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.

Reclaiming our Right to the City

Influential French philosopher Henri Lefebvre argued that justice in late capitalism is about the "right to the city."  In this he meant that not only outcomes are important, but more so control over the processes that produce those outcomes.

As this blog makes abundantly clear, I am concerned about control over the processes of food production, particularly by those made hungry by the food system. There are many ways to do this: experiments with food policy councils produced mixed results, some effective but undemocratic, some democratic and ineffective, and so on. Still, the notion that city dwellers - the racially, economically and socially oppressed especially - should control the process of food production can be expanded to an understanding of related and parallel processes and should provide opportunities for alliance building.

Take, for example, housing. Substandard housing exists in areas that have been abandoned by whites and capital. Because poverty almost always corresponds with these areas, real estate investors are dis-incentivized to put money into housing in those neighborhoods. Why invest in an inner city when the suburbs are much more profitable?

Now, consider the phenomena of food deserts - geographic areas that lack traditional grocery stores or outlets for healthy food in general. These areas are served primarily by convenience stores and fast food restaurants. The process behind the production of food deserts and the production of substandard housing are exactly the same. Like real estate investors, grocers see no need to invest in inner city neighborhoods when suburbs offer a larger market.

What is clear is that substandard housing, food deserts, and poverty are located spatially in the same geographic area and that the processes producing these conditions are far outside the control of the residents of inner city neighborhoods.

A closer examination of injustice in transit, health, jobs, environmental degradation and other spheres reveals that injustice is almost always located in the same geographic area, and this spatial injustice underpins the potential for the building of transformational alliances. Housing advocates, food justice activists and others are natural allies in the struggle against the non- or anti-democratic processes of the global economy.

These allies must struggle to regain control of the city, to reclaim the processes making their neighborhood, and yes, to assert what Lefebvre called their right to the city.