Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire NPR reports systemic racism in property taxes

was listening to NPR yesterday about systemic racism in housing.

They had a number of speakers on but the crux of what they were saying was that the fair housing idea of LBJ in 1968 has failed due to racism.

Their example was that blacks pay and average of 13% more in property taxes on housing than whites, housing that is typically lowered valued housing.

Now mind you they aren't saying that a black family living in a white neighborhood pays more than the white family, they are saying % wise, people that live in lower value housing pay more ....well duh

So lets think about that for a moment - if it costs $6000 to send a kid to school for a year and you have 1000 kids, then you need $6m in revenue. That is a static cost.

Lets say we set the same percentage on property tax between the predominantly black neighborhood versus the white - some random number 2% and each neighborhood has 5000 homes. The predominantly black neighborhood has an average home value of $150,000 and the average home value of the white neighborhood is $300,000

you see where I'm going with this? The black neighborhood brings in a revenue of $15m where as the white neighborhood would bring in $30m with the same tax rate. So of course the white neighborhood is going to have lower tax rates, but at the same time, per capita they are paying more in tax dollars than the black neighborhood.

That isn't systemic racism, that is basic math. This isn't about why a black guy can't afford a $300K home, although they try to make it seem that way,

I see the exact same thing here. My community butts up against the most expensive part of town to live in - several multi-million dollar homes and even the shabbiest shack they have is gonna run you $500K. Their tax rate is half of mine at least. Its not a black and white thing. At the end of the day however, I may pay $7k a year in property tax and they'll be paying something around $16K for even the most entry level home.

So the NPR interviewer says to the guy "so if the black neighborhoods are paying more in taxes, why aren't they seeing more money coming back to the schools?" and the guy says that the distribution is also...wait for it.... racist - that the people who distribute the funds are giving more to police, firefighters, etc and not the predominantly black schools.

so 1. They aren't paying more in taxes. They're just paying a higher percentage because it takes a higher percentage to cover the costs since local communities can't operate on a deficit, and two, even if what he said were true, you think these predominantly black communities are electing white officials to govern them and make decisions about how much they should pay in tax and where the money will be distributed?

finally they close out the segment with a woman saying that they bought their house from a white family that was doing the white flight thing in the 60's from Washington D.C. She said she always wondered why when the neighborhood went black the quality of the schools deteriorated and local business left. They ended the segment with that question - no answer. I would have LOVED to answer that question for NPR.


Everything is racist today, and you can't have an honest discussion about pushing back otherwise you are racist as well. We just have to accept that the entire nation gets up every day and plots against the black man to keep them in their place.

You can argue almost anything as racist (or whatever viewpoint you want to push) if you look at limited data and project it in the light/way you want.

I worked in a research lab for a few years as a graduate assistant and saw study results get "directed" to certain outcomes. It wasn't changing data, it was only showing certain results or results in certain ways. It's made me skeptical of a lot of things, even if I believe in the idea that's being pushed...