* As Fred Trump, Sr. made his fortune in selling real estate housing to middle class whites (and helping to avoid the more extreme abuses that occurred as a result of the ’68 Fair Housing Act, it remains to be seen if his son Donald has learned any of what his father may have taught him when as a younger man he worked with his dad in Queens. Could a Trump presidency quietly disband some of the more extreme abuses of the Obama DOJ’s obsession of disparate impact when it comes to the real estate market?
Regarding disparate impact and its enforcement in US’s neighborhoods, would not be surprised if the Donald’s DOJ went in the opposite direction.
* Oak Park is 64% white, Austin across the street is 4% white.
Topographically, they are identical: the Prairie School of Oak Park means flat.
Obviously, Oak Park has a world famous housing stock with it 25 Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, which probably played a role in persuading the authorities to allow Oak Park to do what it takes to hold back the tide of slumification. Having a bunch of poor blacks take over the world’s biggest concentration of buildings by America’s most famous architect would have been Taliban/ISIS level desecration. So, it didn’t happen. And I think we should study how this sacrilege was averted.
When I moved to Chicago in 1982, my dad wanted to see his old house in Oak Park. I had just read Theodore H. White’s autobiography, which ends with a depressing visit to his old house in the Boston area in what’s now a black slum. As we drove through the slums of Chicago’s West Side, I kept trying to lower my father’s expectations … until we crossed the border into Oak Park and then arrived at Superior St., where dozens of European tourists were wearing headsets were taking architectural walking tours of his old neighborhood.
But Austin’s architectural stock wasn’t at all bad:
http://www.chicagodetours.com/schocking-austin-neighborhood-architecture/
My point is that the ploys that Oak Park pulled to avoid Austin’s fate deserve careful study, but it never seems to come up because they were illegal but also effective. Maybe it would make sense to adjust the laws to allow everybody to enjoy what Oak Park enjoyed?
Back in the 1990s, I read an interview in the The Atlantic with the gay guy who wrote the libretto for the new opera “The Ghosts of Versailles” composed by John Corigliano. He was much more eloquent, but his political stance boiled down to: Of course I’m conservative, I’m a gay guy who writes opera libretti.
* I saw him for a half hour on TV and Bernie has an avuncular bedside manner. He comes across as believing what he is saying. Then Hillary came on and I switched channels or I would get sick.
I am Trump2016 all the way but I can see how the young and naive get sucked in by Bernie’s presentation. He makes socialism sound like a great idea…… he’s had years to perfect this shtick.
