Yes like theologians of yore, we can divide time again, as before Obama (BO) and after Obama (AO). But, we must not discard continuity in the midst of change; old rubbish gets's recycled and takes on another form, Mr. Hitchens. Let's dispel canards of canards by an abbreviated examination, due to space limitations, of America's clinical trial in black and white.

If ever there was an example of science imitating life, the codification of instinctive behavior, it is the pharmacology of black-white relations in America. With a critical eye we can view this relationship as an intergenerational clinical trial where the treatment group receives the medicine and the control group imbibes the placebo. In this observation, however, the medicine is a historic process whose outcome is wealth. The assets of interest here are not those of the wealthy but rather the homes of middle class Americans; a modicum of wealth which still determines household net worth in the country. Household net worth is, in turn, inversely related to social pathologies, such as crime and family dysfunction. It is within the context of clinical trials that the large difference in median wealth, favoring whites over blacks by a 10:1 ratio, can best be understood.

From land grants in the 17th century to suburban tract homes in the 20th century, average white Americans have availed themselves of real property wealth provided by the government, a powerful treatment by any standard. American blacks have, in contrast largely received the placebo, no property when they were property, scarcely any thereafter, and much abuse, as the continuous and cumulative historical record demonstrates

The positive economic and social benefits of land grants and homeownership are clear for white Americans. For this reason it is all the more disturbing that this remedy is not effectively and universally applied in America today. Having conferred historical competitive advantages to white Americans we cannot simply declare laissez-faire the color-blind measure of race relations.

The need exists for an inter-generational housing initiative to supply each new generation of Americans (all Americans) with the urban, suburban, and ex-urban, environmentally friendly, starter homes they require. With the advent of inexpensive, aesthetically attractive, pre-fabrication housing technology this initiative is as feasible as the Levittown-like developments that placed 11 million American families into homes after World War II. Per unit costs for sizable developments would be less than $50,000. This is the centerpiece of successful domestic governance.

For the treatment to be fully effective, however, the nation must finally remove those lingering social and marketplace discriminations still blunting the progress of so many black Americans. In short, “average” black Americans require the same supportive infrastructure long enjoyed by their white counterparts, rather than being held to a higher, heroic standard.

Until these matters are addressed Mr. Hitchens your ideas are just smacking at the question.

I agree with your general notion of housing initiatives and I think the ability to own property not only vests a person in the political process but confers a certain sense of dignity. I think there are indeed pre-fab methods that could make this aesthetically as well as economically pleasing.

However, I balk at your post because it seems to imply (correct me if wrong) government, or maybe even 'white people,' should somehow "provide" this. And when I read stuff like " 'average' black Americans require the same supportive infrastructure long enjoyed by their white counterparts" I really have to wonder what that even means. Certainly, many other non-white minorities have found success, assimilation, property and vestment. Had they been accorded special "honorary" white status? What infrastructure did they have to allow this? So who provides? And how?

Ughh.

First of all, your prose, while rich in the vocabulary department is weak in the substance department. The single biggest assumption in your "government should build housing for everyone" argument is the idea that there are two types of people: black and white. We are simply not that homogeneous. Most, white people can trace their roots back and never receive real estate grants or government funded housing.

Also, there is a difference between correlation and causation.

To be sure, mid-20th century suburbanization was not an isolated real property therapy in American history. Under 17th century land grant provisions, settlers to the Carolinas of the American South exercised “head rights” entitling them to 100 acres of land for each member of the family. Six members meant 600 acres of land. In the Chesapeake Bay region, land grants provided families with 200 acres. Middle State and New England colony families received 50 acre plots. The process of land distribution continued through the westward expansion, Homestead Act et al., until reaching the shores of the Pacific in 1900. Settler families had the right to work hard on land they were essentially given. The 400 year-old historical record also shows that Black Americans were largely excluded from having, let alone exploiting, this opportunity.

Few recognize American suburbanization for the great feat of social engineering that it was. Between the years 1933-1978 this massive public and private sector undertaking, involved 35 million American families; 140 million individuals if one estimates a family size of four. The seemingly innocuous process of suburbanization created the modern American middle class. The introduction of homeownership to millions of families was its signal achievement. Home equity, the largest part of the wealth assets of average Americans, then and now, was no longer the province of a relative few. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA), provided low cost home loans and $119 billion in mortgage insurance to families that would not have ordinarily qualified for home ownership. Federal mortgage guarantees, in turn, encouraged the creation of large-scale suburban tract home developments across the nation, like Levittown, New York (17,400 units), Park Forest, Illinois (5,000 units) and Oak Forest, California (5,000 units). In total, the Federal government assisted 11 million families to own homes, insured 1.8 million suburban tract homes and provided 22 million families with home improvement loans. From 1945 through June of 1971, veterans of World War II received 4,729,000 of these low cost mortgages. The federal government’s expansion of the nation’s home equity capital base also helped to spur the explosive growth in the number of small businesses during this period.

The omnipresent bell curve reveals that a vast population lies between the fittest and weakest members of any society. In deed, if not intent, this middle group has median levels of aptitude, motivation, determination and work ethic. Adding homes to the merits and aspirations of these average Americans was what the post-war social experiment was about. The decision to exclude black Americans from this treatment, and the consequent erosion of the social mortar binding large numbers of black families and communities, is the signal failure of America's biased clinical trial. And, it is the inter-generational effect of this maltreatment, what Oliver and Shapiro call the “sedimentation of inequality," that defines the race problem today.

Despite the evidence, there is a presumption, if not insistence, by too many Americans today that the nation has learned and applied the lessons of a valid clinical trial. This suspect premise leads to a false conclusion. Namely, that selected characteristics; some might say the social pathology, of a significant number of black Americans is natural. That the relatively high incidence rates of unemployed males, school drop outs, welfare households, personal and narcotics-related crimes, homicides, and female-headed households are the outcomes of legitimate social experimentation. Applied science, however, does not provide much support for this specious theory. For, in an authentic clinical trial it is the treatment, not those treated, that is under critical evaluation.

Nothing like a good ol' dose of socialism to cure our ills; right Siaon?

You read the history, call it what you want, but what's better, when there is a vaccine use it universally, do not hoard it, the name is Sioan.

This is not an assumption but a 400 year old trend, broken only by the lack of continental frontier between 1900 and 1945, and reprised with the creation of the new frontier, suburban America. It may be the longest and most continousl trend line in the history of the North American continent. As such it is instructive in and of its self, and offers both theoretiucal and concrete proof for universal application. Don't worry about vocabulary, mind the facts, which make up substance, and get on with moving this nation to the next level. Even a distinctly biased social experiment provides lessons for the proper treatment of human beings, like universal housing and health insurance for that matter, and for that part of the new generations in America that require it.

And if you have not realized it yet this is a moral issue as well as a scientific issue.

Immigrants are a self selected group, generally with above average position in terms of ambition, drive etc. under the proverbilal bell curve. European immigrants in the early 20th century still enjoyed privilege in labor markets and unions due to segregation in the North and Jim Crow in the South and again with more native and average white Americans in suburban America. Intergenerational wealth transfers, work networks etc. cannot be separated from the subject of contemporary discussions of black and white wealth.

But more importantly, domestic governance that excludes the strategic role of starter homeownership, the lesson in all of this, fails this nation and all that it wants to be. A robust consumer demand curve, undermined by poverty and 60% homeownership in the nation, is necessary to purchase what producers would optimally want to provide. A business community, ostensibly conservative, that does not support these changes, undermines there own objectives.