Dana:
The Obama administration, believing that there is no problem too big or small, real or imagined, that a little governmental social engineering can’t fix, has released itsAffirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule in an effort to eliminate any lingering “segregation” in America’s neighborhoods and communities:
When the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968, it barred the outright racial discrimination that was then routine. It also required the government to go one step further — to actively dismantle segregation and foster integration in its place — a mandate that for decades has been largely forgotten, neglected and unenforced.
[T]he Obama administration will announce long-awaited rules designed to repair the law’s unfulfilled promise and promote the kind of racially integrated neighborhoods that have long eluded deeply segregated cities like Chicago and Baltimore. The new rules, a top demand of civil-rights groups, will require cities and towns all over the country to scrutinize their housing patterns for racial bias and to publicly report, every three to five years, the results. Communities will also have to set goals, which will be tracked over time, for how they will further reduce segregation.
However, given that racial segregation in housing is already illegal, what is the real goal in re-making our neighborhoods? Stanley Kurtz suggests that it’s not about racial integration but rather it’s about economic integration:
Race and ethnicity are being used as proxies for class, since these are the only hooks for social engineering provided by the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Like AFFH itself, today’s Washington Post piece blurs the distinction between race and class, conflating the persistence of “concentrated poverty” with housing discrimination by race. Not being able to afford a freestanding house in a bedroom suburb is no proof of racial discrimination. Erstwhile urbanites have been moving to rustic and spacious suburbs since Cicero built his villa outside Rome. Even in a monoracial and mono-ethnic world, suburbanites would zone to set limits on dense development.
Moreover, as evidenced by the four goals of the AFFH, it’s far more than just housing being impacted:
[I]mproving integrated living patterns and overcoming historic patterns of segregation; reducing racial and ethnic concentrations of poverty; reducing disparities by race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, or disability in access to community assets such as education, transit access, and employment, as well as exposure to environmental health hazards and other stressors that harm a person’s quality of life; and responding to disproportionate housing needs by protected class.
The White House has been very quietly readying the finalization of the AFFHR, and with good reason:
With the Department of Housing and Urban Development ready to release new regulations meant to diversify wealthy neighborhoods, American voters overwhelmingly say that it is not the government’s job to try to bring those of different income levels to live together.
The poll questioned 1,000 people who are likely to vote and determined that 83 percent of respondents say it is not the government’s job to diversify neighborhoods in America so that people of different income levels live together, but 8 percent say that it is a role for the government and 9 percent are not sure. An additional 86 percent say that government should not play a role in deciding where people can live, while a small 8 percent says that the government should.
Crazy Americans, right?
And while the White House offers this manipulative rationalization of the AFFH:
As I said earlier, why don’t wealthy liberals just sell their palatial homes and build new ones in poverty-stricken neighborhoods? This will not only meld the social classes, but also draw businesses and services into the poorer districts. Certainly, this would be preferable to destroying property values in high-rent neighborhoods. For instance, why aren’t liberals building and living in Grove Parc?
I jest, of course; no liberal would do such a thing because no liberal would ever practice what they preach; this is all for someone ELSE to accomplish, while they remain in their gated, walled communities.
When I left Long Beach it had wealthy enclaves and poor slums.
Now, just recently, it is allowing the owning of up to ten chickens and four goats and even beehives —–as long as your animals’ pens/hives are at least ten feet away from your next-door neighbor’s property.
TEN FEET!
Think the wealthy enlaves will be filled by chicken pens or goats?
Nope.
My old neighborhood, just on the beach, is already filling with hens, roosters and goats!
It is perfectly legal now.
How are you going to get this racially equalized?
Can Obama force wealthy enclaves to allow these types of neighbors?
I doubt it.
new idea reverse slavery-wealthy liberals become slaves to the underprivileged and poor. Do you all think that Kurtz is going to sell his million dollar home or have his million dollar community integrated with low income housing?
I do believe that segregated cities like Chicago and Baltimore are overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats. It makes you wonder: why is segregation so high in these leftist strongholds, yet so rare in the Southern states? Maybe the MSM is looking for racism in all the wrong places.