The Racist, Oppressive Progressives

As another year comes to a close, can we hope that the disgusting racism of progressives — promoters of an ideology that is explicitly oppressive — will soon lose its power?  Won’t people soon catch on to the possibility that bogeymen about “institutional” oppression and the inequity of freedom are invisible phantoms meant to distract from the progressives’ demand to tell people how to live and to distribute resources and power entirely according to their own preferences?

I have in mind (for one thing) this December 1 screed from Bob Plain:

In Rhode Island life is nice in the suburbs, and some people want to preserve that. Life is not as nice in our cities, and some people want to change that. It’s absolutely not a coincidence that the area where people are looking for change are predominantly populated by Black and Brown people while the areas where people are looking to keep things the same are predominantly populated by White people.

It must make life so much easier to think of people in terms of the color of their skin.  It allows one to ignore all the complications that come with individuals’ hopes and dreams and the fact that all human beings have flaws and biases that can’t be blamed on everybody else.

Give some consideration to reality, for a moment.  What tends to be the dominating party and ideological focus of those cities, where Bob says “life is not as nice”?  One need only glance at those county-results maps from the 2012 election to see that cities are blue, and at least some local activists are starting to notice.  If people struggling in the city want change, they’d do well to begin with the politicians, the activists, and the special-interests who have been promising to help them (and failing) for decades.

Racism and oppression are part and parcel of progressives’ limited understanding of humanity.  We all must be kept in our groups and act like other people in our groups in order for their plans to work.  Sure, comfortable suburbanites want to keep their families up (duh), but only progressives rely systematically on keeping people in their boxes.  Sure, if one person claims an acre of land, that means eight one-eighth-acre lots cannot be placed there, but a pyramid-like bottom tier of social boxes is intrinsic to progressives’ social understanding — not to mention their political power.

Progressives’ plans aren’t built with people’s desires in mind.  I’ve noted, before, that the response of the RhodeMap RI crew to local opposition isn’t that the plan should be adjusted.  No, where local communities are a “barrier,” the progressive mandate is to reeducate them to be more amenable to the plan.

The planners want to create areas that they think would be nice for other people to live in.  The planner in Central Falls envisions a kayak launch near a craft brewery and bicycle shop, which sounds much more in keeping with the interests of those suburbanites than the people who actually live in Central Falls.

The RhodeMap growth center plan for Richmond (PDF) envisions a “classic rural experience of driving through the countryside and arriving at a dense, walkable village.”  But what if the people who actually live (and want to live) in Richmond prefer the classic freedom of driving through the country to a large plot of land that belongs to them?

And what happens when wealthy white progressives make cities into the sorts of neighborhoods that they would like to live in?  Well, they move in and drive prices up.  It’s called “gentrification,” and it was the effect of “smart growth” in Portland, Oregon:

The city core didn’t become whiter simply because lots of white residents moved in, the data show. Nearly 10,000 people of color, mostly African Americans, also moved out.

And those who left didn’t move to nicer areas. Pushed out by gentrification, most settled on the city’s eastern edges, according to the census data, where the sidewalks, grocery stores and parks grow sparse, and access to public transit is limited.

As a result, the part of Portland famous for its livability — for charming shops and easy transit, walkable streets and abundant bike paths — increasingly belongs to affluent whites.

Turning to Providence, we have to acknowledge that not all parts of the city are “not nice.”  Look at the East Side of Providence, arguably the hub of Rhode Island progressivism.  It’s so nice there that residents have mobilized to change zoning rules and stop a specific development that had slipped in before the new, more restrictive (more exclusive) rules went into effect.  (Of course, they talk about preserving “historic” sites, but there’s always an excuse, isn’t there?)

When it comes to preserving “the most exclusive section of Providence’s desirable East Side,” as Patrick Anderson describes it, city planner Robert Azar argues (in Anderson’s paraphrase), “that zoning is typically used to protect local interests, rather than promote broader civic goals.”  Given that RhodeMap RI is deeply concerned with manipulating zoning rules in order to promote broader civic goals, some readers might find it curious that Azar is the chairman of its Technical Review Committee.  Funny how the purpose of zoning appears to be conditional.

Yes, as Bob says, people who live in places where “life is nice” want it to remain that way.  Unlike exclusive urban enclaves, however, the suburbs have traditionally been areas in which families can capture a bit of the comfort for which they’ve striven as they’ve improved their financial circumstances.  Progressives never explain why people with darker skin don’t want the same “life is nice” opportunities or why progressive urban areas are sinkholes for entire demographic groups, rather than dynamic regions of innovation and opportunity.

Even socialists have noticed that household income is down and income inequality is up under the Obama Administration.  However, they are wrong to blame the bogeyman of “capitalism.”  Real free-market capitalism would allow resources to flow where society needs them most, because those activities are the end product, not the money (the “capital”).  What you can do and create is the real thing of value.  Freedom empowers workers, innovators, and risk-takers.

Those aspects of modern society creating systemic and permanent inequality are the more socialistic ones.  It’s progressivism.  When we empower a limited number of insiders, what Joel Kotkin describes as “the Clerisy,” to design our society, they mold the world in a way that suits their tastes and their own interests.  George Will’s summary of the point fits perfectly in this context, so read the whole thing, but basically, the Clerisy is “based in academia…, media, the nonprofit sector and, especially, government… and its power stems from ‘persuading, instructing and regulating the rest of society.'”

RhodeMap RI offers an excellent, concrete view into the group.  According to RIOpenGov’s state payroll module, the director of the state Division of Planning is paid around $120,000 per year.  According to his organization’s non-profit filings, the executive director of Grow Smart RI, Scott Wolf, who has been a leading advocate for RhodeMap, makes around $135,000, with another $20,000 in other compensation.  In recent years, Grow Smart has received 15-20% of its funding from the state, and another 15-21% of its funding from the non-profit Rhode Island Foundation.  According to its filings, the RI Foundation has at least nine employees earning over $100,000 per year, topped by President Neil Steinberg, who was paid $329,199, in 2012, with another $53,210 in other compensation.

Life is nice in the Clerisy.  The rest of us should stop being distracted by the attacks of progressive foot soldiers, with their vicious accusations of bigotry and ghost stories about abstract principles.  The tangible evidence proves progressivism to be a recipe for a new aristocracy whose self interest requires that we never be able to live or to think outside of our assigned boxes.

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