A GLIMPSE INTO OUR INNER BEINGS: WHAT WE READ

In this space over the last 3 ½ years, we’ve acknowledged drawing on books we’ve read for ideas on matters we see as worth writing

about. We’ve pointed readers to books (The Half Has Never Been Told, The Color of Law, and The Warmth of Other Suns) we regard as essential for understanding race in America. We reviewed one of them (The Color of Law) in explaining America’s chronic housing discrimination problem. And, we drew on Madeline Albright’s Fascism: A Warning, in sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump’s dangerous affinity for dictators.

                      

Reading books defines each of our lives, beyond the utility of their content. We find

solace in the books strewn around our homes and offices and packed onto our shelves. None of us can contemplate a life without books. But, what do we read and why? With each of us, there’s a story offering insight into who we are and how we’ve evolved.   

Henry: Diversity, Diversity, Diversity

Many books I’ve read have taken me places I

couldn’t have imagined and offered context for the jumbled exploration of my own thoughts. From my earliest years, reading provided a spiritual experience in which I could join others in exploring humanity and personal relationships. Even in childhood, I read many

different things in many different areas.  I still do: science fiction like Isaac Asimov’s The Foundation Trilogy and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler; physics, like The Great  Unknown by Marcus Du Sautoy

and Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams; religion, including The Bible and A History of God by Karen Armstrong; fiction,including mysteries like Walter Mosley’s Down the River Unto the Sea and classics like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, John Updike’s Rabbit Run, and The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. In keeping current on events of the day (and in step with my co-authors) I read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

                    

Each of these works, and many others I’ve read, remain part of my fabric. This approach

has a drawback. Sometimes, when I go into a bookstore, I find myself happy and sad at the same time – happy because I’m amidst so much knowledge I’d hope I can absorb and sad because I can’t read it all.    

Rob: A Change is Gonna Come

If 25 years ago I’d been asked for an explanation of what I read and why, the answer would have been quite different than what I offer today. Before the late ‘90s, with the exception of trashy

“airport novels” I occupied  myself with on cross country flights, I read nonfiction. My bookshelf included volumes on elections (Theodore H. White’s The Making of the President series), analyses of World War II

(Richard Overy’s Why  the Allies Won), political memoirs (Robert McNamara’s In Retrospect), and biographies of major historical figures (Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson series).

These books brought  me considerable knowledge about a few subjects and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them. But, as I see now, I was missing something. A change was coming.   

In 1999, a friend invited my wife and me into a couples book club. Under its rules, each

person took a turn at picking the book for quarterly dinner meetings. Book club membership changed my reading habits (and my life). During the ensuing 21 years, we’ve read 90 books, about half fiction. I found myself reading, and enjoying, A Confederacy of Dunces, John K. Toole’s wonderful, Pulitzer Prize winning novel  set in

New Orleans, where I once lived, and Stephen King’s 11/22/63,  a time travel novel that presented an entirely different perspective on the JFK assassination. 

My book club experience confirmed the wisdom in the old adage some writers live by: if you want facts, write nonfiction. If you want truth, write fiction. l took that to heart. My

book club experience in hand, and after my wife’s death, I  decided I’d try my hand at writing fiction. I began grabbing more and more novels. I still read lots of nonfiction, but I’m now a confirmed, dedicated fiction reader too.

Woodson: Choices and Goals

My book choices are influenced largely by my life choices and goals. With fewer days left to live than I’ve already lived and with goals remaining, I concentrate my reading on what furthers achievement of my goals.

                        

Because I am a property manager and real estate investor, I read a lot on real estate and economic matters (books like Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Chris Hogan’s Everyday Millionaires, Joseph

Stiglitz’s People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent, and  Property Management Kit for Dummies by  Robert Griswold).  My interest in political and racial issues is satisfied by reading books like Doris Kearns Goodwin’s masterful Team of Rivals and the critically  important That Used to be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World and How We Can Comeback by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan Meltz, and

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Finally, because I participate in several Christian ministries, I read books

on religion, including Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem, Instinct: The Power to Unleash Your Inborn Drive by T.D. Jakes, Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, and The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav. Then there’s the Holy Bible. I read that too.

