PragmaticIdealists

I stand corrected (and post stands updated). Thank...

2012-06-22T13:08:45.091-04:00

I stand corrected (and post stands updated). Thank you for educating me!

I always thought that whitewashing was painting a ...

2012-04-15T08:42:14.911-04:00

I always thought that whitewashing was painting a surface with whitewash. It's a kind of lime based paint. I never liked the texture but it was common in barns or stables back when I was a boy.

As far as I know it had nothing to do with priming a surface for an oil or latex based paint.

I like your article a lot. I am sure anyone can re...

2012-02-25T14:12:39.891-05:00

I like your article a lot. I am sure anyone can relate to it in a little way, as I can. It is indeed easy to get angry when one is angry because being hungry is being in a state of deprivation of desire for the satisfaction of consuming food.

One rule that I use though to curb my anger is by always thinking that the head is placed higher than the heart, therefore the thinking should rule the emotion.

We've used the programs mentioned in our schoo...

2011-12-27T16:58:23.623-05:00

We've used the programs mentioned in our school - True Colors and the What Would You Do? Series. My other favorite program for teacher training is Eye of the Storm with Jane Elliott. It looks at the link between perceptions and performance. It's great for teachers. I also went to a class in which they utilized a program called "linguistic profiling" by ABC News. The best part? It talked about the type of decision we make based on what we hear, not see.

Amen, E.!

2011-08-10T17:37:41.629-04:00

Amen, E.!

Thanks, E.! It's been a wild and wonderful rid...

2011-08-01T22:37:09.868-04:00

Thanks, E.! It's been a wild and wonderful ride -- although, I would look forward a little bit calmer of a life for a while.

Thank you Tina!

2011-08-01T18:58:43.605-04:00

Thank you Tina!

What a lovely post, and filled with good news. Con...

2011-07-30T19:13:58.550-04:00

What a lovely post, and filled with good news. Congratulations on the job and the house and the baby!

Seeing JT always makes me suspect I've been ra...

2011-05-26T20:07:24.765-04:00

Seeing JT always makes me suspect I've been raptured.

And Justin Timberlake was hosting SNL.

2011-05-24T22:40:36.025-04:00

And Justin Timberlake was hosting SNL.

[I would have e-mailed this but couldn't find ...

2010-09-03T08:06:14.242-04:00

[I would have e-mailed this but couldn't find an address for you. Feel free to delete it.]

"right-of-passage" We had a provost who nixed a candidate because of a minor error like this in his letter -- a candidate our department wanted to interview.

I am sure the academic market will love you as muc...

2010-08-30T20:44:11.963-04:00

I am sure the academic market will love you as much as your readers do. Go get that rose!

It's interesting that companies get away with ...

2010-07-03T13:44:37.106-04:00

It's interesting that companies get away with cutting services and reducing staff power as "do[ing] it all for you." I was in a shoe store the other day and I forgot how much of a difference it makes to have an actual professional measure your foot, talk to you about comfort, and send you away with a beautifully fitting shoe. It's a dying art. Most people today think they can do it all better by themselves. Sometimes they are right, but the shoe experience was almost transcendent for me.

If there's anything I look for in a Congressio...

2010-07-03T13:38:49.032-04:00

If there's anything I look for in a Congressional candidate, it's marksmanship.

In response to McDonald's "We do it all f...

2010-06-21T11:07:57.273-04:00

In response to McDonald's "We do it all for you":

"In reality, at McDonald’s we do it all for them. We stand in line, take the food to the table, dispose of the waste, and stack our trays. As labor costs rise and technology develops, the consumer often does more and more of the work. (Ide and Cordell, “Automating Work,” quoted in Ritzer's McDonaldization of some years back.

It is not surprising they rape the country why not...

2009-12-25T21:14:20.321-05:00

It is not surprising they rape the country why not their employees what is a shock that any republicans voted for this at all.

2009-12-17T13:30:27.378-05:00

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

Who knows where to download XRumer 5.0 Palladium? ...

2009-11-20T18:33:32.685-05:00

Who knows where to download XRumer 5.0 Palladium?
Help, please. All recommend this program to effectively advertise on the Internet, this is the best program!

viagra rrp australia viagra pills viagra online ch...

2009-11-07T05:35:59.958-05:00

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2009-11-06T10:58:18.267-05:00

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

I've commented on this elsewhere, so forgive t...

2009-10-27T11:21:08.386-04:00

I've commented on this elsewhere, so forgive the recycling of an argument, but Minneapolis does not necessarily have a "small" African American population. The percentage of Black residents in Minneapolis is about 150% the national percentage. So this may be small in comparison to Detroit, but I would hesitate to call such numbers small.

Also, as a white person living in North Minneapolis, I must say it isn't quite as segregated as popular opinion would have it. And to be fair, there is a fair amount of money coming in to the area for purposes of urban renewal, though we have yet to see whether it's meaningful or just another attempt at gov't-led gentrification.

That being said, I do think the main thrust of the idea (that we can't just ship Portland's policies elsewhere) is still valid, but probably for a lot more reasons that the arguable differences in racial diversity and segregation.

I don't think he's really explaining selec...

2009-10-26T21:13:35.055-04:00

I don't think he's really explaining selection effects so much as saying "yes, if you look really hard for one criterion on which to make the conclusion you want to make about an entire system, you can find one. But you're off-topic."

