Although I don’t like to sort people by skin color, I have noticed that we interact much more frequently with Black and Latinx people here in Florida than we did in Massachusetts. Everyone who worked on our house in Massachusetts was white, for example, while folks in the service industries here come in a rainbow of skin tones, often within the same crew. For white suburbanites in Boston, Black people might as well be aliens. They exist on a different planet and interactions are uncommon, even in service settings.
Although Florida has a higher percentage of Black residents, the difference is not large enough to explain our experience. I’m wondering if the explanation can be found in the states’ respective welfare systems. CATO’s Work versus Welfare Trade-Off 2013:
In Massachusetts, unless a person puts a $0 value on leisure time, being a successful welfare entrepreneur is vastly smarter, from an economic point of view, than working at the median salary. The spending power of the welfare recipient is 118 percent of the worker’s and that’s before considering cash income that the welfare recipient might obtain from under-the-table work and also discounts to EBT cardholders.
How about in Florida? The same chart shows that Florida is one of the worst states for enjoying the welfare lifestyle (unless you love the beach!). At least as of 2013, a welfare recipient in Florida enjoyed only about 41 percent of the spending power of a worker. Therefore, it is not economically rational to spend multiple generations on welfare unless one puts a very high value on leisure time/Xbox.
Whatever the reason, I think it is good for our kids to see that the well-paid guy who runs a paver restoration business happens to be Black while his helper is white.
Separately, we have learned a lot about pavers! Our patios, walks, and driveway are a mosaic of red bricks and white concrete tiles. Over time, the brick color had faded so that the contrast between these items was reduced. More seriously, tree roots had grown underneath and made the surface uneven. Cleaning up after 20 years of neglect required (1) picking up a lot of the tiles/bricks and removing all of the tree roots underneath, then putting everything back down again, (2) painting the bricks with “concrete stain” to restore their bright color, (3) putting new sand in between all of the bricks and tiles to hold them in place, and (4) sealing everything with clear sealer that is supposed to last 2-3 years (at which point it will just need a pressure wash and a reapplication of the sealer). Total cost to rehab 3,000 square feet of patio? $8,000. That’s 8,000 good reasons to continue being a renter!
You’re probably on to something there, but I also think Massachusetts just does a better job of segregating itself in general: Florida has a more “fluid” and mobile population with vacationers, part-time residents, transients, tourists, etc., and I would expect to see more POC mixing with everyone else in FL. My experience is a very #Unscientific survey, however, based only upon my short visits to FL. Here in Massachusetts, the “rainbow people” in terms of skin color tend to be concentrated in Poor Mine areas like Springfield. In wealthier suburbs you can still indeed go most of your life without ever encountering a Black person who actually lives there.
I was surprised by this as long as forty years ago, when I spent a year and a half living in one of the wealthier suburbs of Boston and attended public school. I think there was one Black kid in the entire student body. This surprised me, coming from my hometown in a northern NJ suburb, which was racially mixed in terms of population but still pretty much demographically segregated (meaning: Blacks lived predominantly on one side of town, but everyone interacted in the public school system and more or less got along.) I was shocked even then to discover that the Boston suburb was much more racially segregated than my NJ suburb of NYC.
So yes, I think part of it is the welfare system but also long-term “habits.” Which, as you’ve noted many times now, lead to stupendous bouts of Virtue Signaling in nearly 100% white, upscale MA ‘burbs where there ain’t no Black people, but there are a lot of Black Lives Matter signs!
Which Toucan Sam still does not care about, I take it!
Aside/Addendum: 3,000 sq. ft. is a lot of tiles and bricks! That’s a football field (no end zones) 10 feet wide! What, do you land light aircraft on that thing? Lol.
In the old fashioned system before houses were the collateral for the national debt, it took some knowledge of brick laying to own a house in the 1st place. There used to be books showing homeowners how to repave their own driveways.
“Whatever the reason, I think it is good for our kids to see that the well-paid guy who runs a paver restoration business happens to be Black while his helper is white.”
