Dangerous Minds"), it perpetuates the myth that Palo Alto
Airport was imposed on an existing poor/ethnic community.

This is not true, the airport preceded other development, having been opened
prior to World War 2.[1] There were similar voices after the twin-engine
Cessna crash as to the outrage of building an airport next to (inexpensive)
housing[2]. The causality is reversed from the truth: the housing was/is cheap
because there was a pre-existing airport. (And routes do not go over East Palo
Alto's residential areas).

(Oh, and the starting photo brings back memories of entering the pattern to
land)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Alto_Airport_of_Santa_Clar...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Alto_Airport_of_Santa_Clara_County)

[2] [http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0217/Tesla-plane-crash-
Con...](http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0217/Tesla-plane-crash-Concern-
about-airports-near-neighborhoods)

~~~
ktothemc
Yes, that was my mistake about the airport and I corrected it.

~~~
mpweiher
Fantastic!

------
dluan
When we first moved down to the bay area for YC, we moved into a new
development house in EPA right next to Ikea. I frequently joke that EPA is not
the same as Palo Alto, and while the rest of our batchmates had apartments in
dowtown Mountain View or houses in the Los Altos hills, I really enjoyed
living in EPA.

It was grimy, I'd frequently hear cop car sirens at 4 in the morning. And,
there wasn't much to do in the immediate area unless you wanted to cross the
freeway into Palo Alto. Being there was always a stark reminder of how little
that community had, and also how little we had compared to all of the riches
around us. Being there felt appropriate for us.

I appreciate my time in EPA, because it was a little microcosm that trapped
some of the larger, harder problems of the real-world, hidden inside the
bubble that is silicon valley.

~~~
salemh
Link below is dead dismissing your comment.

To be honest, I'm not sure why your own comment adds to the discussion either.

 _I appreciate my time in EPA, because it was a little microcosm that trapped
some of the larger, harder problems of the real-world, hidden inside the
bubble that is silicon valley._

I suppose it is that.

[1] dead link made a snarky comment towards bravery and a movie flick.

~~~
dluan
I think you might be reading too much into it. Spending time in EPA was a
constant reminder that I was voluntarily stepping into a bubble everytime we
left. The dichotomy was and is still unbelievable.

A lot of people have the distorted view of SV as some golden paradise, where
the roads are paved with 1's and 0's. That is not the case. There are very
real problems, but most times people try to talk about it, it's always rooted
in some struggle to make SV better (e.g. housing).

------
elorant
First time in the last three years that I bothered reading an article on
Techcrunch.

~~~
frankchn
If you liked this, I recommend TechCrunch's excellent piece on SF housing
issues by the same author: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-
housing/](http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/)

~~~
Osmium
> I recommend TechCrunch's excellent piece on SF housing issues by the same
> author

I think we should start paying a lot more attention to authors than to the
domain names they write on. Not reading the byline is something I've been
guilty of for sure, which is why I'm trying to become a lot more conscious of
it now. In this case, both pieces were written by Kim-Mai Cutler.

------
Stratoscope
The redlining maps of San Francisco and Oakland are interesting, but their
resolution is artificially limited. You can see the full resolution maps by
removing the height and width parameters from the URLs:

[https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/nbnlkqx...](https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/nbnlkqxeiyyjuhtg.jpg)

