Bent Out of Compton

Last time David Brooks referred to Compton was in a column of 2012 when he alleged that Tupac (born in Harlem, ranged from Baltimore to Marin City and is most associated with Oakland) represented the city, which in fact had far less to do with his artistic development than his career as a Shakespearian actor, since he never spent any significant time there at all). Via Spin

Shorter David Brooks, "Who Is Driving Inequality? You Are", New York Times, 23 Aprl 2020:

Apparently inequality is my fault, for being better than everybody else. And you too, probably, if you read the column and you waited till after your kids grew up for your first divorce, contributed financially to their music lessons and SAT tutoring, and read aloud to them at bedtime. Unlike some people who were working night shifts at the 7-Eleven instead. This is why your law partner children earn 40 times as much as a secretary, while in 1960 they only earned five times as much, though I'm not sure if that's because future law students back in the day had more music lessons or there wasn't any 7-Eleven for a future secretary's parents to work in in those days. But who would refuse to read bedtime stories to their kids or fail to marry their mothers or insist on working in a 7-Eleven just to prevent inequality? That would be perverse!

In other words, it's really not anybody's fault. Or, putting it another way, it's the fault of geography, dividing us between the talent-rich zones like New York City and San Francisco and everyplace else, unlike the good old days when there was only one side of the tracks and every neighborhood had its own bank president and factory owner reading bedtime stories to their kids and postponing their divorces, setting the example. This is what I've learned in recent months, by lccturing at interviewing the residents of places like Compton, where they have a mayor, and Watts, where they don't, but from both of which good schools, public amenities, school choirs, and music festivals have disappeared, owing to the operation of forces I was unable to identify. Nevertheless far fewer men from Compton than from Watts are in prison, and social mobility is greater in the former than the latter.

What could account for these differences? I mean, beyond the fact that Compton has its own mayor? More resident fathers, better schools among the ones that haven't disappeared, and more cohesive community organizations. And the way to achieve that is to make the neighborhood the unit of social change, put every neighborhood under local control, and you could give them some money too, I guess. 

I don't know. In a way we've already seen this movie, and it was pretty much true:

In the 1950s, middle-class black people began moving into the area, mostly on the west side. Compton grew quickly throughout the decade. One reason for this was Compton was close to Watts, where there was an established black population. The eastern side of the city was predominately white until the 1970s. Despite being located in the middle of a major metropolitan area, thanks to the legacy of Griffith D. Compton, there still remains one small pocket of agriculture from its earliest years.^[14]

During the 1950s and 1960s, after the Supreme Court declared all racially exclusive housing covenants (title deeds) unconstitutional in the case Shelley vs. Kraemer, the first black families moved to the area. Compton's growing black population was still largely ignored and neglected by the city's elected officials. Centennial High School was finally built to accommodate a burgeoning student population.^[17] At one time, the City Council even discussed dismantling the Compton Police Department in favor of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in an attempt to exclude blacks from law enforcement jobs. A black man first ran for City Council in 1958, and the first black councilman was elected in 1961.^[17]

On the other hand, it's a story of better-off black folks fleeing from Watts to Compton when civil rights law permitted them to and then seizing power and taking its rightful share of the resources, and then over the longer term getting cheated again:

For many years, Compton was a much sought-after suburb for the black middle class of Los Angeles. This past affluence is reflected in the area's appearance—Compton's streets are lined with relatively spacious and attractive single family houses. However, several factors have contributed to Compton's gradual decline. One of the most significant factors was a steady erosion of its tax base, something that was already sparse due to limited commercial properties.

It is much more likely that the residents of Compton had time to read bedtime stories to their children because they were better off than those left behind in Watts, and more power to them, as we say, and it was easier for men to stay married when they weren't getting thrown in prison. More power to them (as represented, no doubt, by the city's incorporation and the participation of the black population in politics at the higher levels) indeed!

But it's clear that what Brooks witnessed (to the extent he witnessed anything; it's clear that the facts he cites in the column are all drawn from the 2010 Census as interpreted by Chetty et al. (2018), a source Brooks has frequently referenced, and have no relation to his Weavy tours) was actually the process of things in Compton having gotten worse, starting with the great reaction of Ronald Reagan, who was California governor from 1967 to 1975. And Brooks's view of a simple experiment where one population did the bedtime story and the other unaccountably chose the 7-Eleven (they worked at the fucking 7-Eleven because they needed to feed their kids) is even more irrelevant than it sounds on first hearing. And the way to end inequality continues to be for the oppressed to take power, and money, preferably through the more pleasant kind of political means. Not to ask David Brooks for his well-meant advice.