My Corona Diary (Take XVI): When Neglect Doesn't Feel Benign

<"Green Ceiling"

The Reckoner>

Well, I live here in kill city, where the debris meets the sea

Well, I live here in kill city, where the debris meets the sea

It's a playground for the rich, but it's a loaded gun to me...

Iggy Pop, "Kill City"

<i.>

His many dubious achievements include coining the oxymoron, "benign neglect." How well you remember the late Patrick Moynihan depends on your age, demographic and interest in national politics, I suppose. As for me? I always loathed Moynihan (1927-2003), New York's (officially) Democratic Senator from 1977 to 2001. I say "officially," since he often voted against progressive positions, an inconsistency that the stenographers to power were kind enough to overlook, amid the reams of fawning news coverage that he generated.

A classic example came in the 1990s, when Moynihan drew a line in the sand against President Clinton's attempt at health care reform. As tepid and half-hearted as the Clinton plan seemed to progressives, it apparently struck Moynihan as a socialist bridge too far. How else to explain his notorious declaration, "There is no health care crisis in this country," as the number of uninsured continued to climb? (In 1998, that figured stood at 44.3 million; by 2012, it had ballooned to 84.2 million.)

Moynihan's numerous lapses deserve a post of their own, but for today, I'll focus on his most infamous misstep, which came in a 1969 memo that he wrote to President Richard Nixon, whom he was serving as an urban policy adviser: "The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of 'benign neglect.' The subject has been too much talked about. The forum has been too much taken over to hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides. We need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades."

Those darkly provocative sentences soon took on a life of their own. The far right and its acolytes keenly embraced the term, calling for the political classes to ramp down on municipal investment. The far left recoiled, as did progressives, who took Moynihan's phrasing as grim confirmation that government secretly intended to tip the poor and vulnerable out of the few lifeboats they were occupying, in the aftermath of LBJ's self-styled War On Poverty.

Moynihan protested the loudest, naturally. He claimed to have been misquoted, that he'd merely been calling for a cooling-off period, citing Vice President Spiro Agnew's speeches as an example of overheated rhetoric that needed to stop. Only when a divided nation finally binding its wounds, Moynihan suggested, could it return to the business of deciding who might get what. But that's not how events panned out nationally, as we'll see.

<Down, Down, Down...

.For The Third Time"

The Reckoner>

Well I'm sick of keeping quiet and I am the wild boy
I'm sick of keeping quiet and I am the wild boy
But if I have to die here first I'm gonna make some noise...

Iggy Pop, "Kill City"

<ii.>

By and large, the Moynihans and the Nixons of the world -- followed by the Reagans and the Bushes, the Clintons and the Bidens, the Bannons and the Trumps -- got their way. Direct aid to cities began declining in the Reagan Eighties, as the "by your bootstraps" mantra of his so-called "New Federalism" became the order of the day. That approach quickly ratcheted down to state governments, who welcomed the chance to balance their ever-shaky books without having to confront the often-racist and classist assumptions underlying such maneuvers: Hey, why give "them" anything? They don't really deserve it, anyway, and even if you do, "those people" will only mess it up. 

The mainstream media fell into line, for the most part, having been euthanized by the same corporate cash-out culture that had narcotized the nation. Out went jokes about green stamps and government cheese; in came squishy soft-sell pieces lionizing soccer moms and swing voters. 

You may think I'm oversimplifying here, but not by much, because I've witnessed the effects of this neglect all my life. I thought about that infamous Moynihan memo after hearing a presentation at our Zoom church service today, on the effects of structural racism in South Bend, IN, from someone who'd served on the Common Council there.

The more relevant facts included the release of $90 million of economic neighborhood funding in 2019, of which zero dollars went to black neighborhoods. That's right, that's not a typo. Zero dollars, as in, null, nada, nothin' but a big fat goose egg. Call it what you wish.

Yet, when it comes to code enforcement, City Hall is always Johnny on the spot, it seems. The presenter talked about a neighbor, who'd just had his lawn mowed for him, like it or not. The city charged $169.75 for the work, plus an additional $250 fine, for noncompliance with its code.

And if you can't pay that $400-plus amount right away? Well, the city slaps it on your taxes, plus interest, putting the homeowner at risk of losing their property, which has happened to many people that our presenter knew. She didn't say how many, but the gist clearly suggested, bigger than a breadbox, smaller than an elephant. "That's why my husband and I are out mowing our lawns at nine o'clock on Saturday night, even though I have two jobs, and he has three. And God forbid if it ever rains on the weekend," she said.

Yet one other force has not let the grass -- financial, material, or otherwise -- grow under its feet. That realization hit me when our presenter showed a photo of roughly 17 cards and flyers from realtors saying, "I want to buy your house." 

In other words, the only attention these long-neglected black residents in those long-neglected neighborhoods can ever expect is when someone views them as a potential cash cow, to swoop down over and profit from, when the relevant price points -- and pain points, exerted on those who have to knuckle under, sell out for a bargain price, and go elsewhere -- finally proves right. "So we know they're coming," our presenter said. "Gentrification is coming."

Such practices exemplify vulture capitalism at its worst. But they don't happen by accident. For anyone reading this blog closely, it's worth remembering who presided over those $400-plus code enforcement bills -- Mayor Pete Buttigeig, whose presidential ambitions ran up against the harsh reality of failing to register more than zero to three percent among black voters. I suspect that his priorities, such as his code enforcement approach, had a lot to do with that outcome.

Yet the mainstream media never stopped promoting Mayor Pete as a more "adult," more "realistic" alternative to the rumpled anti-Christ from Vermont, Bernie Sanders -- even as he peaked at nine or 10 percent nationally, than rapidly fell to earth, below five percent. No matter. A corporate-owned media always has its own fish to fry in these fights. They just don't happen to be ours.

In the end, though, all this neglect, benign or malign, leads down the same road, to the consolidation of power by a small, privileged overclass, with the marginalization of the majority written off as the cost of doing business, or price of progress, take your pick. (To see how well this approach works in reality, check out the links below.)

This is what the Moynihans of the world have left us, and while trying to beat them back is a spectacularly grueling and thankless task, even in the best of times, we must never stop reminding everyone what they're really after, and what their neglect represents. That is the least we should accomplish, once we finally emerge from our never-ending dystopian pandemic, which resembles Logan's Run, minus the snappier costumes. 

If they still manage to advance all their most noxious, malicious goals in spite of all of our best effort....then shame on them. If we don't learn from our mistakes, resign ourselves to permanently having to think small, and surrender the high ground to them, without a fight? Then shame on us. --The Reckoner

Links To Go (Hurry, Hurry,
Before They Mow Your Lawn,
And Feed You The Bill):

Buzzfeed News: What Happened
When Pete Buttigeig Tore Down Houses...
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/henrygomez/mayor-pete-buttigieg-south-bend-gentrification

Pro Publica: Leaked Audio Recordings
Reveal Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Firmly In Charge...
https://www.propublica.org/article/leaked-recordings-reveal-chicago-mayor-lori-lightfoot-firmly-in-charge-and-city-alderman-left-largely-on-the-sidelines

Yahoo News: "Two Cities" Collide
As Chicago's Social Time Bomb Explodes:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/two-cities-collide-chicagos-social-140104990.html