[https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/oakland...](https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/oakland.jpg)

~~~
thrownaway2424
A good use of these maps is to wave them under the noses of real estate agents
and inform them that it is the Western Addition, not Pacific Heights.

------
bcx
If you liked this article, you might like the movie Dreams of a City, which
talks about the creation of East Palo Alto:
[http://vimeo.com/23458988](http://vimeo.com/23458988)

EPA's has a really interesting history, back in the 1920s an entrepreneur by
the name of Charles Weeks started a Poultry Colony, preaching "one acre and
independence". ([http://www.paloaltoonline.com/print/story/2008/04/16/one-
acr...](http://www.paloaltoonline.com/print/story/2008/04/16/one-acre-and-
independence) ,
[http://www.santaclararesearch.net/SCBIOS/cweeks.html](http://www.santaclararesearch.net/SCBIOS/cweeks.html))
\- you can still see the remnants of this in the structure of the lots along
Runnymede street.
[http://epawiki.pbworks.com/f/Remnants+of+a+Failed+Utopia.pdf](http://epawiki.pbworks.com/f/Remnants+of+a+Failed+Utopia.pdf)

------
jefflinwood
There's a huge demand for housing of any kind in the Bay Area, so it doesn't
surprise me that areas like East Palo Alto and the Bayview are going to face a
lot of demographic upheaval, unless new housing units are brought online in
other areas.

There doesn't seem to be any appetite whatsoever for filling in more of the
San Francisco Bay to create land, and there are restrictions and conservation
easements on most of the land stretching from 280 to the Coastside.

One possible area to expand into would be Coyote Valley, south of San Jose,
which was a growth target during the first dot.com bubble in 1999, around a
Cisco campus. If Caltrain could put in a station there, along with express
lines, that may open up a middle-class area to new housing opportunities.

~~~
thrownaway2424
It seems very silly to me that people want to bulldoze Coyote Valley in the
name of housing when "downtown" Mountain View, flanking a mainline commuter
railroad, consists entirely of single-story buildings and parking lots. There
are many, many, MANY opportunities around the Bay to replace wasteful
developments with real ones. Just look at the grotesque waste of the Blossom
Hill Caltrain area. It's strip malls, parking, and sprawl for miles. If you go
further out, you'll get more of the same.

~~~
mc32
Quite right. I think the whole Camino Real strip from San Jose to Daly city
could be turned into a high density corridor with subway line running below
(or above) connecting SF to SJ and all the new downtowns in between. Like a
really long Van Ness going down the peninsula.

Old timers could keep their quaint towns --whatever, but at least allow a
modern city corridor down The Camino with good density and the accompanying
amenities (design it with self-reliance in mind so as not to incite needless
driving). The thing that irks me most is the anti building anti progress
contingent which aims to keep the whole of the bay area preserved as it was in
1964. Look at China Japan Singapore Holland get a clue learn to change with
the times

~~~
Animats
_Quite right. I think the whole Camino Real strip from San Jose to Daly city
could be turned into a high density corridor_

Redwood City is doing that. Check out the huge new buildings next to the
railroad tracks.

Besides, this boom is probably temporary. Social and apps have probably
peaked.

~~~
jonny_eh
Just like how chips peaked and telecom peaked? There's always a next
technology, and odds are it'll be worked on in the Bay Area. It's where the
money and talent is concentrated.

------
gyc
While the article is well worth reading, I was bothered by the article
implicitly defining Asians as not counting towards a diverse workforce. I
admit my point is unrelated to the bigger points of the article.

~~~
mc32
This is quite true. Recently I've seen where neither Chinese nor Indians are
counted as minorities. I think what happens is once a minority makes it then
you're no longer considered a minority in some discussions... It should be
noted Chinese in California were highly discriminated against in law till the
50s and 60s (could not own land, for example) so its not as though they had it
"easy". They had to work hard to get to where they are. on the other hand I
get it we want to lift up the classes which have not made it yet so once a
current minority makes it we work toward integrating left out minorities till
one day no one is a minority, economically speaking

~~~
jonny_eh
These days whenever I point out I'm a member of a minority by being Jewish I
am practically laughed at.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Strangely enough, our "not" being a minority doesn't seem to _stop_ people
shooting up our community centers or pushing us onto train tracks so much as
_make it excusable_.

------
lsiebert
This is some excellent long form journalism on how systemic issues have
created an absurd divide between Palo Alto and East Palo Alto.

~~~
yummyfajitas
What does "systemic" mean? How can I determine whether an issue is or is not
"systemic"?

~~~
afarrell
"Systemic" generally means that something arises out of the interaction of
parts, not simply being a result of the sum of those parts individually. At
least, that's how I use it.

