Shaping the Future of NYC

Macaulay Honors College Seminar 4 | Professor Robin Rogers

Author: Kaitlin McDermott

Urban (and Other) Poverty

April 30, 2017 / / 0 Comments

While reading this chapter, I couldn’t help but think about the nationwide concepts addressed in their relation to New York City. The discussion of federal housing programs and topics like the intersection of rental assistance and residential segregation is astoundingly apparent in NYC and, as someone dwelling in the suburbs of Long Island, I know it to be true that historical factors like “restrictive covenants [barring] minorities from moving into white neighborhoods” are a contributing factor to concentrated poverty in urban centers. Those who can, like my grandparents who moved from Queens, leave neighborhoods where there is less economic potential, and invest in property and other means to ensure the economic well being of their children. While there can be a discussion here about redlining, or about gentrification, I think that a number of my classmates have addressed those topics in intelligent and respectful ways. My takeaway from the information about urban poverty is to question the reasons that action to combat what the chapter refers to as, “deep, concentrated, and seemingly intractable” persistence of it.

Part of me wants to be hopeful about the commitment of the government to resolving pressing situations serving to entrap the urban poor. Rulings such as that by the Supreme Court in the 2015 case regarding the 1968 Fair Housing Act make me hopeful. However, I fear that the limited progress in mitigating the continuation of concentrated poverty will be heightened enormously with the actions to be taken by the new administration. Thinking to the words of the President, who claims that cities like Detroit and Chicago, centers of urban poverty, are a “mess” or a “disaster,” I have little hope that meaningful progress will be made to aid those trapped in conditions outside of their own making. In a way, I think it is possible that the focus on inner-cities (and the inherently racial assumption that the term denotes), though certainly valid and important, has the effect of producing apathy on the part of politicians. Admittedly, I subscribe to the (cynical/realist) view that most people are looking out only for their own self-interest, and I believe no subset of the population more in line with this view than the political elite. If this is the case, we must then ask what could make politicians care about urban poverty—what would make it in their self-interest to care? The answer, I think, could lie partly in linking urban poverty to rural poverty, creating a coalition of economically disparaged individuals whose votes could swing (national) elections in ways that perhaps monolithic coalitions could not. I realize that is is an incredibly Marxist view (the underclass rising up to defeat elite, exploitative rulers). But, in the current political climate (especially considering the role that economic inequality played in the Presidential election), can we afford to ignore a potentially beneficial coalition any longer?

A Lottery of Birth?

April 30, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Chpater 10 of the CQ Reader addresses questions of Wealth and Inequality (some such issues I addressed in my response to Chapters 9&11). A commonly heard idea is that life in America today is determined by a “lottery of birth,” meaning that those who are born into privilege are given a disproportionate chance at success when compared to the majority of the public not endowed with wealthy ancestry. The discussion in this chapter, namely in the section “Are parental background and inheritance becoming more important for success?” ran counter to many of the ideas that I had before reading about social and economic mobility in the country.

One reason that America has been heralded as a great nation is that there exists the possibility of upward mobility. Feasibility of realizing the “American Dream” made the United States more equitable than Western European nations, wherein wealth followed a crushing inheritance system, and inequality was assured with rigid class structure. Or so the story goes. It was my belief going into this reading that the United States was perhaps more equitable, but not nearly so permissive as the myth would suggest. In fact, contrary to systems in countries like Britain, where education and rigid de facto class separations serve to administer inequality, in the United States wealth disparity is (I believe) historically related to racial divides and ensuing systemic inequality. Though inheritance and concentration of wealth among the few is an important factor, so too is the inability to garner resources enough to move into a higher income bracket. Piketty claims that, “Wealth, inherited or not, is a huge advantage in becoming even wealthier,” and I tend to agree. Without resources to advance oneself in critical ways—such as getting an education and moving into more “desirable” areas—it is hard to imagine that someone can make it out from the bottom of the American economic system. I will not pretend to know what the solution to combatting this problem is. Perhaps taking a look at the systems implemented in other countries, like Sweden, as mentioned in the chapter, would be beneficial in policy development in the future. Questions of distribution of wealth, independent from income (such as tax and welfare benefits) is a characteristically touchy subject in the United States, but is increasingly important in a time where, “the top 1 percent owns about half of all global wealth and the bottom half less than five percent.”