I don't like his head-wagging. It seems like a manifestation of some kind of innate insecurity and discomfort. But maybe it's the gender-power thing and if it was a female legislator and a male testifying, I would be like "hell yeah."

At any rate, if he's going to be a head-wagging, finger-shaking bulldog, I'm glad his heart seems to be in the right place.

AD- These are really great points, so let me addre...

2009-10-23T12:28:23.580-04:00

AD- These are really great points, so let me address them as best I can one-by-one.

First, you are correct that there is not a single measure of segregation that captures the entire experience. There are generally five: dissimilarity (uneveness), isolation/exposure, clustering, concentration, and centralization. The two of which I report here are the most commonly used. I also agree entirely that African Americans remain the single most disenfranchised race in America. On the other hand, that doesn't justify Renn's conclusions that these are "white" cities as much as they are "not black" cities. African American's unique disadvantages not withstanding, it is an important distinction.

I would disagree that studies have come up with different results. The different measures of segregation are all highly correlated and, though there are quirks, Midwestern cities tend to have the highest degrees of segregation on all five measures (Massey & Denton). That doesn't take away your extremely valid point that studying the experience of segregation on the ground is also important and manifests itself in different ways -- though there are similarities. And, as sociologist Mary Pattillo has shown, it is true that even middle class black neighborhoods tend to be more disadvantaged than comparable white neighborhoods.

Now, on your last point, I completely agree. Simply transferring policies from Portland to other areas -- and snootily looking down one's noses for being in cities that don't have Portland's composition -- is not going to work. The built environment is different (e.g., New Orleans is a city based on a four hundred year old layout) but, more than anything, racial politics are coded into redistribution policies that make accomplishing those goals much harder. And, particularly for Portland, that is true.

But, as I said before, to call these cities (with the exception of Portland and possibly Seattle) exclusively white is just not supported by the data.

You've offered a worthwhile rebuttal to Mr. Re...

2009-10-23T11:37:29.243-04:00

You've offered a worthwhile rebuttal to Mr. Renn's provocative post, but I can't help but think that some of the subsequent commentary puts it most effectively, by focusing on aspects of urban living that remain stubbornly empirical. The Mumford Center's segregation measurements are just a few of many exhaustive attempts to calculate segregation across American cities; no single one that I am aware of has been endorsed by a preponderance of demographers. Segregated or not, cities like Portland/Austin/Denver/Minneapolis with small African American populations (not referring to other races) have to contend with far less concentrated urban poverty and the ensuing public safety or social welfare that absorbs large amounts of city funds for what remains the most disenfranchised race in American cities. This is hardly due to progressive policies that have effectively addressed these issues: the poor African American communities in Minneapolis and Austin and Denver are just as struggling as they are in Cleveland and St. Louis--the only difference is they are much smaller and comprise a lower portion of the city's population at large.

I'm not arguing with the Mumford Center's numbers per say, but I know that other studies have produced entirely different results through their own calculation methodologies. Sometimes how the city looks from a ground-level, empirical perspective matters just as much, since this is what average citizens react to, and influences relocation decisions. And from that angle, of the cities on this list I know well, Minneapolis and Austin both have a visible presence of segregation. North Minneapolis and East Austin are their respective "black" sides of town; visual surveys would reveal that these parts of town are lagging in vibrant neighborhoods that the class of people for which Renn writes are seeking. But these neighborhoods are dwarfed by the surrounding white, vibrant neighborhoods that are not burdened by high crime, abandonment, or high concentrations of persons with less than an 8th grade education. Indianapolis, conversely, has no identifiably black "side of town", with pockets scattered throughout the city, as well as a number of neighborhoods where they comprise 15-25% of the population; in turn, Indianapolis (its successful downtown notwithstanding) by and large lacks the sort of vibrant urban neighborhoods that a person would easily find in the largely white (or at least overwhelmingly non-black) Portland.

Thus Renn argues that the policies in place in the aforementioned white cities simply cannot be successfully transposed to Cincinnati, Memphis, or Baltimore. They have to work with their concomitant higher rates of poverty and need, and some cities (Houston and Atlanta) are doing a better job of this than others. Other cities have simply organized "progressive" policies that have been abetted as a result of segregation: cities as divergent as Chicago and Louisville manage to attract an urbanite vibe because all of their vibrant, white neighborhoods are more or less clustered along one side of town with the majority of political capital. The dividing line that separates these successful neighborhood from the African American ones is profound. New Orleans, always an anomaly of which I am quite familiar, has managed to retain a number of successful urban neighborhoods despite being quite unsegregated and having no clearly black "side of town". However, New Orleans' ostensible liberal infrastructure has completely failed to translate into progressive policymaking the way one might see in Denver or Portland.

pitse1eh -- "sausage fest" might not hav...

2009-10-20T09:08:43.179-04:00

pitse1eh -- "sausage fest" might not have been the best choice of words, I think that my attempt at humor might have fallen short. But, it is quite noticeable that the list was all male.

I think that our system definitely has problems, but, all-in-all, I think that engagement is better than apathy. I know that you are not apathetic, but it is disconcerting when I see lots of people just throw up their hands and walk away, because I think that is what lets these crazies get into office and do the insane things that they do.