Protesting Robert Moses

On June 20th about one hundred protestors met at the statue of Robert Moses in Babylon Village in order to demand its removal.

The protest was organized by Ms. Vanessa Cardino, a recent graduate of Fordham University. According to her petition on change.org:

“Robert Moses has left behind a long legacy of prejudice and gentrification, specifically targeting the Black and Jewish communities. Through his role in building infrastructure throughout Long Island, he supported tactics leading to housing segregation so Long Island neighborhoods were predominantly inhabited by White Christian folks. Yet, many still praise him for his work, calling him a “true visionary.”

Sydney Pereira of The Gothamist reported, “We want people to know the true history of Robert Moses, which cannot be done justly by commemorating him and his actions,” Vanessa Cardino, a Babylon resident who organized Saturday’s action, told Gothamist in an email. “The removal of the statue will be the first step of many to make Babylon welcoming and inclusive of all people… We will keep making our voices heard until the statue is removed.” https://gothamist.com/news/protesters-want-robert-moses-statue-long-island-be-torn-down

The article also includes commentary from Anthony Torres, “What we’re seeing in towns like mine—which again, because of the legacy of people like Robert Moses, is a very predominantly white community—is that you’re seeing that people have had enough of the current system of inequality of white supremacy,” Anthony Torres, a 25-year-old activist from Babylon who protested Saturday, told Gothamist.

He grew up two blocks from the statue of Moses, who Torres says symbolizes an “abusive and authoritarian figure who designed Long Island purposefully to benefit folks like himself and segregate folks based on the color of our skin, to whom we prayed, and where we came from.”

Is This Correct?

From these points of view, it would seem that somehow Robert Moses created segregated neighborhoods on Long Island. I say “somehow”, because there doesn’t appear to be any indication that Mr. Moses ever held a position of authority that had anything to do with residential or commercial real estate development in Nassau and Suffolk Counties.

More importantly, it’s critical to understand that prior to the Fair Housing Act which was passed as Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968; discrimination in housing was not an unusual or necessarily illegal practice.

Newsday’s Editorial Board recently published an opinion entitled “An acknowledgment: Newsday missed a critical chance to lead“

“Because as Levittown was rising from the potato fields of Island Trees in 1947, Newsday was a cheerleader for nearly two years, never mustering a word of protest or condemnation.”

“That might come as a shock to modern readers who know Newsday’s strong decades long stance against segregation in our schools and our communities, and the paper’s history of confronting all manner of injustice. But the 1940s apparently was a different era.” https://www.newsday.com/opinion/levittown-newsday-alicia-patterson-racial-covenant-discrimination-1.38610861

My Parents bought their house in Massapequa Park in 1955. Standing on the dirt road of Roosevelt Avenue they picked out the wooded lot where they wanted the house to be built and went back to the realtor’s office to finalize the paperwork. In family lore, my Mom ended up in a quarrel with the agent. Apparently while they were at the office, a black couple had pulled into the parking lot and the agent lowered a venetian blind that had a message written on it that the starting price for houses was $15,000. When the couple entered the office, they asked about the price saying they thought it was less. The agent replied “Nope, the price went up.” The couple then left. My Mom said to the agent, “Why did you do that? Where are they supposed to live?” She knew that the starting price for a house was $12,000 and asked the agent about the sign. The agent said, “They’ve got their own place in Amityville”. My Mom replied, “That doesn’t seem right.” After a significant period of discussion, the agent bluntly said, “Lady, do you want the house or not.”

The way housing was developed on Long Island.

Communities such as Wyandanch, North Amityville, Roosevelt, etc. were advertised as “interracial housing” where homes were sold on a “non-racial” basis, while other areas were generally marketed to white homebuyers.

Land developers want to sell properties for the highest price possible. Realtors are paid on commission, and homes in white neighborhoods hold higher price points, hence higher commissions. Homeowners wish to receive the highest sales prices possible for their homes. Moneyed interests such as real estate developers, builders, contractors, etc., both then and now hold sway over political leaders. As a result infrastructure, residential, and commercial uses of land are routinely dictated by their desires.