It’s good for the kids? I’m surprised to hear the guy who craps on LGBTQ people every other post promoting racial diversity. Go affirmative action!
Mike: I think it is interesting that you associate a racially mixed team with “affirmative action” (race discrimination).
And that Mike confuses real historically defined group of people who share common heritage with latest in cultural imagination under influence
I’m not surprised at all.
In contrast, I would be surprised if the elite censor class in San Francisco actually did something for other races/genders other than using a larger labor pool for lowering wages.
But they live in a virtual, hypocritical world, so a virtual Black person represented by a BLM sign will have a higher value than a real one.
(We need to know if the BLM seminar at Oshkosh has converted recalcitrant readers to the true religion!)
I think Mike’s idea is that there is a superior race that all employers seek to hire. And then there are inferior races that no employer would hire at any price. So, absent affirmative action, every job, at least within a category, would be held by employees belonging to the superior race.
I think Mike is a dumb dumb.
“Black” “Latinx” “white”
As a White reader I feel traumatized by your microaggression.
Just kidding. But sensible capitalization, along with an attractive subscription price, is the major reason I switched from reading the NYT opinion section to this blog.
Or maybe you’re intentionally parodying the argot of some of the biggest welfare lifestyle recipients of all, federally subsidized professors and university administrators of Cambridge Mass.
Some 30 years ago, there was no racially or LGBTQ~ crap issues in this country — blacks, whites, yellow, red, orange, etc., and zie, zim, zir, zis, zieself, etc., lived their life without looking over their shoulders or wondering if they are “hurting” someone’s feeling. Every now and then you heard about some “discrimination” story and that was it. Today, thanks to force #Inclusion, we see far more discriminations.
We have created a problem out of nothing!
There was no racism 30 years ago and LGBTQ were treated as equals? That’s quite an interesting and incredibly ignorant take.
Australian Anon: How can you call George ignorant? I think that he lived in the U.S. 30 years ago. Were you not living in Australia 30 years ago? If so, how can you know what life was like for a member of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community in the U.S. in 1992?
philg: No, I was not loving in Australia 30 years ago. Regardless there are things called “books” and “the internet” you can use to make yourself less ignorant. I suggest you avail yourself of these resources. Do you think things like the Rodney King verdict and subsequent riots were not well publicized and known around the world?
Anon: They were treated as equals in Europe, and I presume also in the U.S. George is absolutely correct, we have created a problem out of nothing.
Members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community like historian Dr. David Starkey say the same.
State brutality and abuse of power occurs against all races, see e.g. the recent made up charges and de facto imprisonment of Assange, which the left ignores (Tucker Carlson on the other hand has spoken up several times).
I’m getting the impression that you know the world only from propaganda books and the virtuous parts of the Internet.
EuroAnon: educating yourself is easy!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LGBT_people_in_the_United_States
(Probably) Australian Anon:
While these lists are regrettable, we are talking about widespread discrimination. You could as well have posted the list of fatal bear attacks in the U.S. in the 1990s, which is largely the same size:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_bear_attacks_in_North_America#1990s
Always moving the goalposts, classic tactic!
Keeping it simple: George A states there were NO RACIAL ISSUES in the U.S. 30 years ago.
Do citywide riots in L.A. count or not? Is it possible to know about these issues with being a resident of L.A. at the time?
A charitable reader would naturally understand George A’s comment to mean “hardly any racial issues” instead of expecting caveats and footnotes.
Which is true. Now on the other hand the woke are stoking the flames and we have overt racism against whites.
This is exhausting, we need Toucan Sam to cut the Gordian Knot.
It is confusing with so many anonymous folks. I wish everyone would adopt a unique screen name at least. Our friend with the Australian IP address who ignores https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/comment-moderation-policy/ and hurls insults at other commenters can be “Angry Australian” (which is odd since I thought they were all happy Down Under!).