The chapter brings up the fact that the stagnation of upwards mobility is a falsehood, citing statistics from Harvard economist Raj Chetty who found that, “upward mobility in the United States has not slowed and is actually similar to its level a generation ago.” Though perhaps this is true, to me it begs the question of what kind of nation the United States is attempting to be. Upward mobility a generation ago was at a high of 9%, and if the study is to be believed, then ~9% is where we remain today. The poorest members of our society are thus overwhelmingly condemned by statistics to remain in the underclass—is this the American way? It seems odd to me that discussion of income inequality is a debate of statistics when there is the glaring, underlying issue that the systems in place tend often to promote, if not a lottery of birth, at least a card game in which some are dealt a full hand, while others must fold.

The Unemployment/Homelessness Fallacy

April 22, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Chapter nine of the CQ Reader poses the interesting question of causation versus correlation between unemployment and homelessness. The chapter makes the claim that, “experts agree that poverty is the main cause of homelessness,” but expands this point later by defining the many facets of being poor. Poverty is multi-dimensional, and though widely agreed to be the cause of most homelessness, a statement without qualification of the mitigating factors of poverty– both economic and social– is devoid of critical context necessary to intelligently understand the problem.

On the subject of homelessness, I find myself less knowledgable than I would like– after all, isn’t one of the most present sights of the City men and women in tattered clothes asking for spare change? Maybe this is a symptom of the wider New Yorker avoidance of the homeless, or perhaps just indicative of my own intellectual blindness, but reading this chapter was my first actual exposure to studying homelessness. The biggest takeaway that I have from this reading is the importance of recognizing the many factors that contribute to homelessness and how this reflects on the view of, and aid to, homeless New Yorkers as a whole by policymakers. It is a misconception that only economic factors, specifically joblessness, lead to homelessness.  As the chapter says, a recent study found that 17% of the adults in homeless families were working at least part-time. This points potentially to the issue of underemployment, meaning that some people are working and still unable to afford to support themselves due to rising housing costs combined with general economic inequality. To interject something personal to my research project, this is a concern that has been cited in some of my interviews with adjunct professors– they are aware that their financial situation puts them in the vulnerable position where many could end up on the street if not for taking on freelance or other work (one of my interviewees makes the majority of his money moving furniture). The point is though, that not everyone has the same ability to harness and outsource their labor and remain off the streets like the professors I spoke to. This inability can be related to social factors such as mental illness, disability, trauma, or substance abuse. Homelessness seems thus, to me, an effect of inadequacies in social welfare policy, namely in the lack of funding for education, job training, mental health treatment, programs to aid abuse victims, and income inequality as a whole. This is all to say that many, including myself, are sometimes guilty of simplification of solutions to complex issues like homelessness. Statements such as “get a job” or “tax the rich,” though attractive, seem to lack the nuance that comes from actual understanding of the issue at hand, but do reflect the obstacles in thinking that need to be surmounted in order to make progress in aiding those afflicted. Increased funding is an obvious (and expensive) solution, but in this era it does not seem likely. Rather, I tend to believe that change will come from making people realize the wide and tragic effects of poverty and homelessness. Ultimately, isn’t it what stems from chronic poverty (misery, crime, political upheaval) that makes people afraid? In my opinion, the threat to mess with money or with the normal rhythms of someone’s day is likely to produce at least more interest in reforming social policy in the areas of homelessness and disparate income than is relying on pure sympathy.

 

“C-span of the Streets”: What the Focus on Policing and Race Doesn’t Say

March 26, 2017 / / 0 Comments

The debate over the linking, both intentional and not, of criminality and race is pressing in this chapter of the CQ Reader.  The embodiment, in my mind, of racial tension in the United States today is the state of policing and race. A whole section of this chapter is devoted to exploring the answer to the hypothetical question ,”Would improving police interactions with African Americans significantly advance race relations in America.” If I were to critique this as a research question for our class, I would certainly be wary. After all, what is a “significant advance”? With such a subjective, heated issue, I was not surprised the amount of dissent documented amongst scholars, activists, and professionals within the section.

The larger cultural discussion about race in America has been kicked off, in many ways, by new technological abilities to broadcast the inferior treatment of African Americans by police and otherwise. Police video has become what one Professor dubbed the, “C-span” of the streets; however, though the videos have begun to verify the claims of inequality that have rung hollow for centuries, they are not always the most reliable source, nor do they tell totally the plight of minorities in this country. The merits of police video– now done through popular “bodycams”– can be debated ad infinitum, but the real question to ask, the question that should be asked, is whether the treatment of African Americans by police is the problem, or if it is simply symptomatic of a larger issue within the American social framework. Movement affiliates with Black Lives Matter seem to fall in the latter camp, arguing that “discriminatory law enforcement” is not the worst problem to be faced by African Americans today. I agree with this synthesis. It is hard to say that policing is the only problem when disparity and inequality seeps into nearly every other area of Black life in this country. Schools are lacking, economic opportunity is too. Racism is a being not limited to handcuffs and prison cells.