Young couples who buy single family homes on Long Island are typically looking for a house they can afford, with good services such as libraries, and a good school district. As an example, Lindenhurst High School and Wyandanch High School are about five miles away from each other; however the respective graduation rate at Lindenhurst is 94% while Wyandanch is 47%. https://data.nysed.gov/gradrate.php?instid=800000037805#:~:text=GRADUATION%20RATE%20%20%20%20Subgroup%20%20,%20%20%E2%80%94%20%2019%20more%20rows%20 https://data.nysed.gov/gradrate.php?instid=800000037743#:~:text=GRADUATION%20RATE%20%20%20%20Subgroup%20%20,%20%20%E2%80%94%20%2019%20more%20rows%20

According to the 2010 Census, Lindenhurst’s demographics indicated that 92.14% of it’s population was white and 1.53% was black. Conversely, in the same census, Wyandanch showed a racial breakdown of 16.43% white and 64.96% black. However, Wyandanch High School’s demographics show that only 1% of it’s student body is white. http://censusviewer.com/city/NY/Lindenhurst http://censusviewer.com/city/NY/Wyandanch https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/new-york/districts/wyandanch-union-free-school-district/wyandanch-memorial-high-school-14193/student-body

This isn’t unique to Long Island.

According to Richard Rothstien, Historian and Author of “The Color of Law”, “(U)ntil the last quarter of the twentieth century, racially explicit policies of federal, state, and local governments defined where whites and African Americans should live. Today’s residential segregation in the North, South, Midwest, and West is not the unintended consequence of individual choices and of otherwise well-meaning law or regulation but of unhidden public policy that explicitly segregated every metropolitan area in the United States.” This statement clearly places the onus of these policies on elected officials across the nation.

To put a finer point on this, a friend of mine who began working as a licensed real estate agent on Long Island in the 1980s, once told me “We were told not to steer because of the fair housing act we could lose our license. But the bottom line, was (that it was) all about what the people can and can’t afford. That is the only reason why some ended up in those areas.” The implication here is that the earlier policies illustrated by Rothstein had by then cemented segregation in real estate.

While Rothstien points to overt discriminatory policies, it’s important to also be aware of the fact that as the Country moved from class based New Deal policies that ultimately morphed into targeted race based “solutions”, black homeownership has contracted and stagnated. “Between 1940 and 2000, the homeownership rate for black households more than doubled, increasing from 22.8 percent to 46.3 percent”, as of 2017, the rate had fallen to 41%. The greatest surge in black homeownership took place between 1940 (22.8%) and 1970 (42.6%) most of it prior to the Fair Housing Act. https://www.northstarnews.com/userimages/references/African%20Americans%20and%20Home%20Ownership.Brief_Joint%20Center%20for%20Political%20Studies.pdf

In a two part article in Forbes, John Wake sums up the issue as such:

“(H)igh-foreclosure mortgages from FHA and later from other lenders like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and private mortgage companies help explain the Black Homeownership Paradox and why the black homeownership rate isn’t any higher today than 50 years ago.

It looks to me like unintentional reverse redlining since 1968 may have done something that intentional redlining and legal discrimination in the 1950s couldn’t do, it stopped American blacks from increasing their homeownership rate.

Whatever the causes, I think the black homeownership rate should be phenomenally higher today. The first step to get there is to admit that what we’ve been doing the last 50 years isn’t working.

If you asked President Johnson on April 11, 1968, what he thought the U.S. black homeownership rate would be in half a century, I don’t think he would have said, “The same.”” https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwake/2019/05/16/the-shocking-truth-about-the-u-s-black-homeownership-rate-50-years-after-the-1968-fair-housing-act/#3f0a140363ba https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwake/2019/05/16/heres-why-the-black-homeownership-rate-is-the-same-50-years-after-1968-fair-housing-act/#206a611730cd

At issue is that as administrations at various levels of government continue to enact policies that benefit their wealthy donor classes, those on the lower end of the economic spectrum are most affected, sometimes disastrously. The “Great Recession” caused millions of Americans to lose their homes to foreclosure. These foreclosures negatively impacted black homeownership rates by roughly five percent. For the most part, no predatory lenders, bankers, or other well-connected bad actors suffered much more than a slap on the wrist. The governmental priorities were and are clear, welfare for banks and other large business interests and rugged individualism for those kicked out of their homes.

Why Robert Moses is not responsible for housing segregation on Long Island.