~~~
blackbagboys
He knows what systemic means in this context. yummyfajitas's shtick is to try
to dismiss or derail any discussion of social issues by repeatedly posing
disingenuous semantic questions

~~~
yummyfajitas
Or maybe I'm trying to understand. Discussions like this involve a lot of
jargon, non-standard definitions and hidden (or nonexistent?) moral
assumptions.

I do this in all sorts of discussions when I don't understand the terms. "We
want to increase engagement." "How do you define engagement?" "We want the
estimator to be robust." "How do you define robust?"

You can call a request for clarification of terms "derailing" (or just flag me
and call me racist, as many people do), but that makes it look like you simply
want to avoid clarity. Asking for clear statements of claims and definitions
of terms isn't derailing - it's simply good practice if your goal is
understanding.

~~~
dalke
Says the person who thinks that "Disputing definitions is pointless", and
implies that definition_yummyfajitas is no worse than any other definition.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Asking what a person means when they use a word is not pointless - it's the
only way to understand what they believe about the world. If you say "sound"
and precisely define it as "auditory perceptions by a human", I then
understand what you mean when you say "a tree falls in the forest and makes no
sound". If you don't define "sound", then I might think you mean "a tree
falling in the forest creates no vibrations in the air".

In contrast, using the word "vibrations" or "fred" instead of "sound" doesn't
change the physical behavior of the air. That's why disputing definitions is
pointless.

~~~
dalke
Okay, what do you think "systemic" means? What does "pointless" mean to you?
What's a "vibration"? Are you a 'person' and how can I tell?

You just used all those words, and I would like you to educate me.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Pointless means we'll achieve nothing by doing it. I don't know what
"systemic" means which is why I asked. A vibration is an oscillation in a
medium.

------
nawitus
Pretty funny that Wikipedia states East Palo Alto had "only" five murders in
2008, even though the population is 28000. From an European perspective even a
single murder would be significant..

~~~
adventured
That really depends on what part of Europe you're talking about.

Russia has around a 10 to 12 per 100,000 murder rate. Belarus is around a 5.7
per 100k. Tallinn is over 7 and Tirana is over 6, and Chishinau is near 6,
Riga is 5.4, Vilnius is 5.4, Amsterdam is 4.4.

The murder rate in NYC is lower than those for example at about 4 per 100k.
The US murder rate is about 4.7, so it's comparable to Amsterdam as a whole
country of 320 million people, including the extremely violent parts of the
US.

The murder rate in Boise Idaho is about 1 or 2 per 100k typically. Seattle is
in the 3's these days, comparable to Brussels. Mesa Arizona has half a million
people at a 3 murder rate; Portland is around 600k at the same. San Diego is
at around 1.35 million people with a 3.x murder rate.

The US has numerous cities with severe murder problems, and it also has a lot
of cities without such. You can find many cities in the six figure population
zone with murder rates of 1 or 2 per 100k.

Ultimately in the US you can live in whatever kind of world you feel like
living in.

~~~
nawitus
The typical intentional homicide rate in Western and Nordic Europe is slightly
more than 1
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)),
which is a large contrast to about 18 of EPA.

~~~
adventured
Which is exactly why I was specific: it depends on which part of Europe you're
talking about.

Nordic countries have about 25 million people total. Well, the US has 320
million people, and a lot more people in the US live under a 1.x murder rate
than do in Nordic countries.

I typically see people make comparisons using the Nordic countries for
everything in Europe, while ignoring the half of Europe that is problematic
for those comparisons. The US compares extraordinarily well to the Nordic
countries, if you want to do an Apples to Apples comparison, since the Nordics
represent the elite outcomes of Europe - then let's compare using the elite
outcomes of the US; ie the top 10% of Europe vs the top 10% of the US.

------
IndianAstronaut
White flight is still an occurrence today in the bay area. For different
reasons though. Cupertino is very heavily Asian dominated and many whites move
to south San Jose or other areas.

~~~
lern_too_spel
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. This has been true for more than a
decade. The remaining non-Asians in Cupertino have been sending their kids to
private schools in higher numbers.
[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113236377590902105](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113236377590902105)

------
enlightenedfool
"We don’t even want people like you in our subdivisions". It happens even now.
I see in our Boston suburb, whites usually abandon apartment communities that
increasingly host foreign workers. And that's not because of violence. I
really don't find it bizarre and it's perfectly natural. We find ourselves
more comfortable among people of our own kind. If that's not acceptable then
nationalism too shouldn't be because that's another kind of discrimination and
at a different level.