The characterization of police videos as the “C-span of the streets” is more accurate when refined to include most other aspects of African American existence in the United States. Like the channel itself, which has a limited viewership only of those who are most devoted and who stand to be impacted most by changes in the status-quo, the circulation of information regarding race in the United States stands to be digested by those who already understand the situation, as it is their day-to-day reality. Perhaps if Black life was televised more like the “FoxNews of the streets” something productive to “significantly advance” race relations could be done.

Debate: The Suppression-Model of Gang Control

March 19, 2017 / / 0 Comments

This chapter of the CQ Reader presents at the forefront the debate among scholars and policy experts over the merits of gang injunctions. Injunctions are essentially restraining orders that can include restrictions on movement, congregation, or action taken by members of specific gangs, and violation of an injunction is equal to a contempt of court citation. The debate over the use of injunctions to constrain gang activity comes at a time when many cities within the United States already are making use of the tactic; however, though they have been found constitutional and have shown slight success in certain communities, there is outcry by critics who see the practice as an abridgment of constitutionally granted civil liberties.

The arguments of two main individuals are presented in this chapter. Lawrence Rosenthal, a California law professor, is on the side of advocates for the issuing of gang injunctions. Believing that injunctions banning gangs from congregating are effective, Rosenthal’s article argues that this method of aggressive policing has potential to be as effective as aggressive policies like stop-and-frisk. Conceding that it is possible that civil liberties could be compromised by “unduly broad” injunctions, Rosenthal seems unperturbed and concludes that it is better to err on the side of law enforcement than to risk “continued instability.” Though I disagree generally with Rosenthal’s position, and wonder how he would react now in the wake of new rulings on aggressive police strategies like his cited example of stop-and-frisk, I think that his idea of community involvement with the policing process in the case of gangs is interesting. From previous chapters in the Reader, I know that a major problem faced by law enforcement is distrust and disdain for them in the communities where they work. Though often this is a hate more deeply rooted than simple dislike for police, I think that an approach more similar to the one put forward by Rosenthal could be beneficial not just in approaching gang violence, but in policing in general.

The other argument posed in this chapter was from Caitlin Sanderson, an attorney with the ACLU of Southern California. She contends that injunctions are not only ineffective, but are also a violation of civil liberties (despite the prior rulings affirming their constitutionality). Claiming that these injunctions fuel a prison pipeline and violate adequate due process by law enforcement, Sanderson makes the case contrary to Rosenthal that these policies do not have substantial impact on the violence committed by gangs, instead serving to incriminate minority youths and further deteriorate the relations between communities and police. After reading this chapter, I tend to agree more with Sanderson’s general argument. Personally, I feel that the greatest asset of the country’s criminal justice system is the idea of due process, of needing to be found in violation of a statute by a jury of peers before punishment can be doled out. In the case of injunctions, however, law enforcement officials, though not necessarily guided by malicious intent, tend to cast wide nets in their enforcement of anti-gang policies. These nets can catch individuals who are blatantly not involved, who were involved in the past and have since distanced themselves, and who are currently involved in gang activities. Each is a recipient of equal distinction and lifetime punishment in the eyes of the law. This, to me, seems wrong. After all, do not our justice system take into account a degree of forgiveness for those past accused, even convicted of crimes (think: sealing the records of juveniles). Additionally, why should resources be devoted to a policy that does not dissuade gang activities, but rather just repositions their conduct from out on the streets to indoors? A better approach, one that I hope the country is gravitating more towards such as Senators Cory Booker and Rand Paul’s Redeem Act, would be to promote the well being of communities where poverty, lackluster education, and violence are in surplus. In targeting the root causes of gang formation, there doubtless would be greater long-term success in curbing gang activities than the short-term success won by liberty infringing injunctions.

Policing and Profiling: An American History

March 13, 2017 / / 0 Comments

The United States, in many ways, has a criminal justice system enviable to foreign nations. Operating on the presumption of innocence, and accepting of the inherently true fact that when it is presumed that all are innocent, some guilty will potentially fall through the cracks, the “American way” has been a determination to minimize wrongful convictions and protect the rights afforded citizens in the constitution. Unfortunately, this resolve, noble as it may be, has historically been warped over many of the periods of unrest in the country. In some regards, there is rightly a distrust of the system as minority groups have been the most recent to gain “equality” and have been the first historically to lose certain liberties when they come under attack (ex: Korematsu v USA). The discussion of the role of the court system in respect to racial profiling was, I believe, the most interesting part of the chapter, and is all too relevant in this time of uncertainty in the judiciary.

