Tanner Colby and the White Postracial Fantasy

I must admit that I hadn't heard of Tanner Colby prior to him being brought to Birmingham to speak at the 2015 MLK Unity Breakfast. I found it interesting that in this moment of renewed racial protest and an increasing focus on institutional racism, especially within the criminal justice system, the organizers of the Breakfast would pick a white guy to talk about race. His topic, residential segregation, is quite timely, especially in Birmingham with its status as most segregated city in the South, 15th in the nation. My interest was also piqued because I have written extensively on residential segregation both in my dissertation and in our paper published in August of 2014.

The conversation of race and urban development is an important conversation to have, but I believe that Tanner Colby's work falls well short of the standard necessary for meaningful change to happen in our region. There are many, many other authors who have written on residential segregation that would have been much better choices for talking about the topic. Douglass Massey and Nancy Denton, both white, wrote the seminal work in American Apartheid and William Julius Wilson has written extensively on what he calls the "underclass."

While I can only speculate, it seems that Colby was chosen for two reasons. 1) Most importantly, he writes about the region and 2) his perspective as a fairly un-self critical white person presents a point-of-view that is palatable to whites in metro Birmingham, while not undermining, and even to some degree supporting, the gentrification agenda of REV Birmingham and the city. While some of the history in Colby's book is probably pretty new for most whites, it doesn't challenge the practices of the white community today in any way, practices which we have documented.

Colby's thesis is fairly simple and based almost exclusively on a naive integrationist assumption. He argues that post-Civil Rights, integration failed because whites abandoned cities. This argument is confirmed in a more or less scientific consensus. However, he argues that integration also failed because the black leadership that was left behind built institutions or took control of institutions, which became a sort of homogenous fiefdom where black leaders would not integrate or relinquish power in the name of integration. I find this reasoning incredibly strange.  Blacks do not control most of the powerful institutions in Birmingham, whites do, still. Think about it:

Universities: mostly white
Media: white
Schools: black
Government: black
Hospitals: white
Philanthropy: white
Corporations: mostly white

Colby states that the failure of integration was due to lack of "money and human capital," but argues that some sort of naive integration is the solution and that black recalcitrance about integration is one of the barriers. This is puzzling. If the problem is one "money and human capital," doesn't it make more sense to get more money and more human capital to distressed communities? It's not that blacks won't give up their institutions for the good of their communities; it's that blacks still don't control the institutions in their communities, whites do. Thus, residential segregation is a situation caused by white flight and the fact that whites remain in control of the institutions of communities that they left.

To take it a step further, look at the money that has been spent in Birmingham over the last 15 years. $36 million spent on the destruction of Metropolitan Gardens, which displaced 2400 black people; $58 million dollars on a baseball stadium patronized by an almost exclusively white crowd; and $57 million dollars spent on an entertainment district and everybody knows who goes there. That's $151 million dollars on urban development projects in downtown that benefit almost exclusively a white audience. Compare that to the recent bond initiative which was $150 million dollars for the WHOLE REST OF THE CITY. And you're telling me there's some rigid, intransigent sector of black institutions?

Finally, Colby makes no argument as to why this sort of naive integration is even desirable. As someone who is a leader in an integrated organization, I can't tell you how much a struggle not to be a stupid white person, and I can also tell you that 99% of the white people in this region have no idea even what I'm talking about. Dissolving all institutions into integrated institutions, a post-racial fantasy, would do nothing but impose white culture on blacks because of the differences in power and social position between whites and blacks. I will tell whites what Malcolm X told whites.  If you are sincere about racial justice, go back to your white communities and challenge people. Become unpopular. Risk your reputation. But, don't try to tell blacks to integrate, when, even by Tanner Colby's own admission, it has failed.

If we want to integrate, blacks and whites must be on institutional and economic parity. Then and only then is integration possible. But then, it's unnecessary.

Response to the Gentrification Series

Over the last six months, Weld for Birmingham has produced a series on gentrification from an oral history standpoint.  Overall, the series is good and puts a human face on the changes we are undergoing in Birmingham.  No fewer than three of the articles have focused on the Avondale/Crestwood area, which, due to the completeness of downtown gentrification, is ground zero for neighborhood change in Birmingham.

This post looks at Weld's approach to gentrification, points out some blind spots, critiques the response by those promoting gentrification, and provides some data that highlight the downside of neighborhood change.