~~~
yzzxy
That quote was referring to racist homeowners who were planning to leave when
Asian Americans moved in:

\---

"The same issue affected Asian-Americans. When progressive suburban developer
Joseph Eichler’s company sold a home in 1954 to an Asian-American family in
Palo Alto, word spread through the neighborhood and five homeowners approached
the company demanding immediate refunds.

'Get out,' Eichler’s business partner, Jim San Jule, told the white
homeowners. 'We don’t even want people like you in our subdivisions.'"

\---

Segregation is an insidious evil that can exacerbate problems such as violence
and poverty for generations after legal controls or social pressures
disappear. See: the entire city of Chicago and the issues it has faced.

"Seperate but equal" was abandoned by SCOTUS decades ago. Maybe it's time for
you to catch up.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Segregation is using threats of violence to force people to live separately.
"Separate but equal" was enforced at the point of a gun. The OP explicitly
disavowed that.

He's describing voluntary movement. For example, the tendency of Mexicans to
live near each other, or for Indian immigrants to the US to live in Jersey
City or Edison.

Enlightenedfool's point is that most people, including very pleasant people,
harbor tribalist feelings. And these tribalist feelings inform consumption
choices. For example, the bad romantic comedies my girlfriend watches have a
disproportionate number of black people in them - eventually google informed
me that "African American Comedy" is a genre.

A steelman of enlightenedfool's point might note the condemnation of white
people making consumption choices based on tribalism, and ask if a black woman
preferring to watch movies with Meagan Good and Taraji P. Henson rather than
Kate Hudson and Jennifer Aniston deserves similar condemnation.

~~~
dalke
It looks like you are making a definitional statement that 'segregation' is
only possible due to 'threats of violence'. If so, this is overly narrow.
There are others ways to get segregation. Quoting from Wikipedia:

> Housing segregation traditionally has been the practice of denying African
> American or other minority groups equal access to housing through the
> process of misinformation, denial of realty and financing services, and
> racial steering. Misinformation can take the form of realtors or landlords
> not giving a certain ethnic group, or race, an accurate portrayal of
> available units. Racial steering typically occurs when realtors or landlords
> steer European Americans to available units in white communities, and
> African Americans to black or racially mixed communities. Generally, racial
> steering involves misinformation on the part of the realtor or landlord as
> well, because they will not tell the African Americans or other minorities
> about the available units in the European American communities.

That used information asymmetry, not threats of violence, to steer 'voluntary
movement' and end up with a higher amount of segregation than would have
occurred if all parties were equally informed.

While illegal, these forms of housing segregation still exist: see
[http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-
obtains-120...](http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-
obtains-120000-settlement-discrimination-lawsuit-against-chicago-area) as an
example. The quote "Unlawful steering by real estate agents frustrates the
rights of people to make fully informed housing choices and perpetuates
segregated housing patterns" shows that these non-violent policies are
directly tied to segregation.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Disputing definitions is pointless. Obviously voluntary housing choices are
segregation_dalke but not segregation_fajitas. Now lets get back to discussing
objective reality, and remember that words are merely convenient shorthands
for that reality.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/np/disputing_definitions/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/np/disputing_definitions/)

The point I was making: Yzzxy was arguing against a straw man, acting as if
enlightenedfool advocated in favor of using violence to confine certain groups
to certain regions ("separate but equal"). Enlightenedfool argued no such
thing.

Now if you really want to argue against consumption choices based on tribalist
preferences, make that argument. Also be wary of the fallacy of expanding a
definition and then expecting all conclusions drawn from the narrow definition
to also hold for the wide one - I've noticed when people dispute definitions
on topics like this, that fallacy often follows.

~~~
dalke
You created a non-standard definition and used that to make your argument.
Then you refuse to allow anyone to object to your basis of argument, and imply
that any further corrections likely stem from a fallacy on my side. How bloody
convenient for you.

