The Real Estate Page As Colonial Dispatch

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Real Estate sections are mostly breezy, fun profiles of the super rich buying up houses and remodeling the ones they already own. Harmless escapist fun? Maybe. But how we write about real estate often reveals casually racist and colonial attitudes that are rarely, if ever, examined.

In this episode we talk about why the way we talk about the real estate business matters and how the white civilizing mission never went away. With guest Aaron Cantú.

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Show notes

Media and the ‘Melting Pot’: Putting a harmonious spin on gentrification

-Aaron Cantú | January 1, 2015 | FAIR

When NYT Real Estate Stories Read Like 19th Century Colonial Dispatches

-Adam Johnson | May 2, 2016 | FAIR

Media and the ‘Melting Pot’

-Adam Johnson | January 1, 2015 | FAIR

Party Like It’s 1992

-Bobby London | September 5, 2017 | The New Inquiry

Remembering The Lost Communities Buried Under Center Field

-Janice Llamoca | October 31, 2017 | NPR

Referenced

Upper Upper West Side Attracting New Settlers

-Philip S. Gutis | March 9, 1986 | The New York Times

Pulling Out of Fort Apache, the Bronx; New 41st Precinct Station House Leaves Behind Symbol of Community's Past Troubles

-Ian Fisher | June 23, 1993 | The New York Times

Veterans Remember 'Fort Apache'

-Larry McShane | June 30, 2002 | Associated Press

America's Next Great City Is Inside L.A.

Brett Martin | January 6, 2014 | GQ

Detroit: A New American Frontier

-Aaron Renn | July 20, 2011 | Yes! Magazine

Racist emails show Chicago official joked about 'safari' tour to see violence in black neighborhoods

-Ray Long & Todd Lighty | July 17, 2017 | Chicago Tribune

Everybody's Laughing at the Video of an Angry White Guy Claiming He 'Settled' Brooklyn

-September 23, 2015 | Vice

Recommendations

The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City [PDF]Neil Smith | 1996

Greening the urban frontier: Race, property, and resettlement in Detroit [PDF]Sara Safransky | August 17, 2014 | Geoforum

Is There Room for Black People in the New Detroit?Suzette Hackney | September 28, 2014 | Politico

The Permanent Crisis of Housing

-David Madden & Peter Marcuse | October 2, 2016 | Jacobin

The Steady Destruction of America’s Cities

-Gillian B. White | March 9, 2017 | The Atlantic

How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality and the Fight for the Neighborhood - Peter Moskowitz, Nation Books (2017)

The Works of Mike Davis

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iTunes link

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Show notes:

Racism Has Shaped U.S. Welfare Policy Since 1935

Alma Carten | August 22, 2016 | The Conversation

Study: Trump fans are much angrier about housing assistance when they see an image of a black man

German Lopez | September 8 2017 | Vox

Black Women: Supporting Their Families—With Few Resources

Gillian B White | June 12, 2017 | The Atlantic

How Racism Tears Apart Social Democracy

Sean McElwee | January 23, 2014 | Huffington Post

Lashing Out at ‘Identity Politics,’ Pundits Blame Trump on Those Most Vulnerable to Trump

Adam Johnson | November 20, 2016 | FAIR

Where's the empathy for black poverty and pain?

Tanzina Vega | May 5 2017 | CNN

U.S. Opens Spigot After Farmers Claim Discrimination

Sharon LaFraniere | April 25, 2013 | New York Times

Racism undermines support for government spending

Sean McElwee | February 16, 2016 | Al Jazeera

Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against America's Poor

Noel A. Cazenave Kenneth J. Neubeck | Routledge

Not my original content, but taking this comment from another sub and posting here:

>I’ve been seeing and hearing a lot of “if you like socialism look at starving Venezuela” comments all over the media, most recently with Meghan McCain on The View which the Chapo Boys talked about in the last episode and someone asked me for a response to her comments.

>The reason they asked me was that I have a PhD in sociology and more specifically looking at how the Western media covers Venezuela.

>I recently wrote a book called “Bad News From Venezuela” which details the enormous disparity between the image of the country and the empirical reality and features interviews with journalists where they admit to not being able to speak Spanish, not leaving their penthouse apartments very often, paying locals to write their stories and knowingly printing fake news about the country.

>I also write about the media coverage of Venezuela at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

>Firstly, I’ve yet to see any credible study about how much weight Venezuelans have lost. I’ve seen plenty of organizations linked to the local opposition spouting out numbers though.

>Venezuelans are hungry in good part because capitalists in the country are intentionally trying to starve them by withholding food in order to provoke an uprising, as they have done numerous times in recent history, for example, before the 2014 elections and in the year of the 2002 and 2002/3 attempted coups. After decades of neoliberalism, Latin American countries’ food systems are dominated by often a single massive multinational which creates, imports or distributes most of the food. For instance, the company Polar dominates the food market, controlling
over half the flour controls over half the flour in the country (the staple) and also owns a network of supermarkets.

>Secondly, Venezuela is also suffering because of the US sanctions, which the UN General Assembly condemned, noting they were deliberately designed to “disproportionately affect the poor and the most vulnerable classes” , calling on all states not to recognize them and began discussing reparations that the US must pay to Venezuela. None of this has been reported anywhere in the US media; I have checked.


>The Venezuelan people, unlike us, of course, know all this, and that’s why even during this period the government’s popularity has gone up and they convincingly won the recent election. Of course, none of this is to say that the government is good or doing well. I'm actually highly critical of where the government has gone. But if we actually care about facts and context and discussion, this stuff needs to be known, otherwise we are completely ignorant of the situation.

>These are not the only reasons why the economy is bad, you can read a longer explanation here.



>Finally, if this is proof socialism failed, then Ecuador must be proof that socialism works, as under the socialist president Correa, unemployment fell to a record low of 4%, poverty fell by 27% in 7 years all while beginning to bring in universal free education and healthcare and reducing its debt. Of course, none of this is ever brought up by these people because they don’t want an honest discussion about “socialism” and they don’t want people knowing about these countries.

>So a response in 140 characters would be Venezuelans are hungry because big capitalists in the country are intentionally trying to starve them and because of illegal US sanctions. This certainly doesn’t tell the whole story but is a quick comeback.