The comment moderation policy is my most favorite topic! I never knew anonymous was from Australia! Lovely country. I spent a year going to the University of New South Wales. Would it be possible to tag all of his posts with a nick name, (I would suggest “Angry Aussie”) so we can keep track?
TS: One of the “Anonymous” is from Australia. The Anon brand has been diluted!
(I’ll try to come up with a username.)
@European Anon:
I agree with you. Sometimes I’ve abused the laissez-faire username policy of our generous host and I think it’s best if people at least try to come up with catchy (but still anonymous) usernames if they choose to go that way, and stick with them.
It’s a little bit subtle on this blog at least – because it does help our poor addled brains at least keep track of the person we’re responding to. You can at least develop a better sense of their long-term trends of thinking, etc. Otherwise, it’s much more difficult to tell one “Anon” from another “Anonymous.”
I promise in the future to only use alternate usernames on exceptionally rare occasions for comedic effect.
Someone from Europe shouldn’t have any real trouble coming up with a username. “Brussels Sprout” for example. “Value Added” maybe. Lol.
Flying Fox is a perfect username for Australian Anonymous. Many sub-species of this bat are native to only Australia and Oceania. It exhibits defying spirit of Bat Man that has become a slang word and nocturnal posting as related to servers where this blog hosted
I think Alex (1.0) is a great example of why posters on this blog are so great. It was hard for this bird brain to keep the various Alexes straight, but much to my relief he came up with the Alex 1.0 moniker. Stay calm and carry on!
Speaking of great posters… Has anyone heard from Pavel recently?
There was hardly any terrorism in 2001, excepting a few caveats and footnotes. I wonder what everyone was getting worked up about?
@Australian Anon, if your source is books and the internet, then I’m sure you read and watch videos about Africa too, no? Did you know about the “hidden” country in African called Wakanda where advanced civilization made of BLM lives that will not share their wealth and technology with the rest of the world, not even with outsiders Black binaries! Go figure!
Back to reality.
Thirty years ago, there were far less discrimination and people lived far more happily together. Why? No personal issues was elevated into “crises” and no “expert” was running around brain washing us that society is destined to be doomed unless we follow the “expert” instructions — sorry, I meant to say “forced” into following “expert” instructions.
Take a very recent example: Monkeypox.
Based on “2022 U.S. Map & Case Count” for Monkeypox [1], there are 827 cases in California and 520 cases in Illinois and zero, ZERO death but yet both states have declared a State of Emergency [2] so that “the full mobilization of all available public health resources to prevent the spread” (when will New York join them?) Really? If those states consider this to be an “emergency”, why don’t they consider traffic fatality, alachlor and drug related death, obesity related death, and my favorite one, high school drop off rate which far exceeds any of those “crises” [3] as an “emergency”?
I will tell you why. Monkeypox is fresh news and our savors want to stay in the spotlight. Period.
Btw, I cannot wait to see when the media will start broadcasting instructions on how to have safe sex to avoid Monkeypox. Instructions similar to how to avoid COVIDFear by wearing a mask, any mask, and staying 6-feet-apart. I would like to see this in books and videos and offered in classes.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/response/2022/us-map.html
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/02/us/california-state-of-emergency-monkeypox.html
[3] https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-high-school-dropout-rates#:~:text=Every%20year%2C%20over%201.2%20million,from%20high%20school%20on%20time.
@Australian Anon, another point.
Since your source of information is books and the internet, then I have a question for you.
As you know, some of Dr. Seuss books are banned for being “racist”, the same is done for other books and shows on PBS to name some. And if that wasn’t enough, the woke is removing monuments, flags and the history of the Confederates from books and public places.
Now, if the next generation, are to get their source of information and education from books and the internet — like you do — and they do not have access to those “racist” banned context, how will they ever learn about the terrible history of America and all the wrongs that their parents and grandparents and great grandparents have done? How will they understand how BLM started, the meaning of #Rainbow flags and #LoveIsLove and why LGBTQ were appressed?