The Warren Court of the 1960s was the driving force behind innovation in the criminal justice system geared towards equality. Intent on protecting the “rights of the accused,” the Supreme Court of this era erred on the side of caution, ruling that those accused of crimes should be afforded protections not before mandated by the federal government. This decision surely impacted all of those who were accused, but none more than those who did not have adequate schooling or knowledge of their rights in interacting with police.  Though the system did not become perfect, and probably never will, the innovation during this period benefitted marginalized groups en masse. However, the Supreme Court’s reach is only so far– in the day to day operations of police forces, the rulings of individuals holed up in their “ivory towers” cannot be assuredly implemented. For example, there was mention in the chapter of the Arizona case wherein Latinos were being profiled and stopped by police because of a mayor tough on illegal immigration. Though the case was settled against the official who ordered profile based policing, the mere fact that an official policy such as that can be conducted for any period of time is indicative of systemic problems within the criminal justice system, and perhaps suggests the existence of similar policies yet to be challenged in other regions of the United States.

The judiciary today is in flux. With the Supreme Court at diminished power and the disjunction between federal, state, local courts, and the Executive branch, I am concerned about the next steps moving forward as related to anti-profiling and police-reform advocacy groups. As I cannot see the system changing independently of governmental action or formidable opposition, I will continue to put faith in bulwark groups, such as the ACLU, to break down the barriers of racial profiling in policing, and prevent the construction of a greater barrier to justice for minority groups thus.

Found partially erased in the aftermath of a literature class, these words are painfully relevant to the current crisis in academia.

A Crisis Refusing to be Erased

March 7, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Adjunctification has been a problem in higher education for some time now. At CUNY, I think that the statistic now hovers around adjunct faculty comprising 60% of total faculty teaching in the university. Adjuncts are technically part-time employees, but usually teach heavier course loads at multiple colleges to make up for the slack in pay. In New York City, it’s common to have someone teach a class at Columbia, NYU, and Queens [College] in a single day– but how is that sustainable? They make less money, they have less time to do their own writing and research, making it all the more harder to advance. And it’s only getting worse. Entering the Academy now is almost like that scene in Titanic when the crew members lock the gates on steerage passengers. So the mother brings her children back to their room, and the elderly couple lies in the bed as the water flows under the door. The system is in crisis mode, but what choice is there except to stay on the ship? –Anonymous Source 

Crawling Towards Disaster: The State of Environmental Policy

February 26, 2017 / / 1 Comment

Air pollution and climate change are two of the most pressing issues facing the United States today. Reading this chapter of the CQ Reader, it became more clear the scope of environmental problems, as well as the current policy resolutions aimed at alleviating pollution and climate change. At its core, the main conflict of government environmental regulation, such as President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, boils down to two issues: First, the economic implications surrounding the policy action; Secondly, the increasingly partisan lines along which policy is favored or deplored. The dilemma posed by environmental action debate pits public health and the well-being of the nation’s children against the livelihood of American laborers as well as those in the energy industry. A complex issue, I finished the chapter considering the many angles to my own stance on President Obama’s Plan. Though I ultimately agree more with the points cited in the reader regarding the benefits and necessity of a plan like President Obama’s to prevents deaths and illness, I came away feeling slightly uncomfortable with the approach of our government when it comes to dealing with pressing, life-altering policy questions such as those related to the environment.

Probably the most surprising information in the chapter was the discussion of the imperfect implementation of policy deviant from electrical energy. There were two examples in particular that highlighted the inefficiency of “advanced” energy. In Arizona, grid problems caused there to be too much solar energy, meaning that utility companies lost major revenue, despite the fact that they provided a service to homeowners on cloudy days when they needed to use the electrical grid. Two energy experts in the chapter agreed that a situation like that, wherein homeowners did not owe money for use of utilities, mandates that new structures be developed; however, expert Hebner believes that these problems can be solved only with money to improve energy storage and to update grids. Considering the contention surrounding a de-facto shift away from electrical energy in the country, it seems unlikely to me that more money will be invested in the near future into advanced energy storage facilities, such as the one in Canada. In fact, it was mentioned that there was a facility built in Texas, now stalled due to domestic political pressures and concerns over profitability. The second example was that of Germany, who has implemented the most ambitious plan out of all of the EU member countries. Though advocates hail it as an achievement for business and for the people, opponents see faults with the plan, namely that cities are producing green energy that no one needs, but are entitled to sell it, leaving consumers to pay around double, over the next ten years, what they were paying for non-green forms of energy. This is another striking example of implementation and regulation gone wrong, as the policies are certainly aimed at helping the environment and citizens of certain countries, but industry or consumers themselves can be impacted negatively by yet-to-be perfected policy implementation.