Nobody except you said there was a threat of violence. The original article
even compared the violence of the Jim Crow South with "the Californian way
[which] worked tacitly through housing, jobs and education policies. On top of
racially restrictive covenants, realtors around the San Francisco Bay Area
were engaged in a practice called blockbusting."

This isn't violence. Restricted covenants have been unenforceable by the
government since Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948, so it's not like there's even any
threat of government force to back up a covenant through the civil courts.

The comment by enlightenedfool are personal, but don't reflect the law. It is
illegal to discriminate based on national origin just like it's illegal to
discriminate based on race. Both have been illegal since the Civil Rights Act
of 1968/Fair Housing Act. Currently the only legally accepted threat of
violence, for those who hold that government force is backed by a threat of
violence, is against those who use discriminatory practices.

In any case, enlightenedfool was not talking about violence either. ("And
that's not because of violence.") Neither was yzzxy, who referred to the
housing discrimination in Chicago, which were very similar to the non-violent
way of California.

For your statement to make sense means (I believe) that you inferred that
yzzxy's reference to "separate but equal" was a statement that equated
enlightenedfool's beliefs on "own kind" as identical to the specific
government practices ruled illegal in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and
that you believe laws are only possible via the threat of violence by the
government, and therefore yzzxy must mean that enlightenedfool also want
coercive violence.

This is a stretch. It's much easier to believe that yzzxy uses it as a short-
hand for the thinking behind the separate but equal doctrine rather than
specific implementation points. For one, Brown v. Board of Education was not
about private discrimination in the housing market but about government
discrimination. For another, the theory of "laws backed by threat of violence"
is extremely tenuous here. Redlining occurred through mortgage discrimination,
via the National Housing Act of 1934, where banks ended up denying mortgage
capital to high-risk/strongly minority areas. Where is the violence in "we
will not give federal mortgage insurance to houses in this neighborhood"? For
a third, if anything, it is yzzxy who supports government-backed violence as a
way to prevent further segregation.

The only way I could understand your conclusion required an implicit
acceptance of an incorrect definition - that 'housing segregation uses threats
of force to live separately.' It seemed easier to first start with that wrong
statement, as it would otherwise be impossible to address your other
substantive points.

Instead you ended by asserting that any definition arguments are pointless -
quite odd from someone who asked "What does "systemic" mean?" on this very
thread? If you really believe that definition arguments are meaningless, why
do you get into them?

You say you are "trying to understand", and yet reject as meaningless anything
which might lead to a change in your understanding.

How disingenuous. And yes, I'm using my own private definition that you can't
respond to because I haven't told you what it means.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Nobody except you said there was a threat of violence._

Yzzxy did refer to violent segregation: ""Seperate but equal" was abandoned by
SCOTUS decades ago. Maybe it's time for you to catch up."

The fact is that housing segregation in this era was enforced by threats of
violence, aka "law". Same for banking regulations.

 _Instead you ended by asserting that any definition arguments are pointless_

Providing definitions is important to clarify thinking. Thanks to you
providing a definition, I know what concepts you refer to when you say
"segregation". In contrast, I don't know what concept "systemic" refers to
because of the lack of a definition.

There is no point in me telling you your definition is wrong. If I convince
you, all that will happen is you'll apply different mental labels to the same
things. Your conclusions will remain the same, they'll just be phrased with
different words.