First, there seems to be little in terms of displacement in census tract 24, home to Avondale and parts of Crestwood.  There has been only a 5% change in terms of the demographics in the census tract.  However, property values have risen dramatically, to the tune of 61% over the past ten years.  This is more than the increase in property values of Homewood and Mountain Brook, but less than the increases in downtown Birmingham.  If this trend continues, widespread displacement will be inevitable, particularly of low-income residents.  One of the Weld series' largest blind spot is the lack of voices representing low-income renters.  They have almost exclusively interviewed privileged white residents.  Are low-income residents' rents increasing, are they contemplating moving to a cheaper zip code, and are landlords attempting to push them out?  

(In fairness, I'm not under any illusion about how difficult it may be to develop the connections necessary to get an interview with renters who may not want to get caught up in a political fight.)

As an artifact of this blind spot, the response to the most recent gentrification series post "Leaving Crestwood" displayed an incredible amount of privilege and entitlement.  Posters wrung their hands and navel-gazed about a privileged white resident leaving the community- all of these lamentations coming from other privileged whites.  

In an earlier article by Nick Patterson, "New Students, New Parents, New Reality, and Change," the author documented how white residents make decisions about school choice.  Tellingly, the residents highlighted in the article consulted other whites when deciding about which schools their children should attend. (The Bigas stated that they changed their mind after consulting with Reverend Brandon Harris, a white man.)  

Does this really look like integration, a situation in which white residents' community looks not unlike the community that s/he would have in Homewood or Mountain Brook?  Maybe this is untrue, but the articles, with a dramatic lack of black protagonists, portray a lily-white community within a larger black neighborhood.  The articles give the distinct impression that gentrification and neighborhood change are driven by a small cadre of privileged, white advocates of a type of economic development that can best be termed municipal trickle-down economics.

I'm quite pleased with the gentrification series from Weld, and this critique is just an attempt to make it better.  The series has spurred conversation in Birmingham that otherwise never would have happened. However, there are blind spots that need to be addressed in future articles in the series, and the number one blind spot is "are there people experiencing displacement pressures?"

Gentrification and the White Savior Industrial Complex

This post is written in response to the post Gentrify Me on the blog Life and Law on 23rd Street.  Gentrify Me was written in response to my piece in Weld for Birmingham called My View: Gentrification.  In a nutshell, the author of Gentrify Me agreed with all of my conclusions, but insisted that gentrification was, in fact, good.

In response, I want to delve deeper into the underlying causes of such a view of gentrification - namely: the white savior industrial complex. Teju Cole coined this term in response to Kony 2012, a widely maligned video that thought to represent white people as saviors of Africans.  I believe that this impulse is vividly shown in Birmingham, in which white gentrifiers characterize themselves as the saviors of Birmingham, and by extension the black people in it.

Using Cole's seven points about the white savior industrial complex and excerpts from Birmingham blogs and journalists, I will show that the white savior industrial complex is alive and well in the Birmingham area.

1. "From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex."  Clearly, gentrification is the fastest growth industry in the Birmingham region.  The city just constructed a 58 million dollar baseball stadium and a 20 million dollar park.  Home values are rising dramatically downtown to the tune of 90% over the past 10 years.

2.  "The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening."  Clearly, white saviors are promoting policies of gentrification.   REV Birmingham, a new joint venture combining Operation New Birmingham (a tireless promoter of gentrification) and Main Street Birmingham (also a promoter of gentrification; see work in Avondale) is a charity dedicated to revitalizing Birmingham.  Main Street Birmingham won the Birmingham Business Alliance's nonprofit of the year award in 2012.

3.  "The banality of evil transmutes to the banality of sentimentality.  The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm."  For evidence of this I turn to a recent blog post on Magic City Made by Avondale resident L.K. Whitney.  In it, she shows how her concerns for Birmingham are rooted in sentimentality for a "community" experience of difference.  She states that she is emotionally shaken when someone undermines the liberal utopia of different people all thinking alike.  Rooted in this is the inability to understand how or why someone could have a difference of opinion, and how those differences are rooted in culture, race, and history.  She believes, instead, that all the deep seated and profound issues of the region can be solved through enthusiasm for this liberal utopia.  This sentiment also rings heavily in Gentrify Me, though less overtly.

