12 Comments

Prof. Loury, you were visibly shocked when David Kaiser said that redlining in cities was not as harmful to blacks as Coates and others claim and that more whites than blacks were actually living in those redlined poor neighborhoods. It's shocking that Coates' claim -- which was repeated and given credence by Richard Rothstein in his influential and persuasive book "The Color of Law" -- had not been 'fact-checked' or challenged until now. Or has it been challenged and no one in the Coates School or the punditocracy knows it? You were clearly surprised by what Kaiser said (as I was). I'm just an ex-journalist, and I'm ashamed that I didn't question Coates' redlining claim. But if Kaiser's 'news' about the actual victims of redlining from 1940 to 1970 was news to someone as informed on the subject like you, it means almost no one else knows it yet. Maybe you should send Mr. Coates a text.

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Listened to entire interview. Absolutely engaging and informative. Great level of detail and exemplifications. David Kaiser is focused, clear thinking and speaking. I myself appreciated the long-thoughts, deep level of detail and development of talking points, always within a structure that he (and Glen) develop and refer back to: a thorough canvassing of every theme. . I could have listed to a longer interview with this guy, who has a vigorous mode of expression and is diligent in his attempt to articulate ideas precisely and accurately. Every single idea was interesting. No cliche's or tropes here. I've appreciated your work for years now, Glen.

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It is delightful to be educated regarding the ignorance of the orthodoxy of today's intellectual elite... There were three or four moments this one included where my mouth dropped open... Thank you for sharing...

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Hm. Apparently I didn't TY Professor Loury for another fine interview. TYTY, as always.

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Interesting timing on this...

Coincides with Price Fishback's, et. al new working paper suggesting that the HOLC maps did little to influence FHA lending patterns. (https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29244/w29244.pdf), but that FHA

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Yah, fascinating! TYTY M. Cahill.

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Dr. Loury writes: "They use the median as the measure, and then they take a ratio of the medians."

I take it that the medians being ratioed are median wealth for black people and median wealth for white people?

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Correct. And both are relatively small numbers, compared to the respective means...

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At the 50th percentile, both populations have almost nothing. By using the median as the yardstick, you're inflating the tiniest disparity by a massive number. Say I, sleeping under a moldy piece of carpet, have ten cents, but my neighbor in the soggy cardboard box has a whole buck twenty. One could simply state that he's twelve times wealthier. But that would be a dishonest, misleading framing of the situation.

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Thanks for the explanation. I listened twice to that inserted comment from Glen to understand the statistical "banditry." Relative versus absolute measures are often used to exaggerate non-significant differences.

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thank you.

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Oct 6, 2021
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No recollection of these events...

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