Further, all this argument over definitions has gotten us completely
distracted from the actual point. The point is this: humans often allow
tribalist feelings to influence consumption choices (housing, movies, etc). Is
this a bad thing that should be prevented and/or condemned? The definition of
segregation is completely irrelevant to the answer to this question.

~~~
pron
> The point is this: humans often allow tribalist feelings to influence
> consumption choices (housing, movies, etc). Is this a bad thing that should
> be prevented and/or condemned?

No, see what you did there? While humans often allow tribalist feelings to
influence their choices, there is a difference between those who can choose
more and those who can choose less, and the discussion is about those who can
can choose more restricting the mobility of those who can choose less. Those
are facts -- they are not a matter of opinion or ideology, but the objective
reality. It is you who decided that "tribalist feelings" are the cause of
segregation, which is a nice hypothesis but a factually wrong one. What you
have here isn't tribe A and tribe B, but a dominant tribe A and a weak tribe
B, and power dynamics has a far stronger effect than in-group dynamics, as
proven by history in this particular case and others like it. That there are
several dynamics here concurrently does not mean that they're all equal in
influence.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_While humans often allow tribalist feelings to influence their choices, there
is a difference between those who can choose more and those who can choose
less, and the discussion is about those who can can choose more restricting
the mobility of those who can choose less._

If you scroll up, you'll realize that we are discussing cases where no one has
the power to restrict anything. The only power anyone has is to buy or sell a
good (movies in my example or houses in enlightenedfool's example) to a
willing partner in trade.

I also didn't "decide" anything. I merely asked a _normative_ question. I know
you have some vendetta against me, but it might help to read my comments
before carrying on this vendetta.

~~~
pron
> If you scroll up, you'll realize that we are discussing cases where no one
> has the power to restrict anything. The only power anyone has is to buy or
> sell a good (movies in my example or houses in enlightenedfool's example) to
> a willing partner in trade.

That is not at all what was being discussed, but what you decided the
discussion was about by making the wrong assumption that housing choices were
as voluntary as picking movies. They are not, neither are they voluntary, as
research shows (as well as the discussed article). Going back to "systemic",
bureaucracies in the US (both private and governmental) do restrict housing
choices by discriminating based on proxies for race (i.e. correlated
variables, that are sometimes directly related to race, and sometimes less
directly).

I have no vendetta against you, but the way you're discussing these issues is
insincere, and shows complete disregard to the vast body of evidence
collected. But it does provoke an emotional reaction on my part because it is
a prime example of "nerd bigotry" that's so rampant among startup people.

You say you discuss objective facts, where, in fact, you make false analogies
and presumptions that are precisely where racism is often found. The most
obvious example, given by countless people before you, is that of "voluntary
choice", while racism works precisely by restricting choice. I will not go at
length into how that's done, because the process has been documented so many
times and in great detail. But if person A has choices, say, 1 through 5, and
person B has choices 1 thorough 3, and exercising those choices requires more
effort on the part of person B, it is true that whatever person B chooses is
voluntary, but it is no less true that it is _less_ voluntary than the choice
of person A. This is doubly true, if choices 4 and 5 -- unavailable to person
B -- or, say, choice 3, which is available for person B but extremely hard to
achieve, are precisely the choices that confer more power on their chooser.

So: 1/ restriction of choice is not binary, and is often done in roundabout
ways (which is why studies are required). 2/ Not all discrimination is equal
:) - discrimination that results in unfair power distribution is far worse
than discrimination that has little effect on the distribution of power.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Going back to "systemic", bureaucracies in the US (both private and
governmental) do restrict housing choices by discriminating based on proxies
for race (i.e. correlated variables, that are sometimes directly related to
race, and sometimes less directly)._

I.e., banks choose who to extend loans to based on non-racial factors like
debt/income, job tenure, home appraisals and models of future home value? Yep,
nothing voluntary at all about a private party choosing who to trade with.

Anyway, it's completely tangential to this particular thread, which is about
people choosing which houses to buy based on tribalist feelings.

 _But it does provoke an emotional reaction on my part because it is a prime
example of "nerd bigotry" that's so rampant among startup people._

Asking concrete questions is "nerd bigotry"? Um, ok. I'm not even sure what
that is, but asking makes me just a creationist so meh.

 _I will not go at length into how that 's done, because the process has been
documented so many times and in great detail._

My uncited experts proved that your uncited experts are wrong and also worse
than Hitler. I win! <\- See how appeals to unstated authority are not
productive?