4.  "The world exist simply to satisfy the needs - including, importantly, the sentimental needs - of white people and Oprah."  Same evidence as above.  Furthermore, Dan Carsen's article on "reverse integration," whatever that is, and a recent article by Mandy Shunnarah in the Magic City Post, speak to the complicity of and promotion by the media of white saviors.  Shunnarah's article seems to take the position that the conversation about Ensley needs to be shifted, and shifted by white people.  Shifted to what?  A nice place to experience sentimental diversity?

5.  "The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice.  It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege."  REV Birmingham, Magic City Made, and almost every charity in Birmingham never mention, much less fight for justice.  These charities exist to appease the needs of mostly white donors, funders and gentrifiers, to make them feel like they are participating in something good, no matter the effects.  To claim to fight for justice would undermine the monetary basis of most charities in Birmingham.  It is structurally prohibited.

6. "Feverish worry over that awful African warlord.  But, close to 1.5 million Iraqis died in an American war of choice."  Naturally, part of this is irrelevant to Birmingham, but the feverish worry over that awful African warlord, ignoring other factors is quite prevalent.  For instance, there was much journalistic concern over the corruption of Larry Langford - and no doubt, he deserved it.  But at the same time, white journalists privileged this narrative over the much more important one, that banks screwed Jefferson County.  It took Rolling Stone journalist, Matt Taibbi, to finally put the pieces together.

7.  "I deeply respect American sentimentality the way one respects a wounded hippo.  You must keep an eye on it because you know it is deadly."  While I don't think that the white savior industrial complex in Birmingham is at a deadly level yet, if the pattern of white saviorism and gentrification continue, it could lead to widespread displacement of poor, mostly black populations.

Let me be clear - my critique of the blogs and work of others in this article is absolutely not a personal attack.  The aim is to point out blind spots and unchallenged assumptions about the nature of Birmingham and the world at large.  Whites are not automatically owed the privilege of determining the direction of the city.  Whites should seek out neighborhood residents and leaders and try to understand how they can help and what those leaders want, not plow forward with critically-unassessed ideas founded chimeric utopias.  Justice - real, practical justice - should be the goal, not sentimental, feel-good experiences.

Downtown Stadium is a Strikeout

It has been interesting to watch news people, politicians, and the business community salivate over the proposed $50 million dollar baseball park adjacent to Railroad Park.  Without fail, proponents cite the positive economic impact and the redevelopment of properties between UAB and 1st Ave North, and without fail there are no dissenters among the voices.

Well, count me among the dissenters.  The academic research on sports stadiums shows that these stadiums benefit investors, owners, and players and no one else.  Some highlights of the research follow:

• According to Calvin Jones in the Journal of Environmenal Planning A, sports stadiums contribute to uneven development between and within cities (think spatial injustice from previous post).
• According to Robert Baade and Richard Dye in Growth and Change: A Journal of Urban and Regional Policy, "the presence of a new or renovated stadium has an uncertain impact on the levels of personal income and possibly a negative impact on local development relative to the region. These results should serve as a caution to those who assume or assert a large positive stadium impact."
• Baade again argues in the Journal of Urban Affairs that "(t)o attract or retain a team, cities are offering staggering financial support and rationalize their largesse on economic grounds. Do professional sports increase income and create jobs in amounts that justify the behavior of cities? The evidence detailed in this paper fails to support such a rationale. The primary beneficiaries of subsidies are the owners and players, not the taxpaying public."
• Adam Zaretsky argues in the April 2001 issue of the Regional Economist, a publication of the Federal Reserve of St. Louis, that "the use of public funds to lure or keep teams begs several questions, the foremost of which is, 'Are these good investments for cities?' The short answer to this question is 'No.' When studying this issue, almost all economists and development specialists (at least those who work independently and not for a chamber of commerce or similar organization) conclude that the rate of return a city or metropolitan area receives for its investment is generally below that of alternative projects. In addition, evidence suggests that cities and metro areas that have invested heavily in sports stadiums and arenas have, on average, experienced slower income growth than those that have not."

Clearly, stadiums do not benefit the majority of the taxpayers and under some circumstances may actually harm them.  Those that benefit from the subsidy are those that seek to gain the most from the development: real estate magnates benefiting from rising land values, investors in businesses in the surrounding entertainment district, and politicians with more money for their projects.  No cities build baseball stadiums with public money anymore, specifically because there are few public benefits and legions of private sector benefits.

If Birmingham Barons owner Don Logan wants to move the Barons back to Birmingham, he should assemble his own investors. God forbid that he put his own cash up for the stadium [/sarcasm].  It is understandable that Birmingham wants to follow the lead of many cities in turning downtown into a playground for the rich, but careful attention to the research reveals that the benefits from such redevelopment never actually trickle down.