When money pours into a region, there are many individuals that will line up in order to curry favor. They are typically, Mayors, Town and County Supervisors, Zoning Boards, local Legislators, various current and former Politicians, Bureaucrats, Business interests, paid Academics and Consultants, Newspapers and local Media, etc. These entities are the “Sales Team” that will form public opinion.

As an example, it was somewhat disingenuous and self-serving for Newsday to apologize for their failure “to lead”. They had received substantial advertising revenues from the developers of Levittown and other homebuilders.

Additionally, every new resident in Levittown or other towns represented another potential subscriber. Why alienate possible future customers and budding profits for high-minded ideals? Newsday today will champion various commercial and high-density residential housing developments along with their attendant infrastructure requirements throughout Nassau and Suffolk Counties, why? because that’s where the money and influence is. A “different era” indeed!

During the period of suburbanization, Moses was often fighting to stay one step ahead of these interests in order to try to acquire and preserve lands before they became tract housing. Properties such as Massapequa Preserve, Southard’s Pond in Babylon, Caumsett, Caleb Smith in Smithtown, and Connetquot River State Park, represent almost 6400 acres of preserved lands, not to mention the more famous state parks and parkways that most individuals are far more familiar with. Generally, Mr. Moses’ interests were at odds with the real estate developers and many of their confederates.

The Mirage of Diversity?

Depending on the source, New York City is either the 4th, 5th, or 6th most diverse city in the United States. https://wallethub.com/edu/cities-with-the-most-and-least-ethno-racial-and-linguistic-diversity/10264/ https://www.niche.com/places-to-live/search/most-diverse-cities/ https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/slideshows/the-10-most-racially-diverse-big-cities-in-the-the-us

According to the 2010 Census, the racial makeup of NYC was, white – 44.6% Hispanic or Latino (of any race) - 27.5% Black or African American – 25.1% Asian - 11.8%.

It’s odd to consider that in a “diverse” city such as New York, there are significant disparities in the racial breakdown of individual neighborhoods. Data from Niche.com

SoHo 1% Black

The West Village 1% Black

Upper East Side/Carnegie Hill 2% Black

Mott Haven 1% White

Hunts Point 1% White

Brownsville 2% White

Could it be possible that the same factors concerning housing on Long Island are also occurring in “diverse” New York City, or possibly the entire Country?

As for education, the top three free High Schools available to students in New York City are Townsend Harris High School, Stuyvesant High School, and Queens High School for the Sciences at York College. Their respective student body demographics are (Data from US News & World Reports):

Harris – 57% Asian, 20% White, 11% Hispanic, and 5% Black. Graduation rate – 100%

Stuyvesant – 73% Asian, 19% White, 3% Hispanic, and 1% Black. Graduation rate – 99%.

Queens – 80% Asian, 6% White, 4% Hispanic, and 4% Black. Graduation rate – 99%

On the opposite side of the coin, August Martin High School in Springfield Gardens is 9% Asian, 1% White, 14% Hispanic, and 67% Black, with a graduation rate of 56%.

Do these schools represent the “diversity” of New York City? Is diversity in and of itself an attainable or desirable goal? Based on these figures, an argument could be made that New York City is unfairly favoring Asian students over students of other races as they are significantly overrepresented in the best schools compared to their portion of the overall population. Or maybe, just maybe, people don’t easily fit into quotas or labels. Everyone possesses individual talents and abilities; people work hard and achieve their goals through aspiration and effort regardless of their skin color. The true goal of a society should be to focus on economic and educational policies that create equal opportunities for the community as a whole.

The point is that in these situations, there are all sorts of moving parts and those parts are often warped to serve moneyed interests while overburdening and underserving the poor and middle classes.

The NYC school system allows students throughout the city to attend any school that will accept them based on their academic record, yet this creates disparities. People in the city can supposedly live wherever they choose; yet individual neighborhoods end up segregated.

On Long Island, students attend the district that they live in and disparities also exist.

This issue is not about Robert Moses. It is about how the sausage is made regardless of where you live. Real estate and related industries and their business and political allies are inclined to extract the greatest amount of profit for those best positioned to benefit. Those that gain these profits are more than happy to have Robert Moses as the scapegoat for their practices. After all, they would prefer a divisive fight over a statue rather than a discussion of effective policies that might ultimately limit their income and leverage. Until these protestors realize that, they are more likely to be “rebels without a clue” rather than true agents for change.