The New York Times today published a long and eloquently written editorial that blames affluent Americans (mostly white or caucasian) for segregating themselves off from less affluent Americans (mostly black and Hispanic) and thereby giving rise to economic inequality and, allegedly, a corresponding lack of opportunity for the poor and disadvantaged.
The Times is rightly worried that the COVID-19 pandemic will exacerbate this problem—if, as is likely, it causes the affluent to further flee densely packed cities for neighborhoods that are more inherently conducive to social distancing and thus safer from pathogens like the coronavirus.
Restrictive Zoning. The Times has a point when it criticizes restrictive local zoning ordinances, which too often prevent the development of denser, varied, and more affordable types of housing.
But instead of proposing the obvious solution to this problem—more open, accommodating, and less restrictive zoning ordinances—the Times proposes more authoritarian-style, command-and-control regulations such as those imposed by the state of Oregon.
Oregon, reports the Times, last year banned single-family zoning in all cities of more than 10,000 people.
Of course, this doesn’t solve the problem of affordable housing; it exacerbates it, as the affluent bid up the price of increasingly scarce single-family housing stock in economically segregated neighborhoods.
More options, not fewer options, in the housing and education markets are needed to create greater opportunity for America’s poor and disadvantaged.
Sins of Omission. For these reasons, the Times’ editorial is remarkable for what it does not mention.
There is no mention of school choice, which allows parents of poor and disadvantaged students to send their children to a public or private school of their choice regardless of district or jurisdictional boundaries.
School choice programs have been enacted with great success in many states and locales; however, they run afoul of the teachers unions, which are a powerful Democratic Party constituency with deep financial pockets and organizational wherewithal.
The teachers unions rightly fear that choice and competition threaten their public school monopoly. Thus they are vociferous opponents of school choice.
Crime. There also is no mention of crime—or at least no substantive mention of crime and the very real effect crime has had in creating residential segregation and the inequality that the Times laments.
Instead, the Times mentions the word crime exactly once, and only to belittle and disparage it as a reason the affluent have fled cities and created more economically segregated neighborhoods, both within cities and in the surrounding suburbs.
But the truth is: an explosion of violent crime in our nation’s cities in the 1960s and ‘70s caused many people of financial means, black and white, to flee the cities.
The New York Times to the contrary notwithstanding, this had nothing to do with selfishness or “racism.”
Instead, it had everything to do with safety and survival—for yourself, your family, and your loved ones—and with wanting to ensure that your children grew up in a neighborhood rich in opportunity and free of violent crime.
American cities have rebounded in recent decades after Rudy Giuliani and other urban leaders embraced conservative reforms that dramatically reduced violent crime and made cities once again an oasis of safety and culture.
Yet, the Times and other “progressives” have been working diligently to overturn these reforms—by attacking “stop-and-frisk” policing, for instance, and by seeking to eliminate entrance exams for New York City’s elite public high schools.
Of course, the Times editorial is silent about crime because it is the elephant in the room that dare not be mentioned in “progressive” circles—except insofar as it can be used as a cudgel to attack the police.
But make no mistake: undermining the achievements that New York and other cities have made in combating crime and in creating islands of educational excellence will not help the poor and disadvantaged; it simply will drive the affluent—black, white, and brown—further away.
School Funding. Finally, the Times pushes the old saw that we don’t spend enough money educating the poor and disadvantaged; and it laments the financial disparities that exist between affluent and poor school districts.
These disparities are real, but the notion that they are responsible for differences in educational achievement is silly and simply not supported by the facts. As Reason Magazine’s Ron Baily reports, researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research have found that
the gap in educational achievement between public school students in the bottom 10th economic status (SES) percentile and those in the top 90th SES percentile has remained essentially unchanged over the last 50 years.
[…]
The researchers note that these disappointing results occurred despite the fact that ‘overall school funding increased dramatically on a per-pupil basis, quadrupling in real dollars between 1960 and 2015.’ In addition, pupil-teacher ratios declined from 22.3 in 1970 to 16.1 in 2014.
In short, the problem is not money; the problem is the schools and the home environment of the students.
And this becomes especially obvious when you consider that many Catholic and public charter schools do a demonstrably better job educating poor and disadvantaged students and at a fraction of the cost of traditional public schools.
Choice and Competition. We absolutely need to create more opportunities for our fellow citizens who have failed to share or partake in our rising national affluence. And no doubt the COVID-19 pandemic makes this more difficult.
But ignoring politically inconvenient truths, as the New York Times does, makes this mission impossible. We need more choices, more competition, and freer and less fettered markets in housing and education.
Feature photo credit: Getty Images via the Wall Street Journal.