Editorials

A curious development in Berkeley’s social evolution has recently surfaced in these pages. Despite the fact that the official city logo is derived from the multi-hued faces which are part of the mural Romare Bearden created for the City Council chambers, it’s apparent that the city has a residual population of pull-up-the-ladder cultural isolationists. Embedded political commentator Zelda Bronstein’s recent column documented and lamented the fact that Berkeley’s building boom has still produced almost no housing for low-income people (anticipated more than a year ago in an article by Rob Wrenn). It has elicited responses from seemingly well-educated and articulate residents who ask why anyone would want to live with such people anyhow.  

The hardy little band of citizens who both appreciate population diversity and deplore mindless densification-for-profit has been aware of this attitude for a while now. They have been embarrassed by those residents who initiated a legitimate CEQA challenge to the city’s secretive land-use decision process, but chose as their target an innocuous all-affordable senior citizens’ apartment complex. They think the same environmental issues could and should be raised about the wall of luxury condo developments going up on University which have little space for low-income people. 

The savvy speculators who make their fortunes from building projects have gleefully exploited all the loopholes in the affordable housing bonus laws, gaining allies for their enterprises from well-meaning liberals who don’t realize that the building boom has actually reduced the city’s population diversity rather than enhancing it. But the elephant in the middle of the room is the question of whether most Berkeleyans actually want a mix of income levels in the city. Corollary (if elephants can have corollaries) is the lack of open discussion of the fact that having racial and ethnic diversity still requires income diversity, since people of color still make less money than those of all-European origin.  

I’ve been reading away lately at a pair of books which look at the diversity question from different interesting angles. Kwame Anthony Appiah is a Princeton philosophy professor, the son of a marriage between British and Ghanaian intellectuals who were prominent members of their respective countries’ political elite. He was educated in England, later chose U.S. citizenship, and is also gay. His book, The Ethics of Identity, explores the philosophical question of whether diversity is a value in itself.  

Jonathan Kozol has spent his life exposing the way that the children of the poor—predominantly African Americans—are condemned to dismal segregrated schools as the more affluent of all races choose to remove their children from admittedly appalling public school environments. His new book is fittingly titled The Shame of the Nation—The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.  

The two approach the same topic from opposite perspectives. Appiah considers the positive aspects of multiculturalism balanced against the virtues of individuality, and seems (I haven’t finished the book yet) to be coming down on the side of a cosmopolitan culture whose members retain some of the virtues of their unique roots. That would be the ideal Berkeley, probably for most of our current residents. Kozol, on the other hand, points out the stark consequences of the failure to create a viable integrated society for those who have been left behind in cities. The recent scenes from New Orleans graphically depict the worsening plight of the have-nots in this country. The underfunded and abandoned public schools in many of our cities have become an ever-present demonstration of how majority society has stopped caring for the poor. 

Berkeley has a certain number of optimists who believe Berkeley would be paradise if it could just limit its diversity to the well-behaved middle classes of all hues. As long as those people of color can afford to live here, they seem to be saying, we’re delighted to have them on our block. We’re pleased to invite them to our parties—they can even join our religious institutions and our social clubs. Patricia J. Williams in The Nation this week has a mini-review of a book that satirizes this mentality, Damali Ayo’s How to Rent a Negro. She calls it “a kind of Miss Manners for the racially isolated yet yearning to connect.” She says it offers “handy tips on how to enliven your parties with a little integration, how to impress your friends you’re not a racist and how to compliment your Negro on the articulateness of his speech.”  

But when it’s a question of their own kids, even the hardiest multi-culturists of any race will bend their principles. Very few parents who can afford it are willing to sacrifice their own children to what passes for public education in many parts of this country today. I doubt if African-American Columbia Law Professor Williams sends her son to her neighborhood New York City public school, unless she happens to live in one of the few “right” neighborhoods.  

The Berkeley public schools have been almost unique in that they offer an excellent public education in a multicultural environment. That’s why many of us chose to live here, and why the non-white parents who now can’t afford to live here figure out ways to send their children to our schools anyhow. They register the kids from Grandma’s house, or from the home of a sympathetic friend, and they take advantage of, yes, lax enforcement of residency requirements. A better solution would be for Berkeley to reserve its small amount of remaining infill space for projects which produce a substantial number of suitable homes for lower-income families. Those who genuinely value the city’s historic diversity shouldn’t go on kidding themselves that building lavish condos for upper-middle class buyers has anything to do with maintaining it. That’s just not true. Of course, for those who want the city to become even more of an enclave for the presumably well-behaved well-off, the status quo is just fine.  

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