                         

As with Henry and Rob, my reading focus developed over time. It reflects life choices

I’ve  made because of my evolution as a person and as a professional, and through recognizing the limitations we all face as humans. Reading remains an essential part of my life.   

            

  

HOUSING DISCRIMINATION: What To Do

During the last few weeks we’ve examined in detail Richard Rothstein’s path breaking book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.  We’ve laid out Rothstein’s support for his basic premise – that segregated housing in America resulted from sustained, deliberate governmental action, not just individual bias. After making his case, Rothstein spends much of the end of the book discussing his ideas about what America should do about the problem now.

Rothstein offers a number of suggestions for remedying the effects of housing discrimination.  To his credit, he recognizes many of them are today impractical, given the nation’s partisan, polarized political atmosphere.  But he puts the ideas out there and our purpose today is to report them, not critique them.  We’ll do that later, in one final post on this subject.

We actually start with one of Rothstein’s simplest suggestions.  Given the public’s almost total ignorance about how government, through courts, federal, state and local agencies, forced African Americans to live in segregated communities, public education about the problem becomes essential.  Teaching the history of these discriminatory practices could go a long way in dispelling the public notion that African Americans are solely responsible for their housing choices and resulting economic plight.

Economic Security

Rothstein would begin by doing something about the major problem that keeps many African-Americans stuck in substandard, segregated housing: not having enough money to buy homes anywhere else. The government, Rothstein argues, could do four things about that: 

1. Adopt a full employment policy.  This, of course, means guaranteeing jobs for everyone, using government jobs to fill in gaps the private sector leaves.  The United States has never done this except, de facto, in war time;      
2. Enact minimum wages that keep up with inflation;
3. Develop transportation infrastructure that allows low income workers to get to available jobs, particularly in suburban areas; and  
4. Provide incentives (including cash, presumably) that would spur housing integration by helping middle class blacks buy houses in suburban areas.

            

                

Zoning Reform

By banning zoning ordinances that prohibit multi-family houses or require very large lots for single family homes,

Rothstein argues black families would have a better chance at moving into integrated neighborhoods. He finds large lot requirements particularly objectionable, because they price homes many middle class black families might afford out of their reach.

Related to this idea, Rothstein advocates changing the federal tax code so as to deny the popular mortgage interest deduction to property owners in suburbs that don’t do enough to attract multi-family housing developments and moderately priced single family homes.

Another zoning reform proposal – called inclusionary zoning – would require that communities make a positive effort at integrating low and moderate income families

into more affluent neighborhoods.  This goes beyond just banning discrimination and imposes a positive obligation to promote housing integration.  Some states are doing a version of this with “fair share” requirements based, not on race, but on income.  These requirements limit development opportunities unless the area requires a “fair share” of moderate and low income housing.  Developers can build more units in places that achieve these fair share objectives, while builders in communities that don’t meet the requirements get shut out of projects.  National “fair share” requirements have been proposed as a way of ensuring moderate/low income, and perhaps racial, representation in all suburban areas and municipalities.  Tax consequences have also been suggested as a way of enforcing such requirements.

Section 8 Housing

The federal government’s Section 8 housing program

receives a great deal of consideration in Rothstein's solutions section.  As expected, he begins with a plea for more Section 8 money so more people can receive Section 8 vouchers that help economically disadvantaged individuals obtain housing.  Rothstein doesn’t stop there because it’s one thing to give more people Section 8 money, but another to give those getting Section 8 money a chance to do something different with the money.

Rothstein proposes making Section 8 grants large enough to give low income, often African-American, recipients a chance to get out of the segregated housing they often find themselves in now.  Most Section 8 recipients now just use the vouchers to subsidize rentals in segregated areas.  Rothstein wants to make the vouchers big enough that Section 8 participants could use them in escaping to more affluent areas.  This, he argues, would change the fundamental nature of housing for many low/moderate income persons and get them out of the cycle they now find themselves a part of – a cycle in which the kind of housing in which they live never really changes and the complexion of the neighborhoods in which they live never really changes.  

The solutions put forward in The Color of Law will not win popularity contests in many places.  Still, they are serious solutions for a serious problem and they deserve careful review.  We’ll get to that in a future post.