Another interesting aspect of the chapter was the timeline provided of environmental policy changes through the years. What stuck out most to me was the dates of policy initiatives, as well as the commentary provided on the actions of some administrations to combat pollution and climate change. It seems to me that environmental action has grown as a partisan policy issue since the days of Republican President Ronald Reagan. As mentioned, his administration took no action against acid rain, and for the most part, it seems that the parties today have fallen in line with the position of leadership for or against action. Indeed, the environment was predicted to be a main issue of the Election of 2016, and hindsight now proves that prediction painfully true. It is immensely troubling, though not surprising, that such important issues as the future of the planet have fallen to bipartisan bickering; however, though I firmly support action to protect the environment and the health of the public, I can understand the pushback against recent policy introductions. Statistics provided within the chapter point to the conclusion that industry itself blows out of proportion the costs they will incur due to policy changes, but I think it is important also to look at individual people impacted by the policies, such as the unemployed Kentucky man who lost his job as a coal miner, featured in a photo near the end of the chapter. If anything, this chapter tells us that the issue is not black and white as some may suppose, but rather an incredibly complex policy question facing the country, as well as the City of New York.

On Primacy of the Subject– Kaitlin McDermott

February 15, 2017 / / 1 Comment

These two short videos highlighted the most prominent idea that I have garnered thus far from the Telling True Stories readings: the subject, and his or her comfort, consent, and clarity of shared narrative, is of utmost importance to story tellers and ethnographers. Though the point may seem obvious, it is important to recognize and to understand fully, as it remains the difference between treating an individual with a story to tell as such versus treating them as a story fitting into a larger narrative, and therefore as less than a unique human with a unique human experience to share. Brandon Stanton comments on this phenomenon when he noted in the video that he did not, “want to be the best at telling the story of humanity,” but rather wanted to focus his energies on telling the effective, truthful, and meaningful accounts of the people stood in front of him. In this way, Stanton comments on his own investigative standard in the HONY series, and emphasizes further, in conjunction with the authors that we have read so far, the primacy of the fair treatment of the subject above all else in ethnographic work.

Even though I have learned about ethnography in the past, the “Getting People to Talk” video taught a number of unexpected lessons. The first shift in my view occurred when one of the “expert” ethnographers stated that ethnography was not a set of beliefs, but rather a “philosophical observation.” In my mind, this triggered a discourse regarding the accepted definition of ethnography, including what can and cannot be classified as ethnography, and what purpose there is in deeming the practice a philosophical enterprise as opposed to a checklist of techniques. After watching the video and thinking more on the topic, I think I understand better the linguistic and practical divide between the two ideas. Classifying ethnography as a philosophical technique by which to learn more intimately the behaviors, feelings, and thoughts of a subject allows for greater latitude in investigation. If a researcher was to follow strictly a checklist of steps or functions to fulfill in an interview setting, it is possible that there would be difficulty connecting and building rapport between interviewer and subject because the conversational environment of a specific situation may not be conducive to certain methods of discussion. I think of this most clearly with the differentiation in technique noted in the video between the approach to “extreme users” and the “fly on the wall” technique. With a checklist mentality, it seems unlikely to me that the form of participant observation necessary to understand and observe the behavior of extreme users, many of whom have internalized their study-able behaviors, would exist. Further, I think that the benefit to consideration of ethnographic pursuits in a philosophical framework exists in the gained ability of researchers to craft more nuanced messages and statements about the human condition.

Though I understand better how ethnography should work on a practical level, I do still have questions about the practice and how to implement some of the suggestions for successful ethnography in my own policy project. Touched on in the shorter video was the idea that people craft responses that are not entirely truthful. Stanton responded to this by saying that as he has become more known in New York, more people seem inclined to fabricate accounts; however, coinciding with this rise, Stanton had become much better at interviewing and picking out lies. This is all fine and well for HONY and for Stanton, but for my purposes, as a relatively unskilled interviewer, I am wondering how I must deal with statements that seem less than true and additionally how I should go about securing interviews (re: that montage at the beginning of the IIT video–street rejection in NYC is real). Without the prestige of a project like HONY it seems like the only real way to get this done is to put in serious legwork and hope for the cooperation of those around you. And then the real work—dealing with a multi-dimensional, flawed subject who may breathe politically correct sentiments and lies—begins.

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