Now remember how I compared to discussions on topics like HFT? If this were an
HFT discussion, one of the HFT's would have just linked to a page on
nasdaq.com and said "go read the docs on hide-not-slide orders, you'll see
they work like I just described".

~~~
pron
> I.e., banks choose who to extend loans to based on non-racial factors like
> debt/income, job tenure, home appraisals and models of future home value?
> Yep, nothing voluntary at all about a private party choosing who to trade
> with.

The fact that those factors are non-racial does not mean it's not racism!
We're back to that again. Racism (like sexism) does not require malice or ill
intent (or even bigotry or prejudice) once its systemic! Suppose you make sure
by some way that there's a strong correlation between race and wealth, and
then a bank gives loan only to rich people. Well, that's racism! That doesn't
mean the loan officer is a bigot! This is something you need to understand.
Banking practices can be racist even if no one at the bank is prejudiced (they
can all be liberal Democrats who voted for Obama, twice), and all of their
decisions are based on pure financial reasons, only because hundreds of years
ago society was organized in some particular way. That's how it works. In
fact, you could say that everyone is a victim, because those bank officers,
through no fault of their own, are now cogs in a racist machinery. So they're
victims, too, except that some people are bigger victims than others -- some
are part of a racist system, and some feel its consequences every day.

If you, by some mechanism, create a society in which people's rational, self-
serving actions would result in a system where power is largely withheld from
some racial groups then you've built a racist society even if no one in that
society is a xenophobe.

> which is about people choosing which houses to buy based on tribalist
> feelings.

No. "Based on tribalist feeling" is your _conjecture_. Yes, tribalist feelings
are probably a contributing factor, but racism is a _much_ more dominant one.
How do I know that? Well, because I bothered to read some studies.

> Asking concrete questions is "nerd bigotry"? Um, ok. I'm not even sure what
> that is, but asking makes me just a creationist so meh.

No. Pretending to ask question you don't really want the answer to, and
ignoring science because it isn't physics is.

In fact, there are a lot of interesting questions an interested nerd could
ask. For example, while anti-nerd discrimination is certainly not systemic,
one could ask about discrimination against unattractive people. I think there
are studies that show they are being discriminated against even on loan
applications (and from there you could take it to other correlations and
discrimination by proxy etc.). Of course, it's not too hard to show how that's
not at all like racism or sexism (if only in measure), but at least there is
something interesting to talk about. That would be a college-, or even
graduate- level question. But your "questions" are kindergarten level, and
show that you have no desire to even learn the very basics of this issue.

> See how appeals to unstated authority are not productive?

My uncited experts can be found in a 2 minute Google search. Yours are made up
so I win.

> If this were an HFT discussion, one of the HFT's would have just linked to a
> page on nasdaq.com and said "go read the docs on hide-not-slide orders,
> you'll see they work like I just described".

Wow, those guys are really smart! I won't send you links to the top 50 papers
showing the data, or even to the top two, because either you won't read them,
or, if you do, you'll make up a baby-nerd argument to invalidate them because
the definitions (which, as always, would rely on you having some basic
background in the science) won't be rigorous enough to your liking (because
you don't have the background). Then, I'll send you links to books with the
definitions, which you won't read, and it will end up just you asking me to
teach you all of psychology and history back to first principles, which you
won't find satisfactory until I go back to elementary particles, which is
impossible because we're dealing with intractable science (and hard because
I'm not knowledgable enough). So, no thank you.

Also -- and _that_ is the real reason you find HFT discussions different --
this kind of discussion evokes a response in you that makes you unwilling to
open yourself up to new information. HFT doesn't. Yes, just like a
creationist; I'm sorry, but it's the same kind of emotional response, only you
and the creationists reach for your own kind of weapon -- yours is misused
logic. I mean, you _know_ all those thousands of studies exist (I'm sure
you've seen those buildings at your university), and you _know_ everyone who
has studied them reaches similar conclusions (similar enough for you, that is;
there are quite a few controversies), but you choose to believe that those
conclusions are based on faulty logic rather than on data (they are based on
data), and you think you can argue with them using logic (logic, BTW, is not
so effective in the intractable sciences, just as it's not so effective in QM
-- until you learn the basic mechanics of things). Those conclusions are the
result of 40 or so years of research by thousands of historians, social
workers, sociologists and psychologists. Some of them -- though not all -- are
great scientists.