Birmingham needs a municipal economics built on service to the least fortunate, not the most fortunate.  Parkside stadium strikes out in this regard.

Food access is not the answer

Today's LA Times article on food access and obesity confirms what I have been suggesting throughout this entire blog.

Eating healthy is a question of having money, not of having access to food outlets. Poor folks are going to buy the cheapest food even if a conventional grocery store with healthier options exists. The quickest way to improve people's diet is to increase their income. 

The food movement up to this point has centered on technical fixes to obesity - namely, increasing access to healthy food - but what is needed are interventions that combine community economic development with increased food access. Main Street Birmingham and Project Hopewell are developing public markets in Southwest Birmingham for precisely this reason, but this project is only one piece of the solution.

Birmingham needs comprehensive community economic development beginning with food production through urban farms and possibly aquaponics cooperatives, proceeding to value-added products such as cakes, breads, and jams, and ending with the public markets that are being created.  Comprehensive projects like these will increase access to healthy food, raise incomes, provide employment, and integrate food within every aspect of community life.

These projects are inherently political in the sense that they challenge dominant economic development paradigms that center on financial power, instead devolving control to individual entrepreneurs and in ideal cases, worker-owners of a cooperative.  This stands in stark contrast to the ill-conceived and ineffective focus on access.

The pieces are in place to do real community economic development around food, and the time is now to shift the movement from technical fixes to revolutionary projects.

The Allen Plan and Ways Forward

Will Allen's Plan: Providing food, jobs  

Until very recently, the typical strategy for a local faction of the alternative agriculture movement included farmers markets, subscription plans, institutional purchasing and distributorships.  This approach appealed to high end buyers, supported small family farms, and focused almost myopically on market-based solutions to the small farm crisis.  However, this path can go only so far as the high capital turnover times in agriculture, stemming from high production times, make agriculture a poor investment.  

Consider an investor looking at an investment in steel production or in agriculture.  Since turnover times are much shorter in steel production than in agriculture, it makes good sense for the investor to invest in steel. Investors are more likely to invest in steel than agriculture because it takes longer to make a tomato than to make steel. This is why American agriculture is subsidized to the tune of 16 billion dollars a year, subsidies which allow large farmers to market at below the cost of production and make farming a lucrative investment. With the current structure of subsidies, the small family farm and urban agriculture will never be a good investment because of the natural limitations to agricultural production and the lack of government support for these enterprises.


While national level subsidies are unlikely to change in the near future, subsidies for local agriculture can be developed by state and local governments. In fact, fiscal sustainability and growth for urban and local agriculture hinges on the ability to leverage support from governments. 

I want to next outline a simple, but effective policies and arguments to push local governments towards subsidies for local and urban agriculture.

• Argument: The region has a legacy of agricultural production, and that legacy should be protected by the government.  

Policy tools: land trusts, tax abatement, agricultural zoning

• Argument: Local agriculture produces jobs and economic development (see Allen Plan).  

Policy tools: direct payment, land trusts, tax abatement, agricultural job training programs, increased availability of public land for agricultural production, "sin" taxes on high fructose corn syrup and other bad foods earmarked for ag. 

•  Argument: Local agriculture relieves food insecurity through economic development and providing access to healthy food.  (The single most important item for addressing food insecurity is economic development.  People have little to eat because they are poor and eat bad food because it is cheap).  

Policy tools: direct payment, land trusts, tax abatements, agricultural job training programs, subsidized farmers markets (municipality pays farmers to provide fruits and vegetables at a discounted price), institutional purchasing, increased availability of public land for agricultural production, "sin" taxes on high fructose corn syrup and other bad foods with proceeds earmarked for ag.

While this is not an exhaustive list, the strategy is markedly different from previous strategies in that it focuses heavily on government-subsidized economic development and relief of food insecurity. 

It also operates on the assumption that food is urbanizing quickly, a reflection of urbanization processes across the globe, and attempts to develop a strategy appropriate for that urbanization.  Even many farmers who may consider themselves rural are in fact in metropolitan areas, and, clearly, they are utilizing urban markets.  

Ultimately, the goal is to eliminate the food system that produces, primarily, hunger, food insecurity, and bad food, and replace it with an urban-based food system that distributes good food fairly and sustainably.