The proof might be in the property values

George Floyd

When I saw the headline, “When Black lives are valued, property becomes worth saving,” on a Brookings Institute piece,[1] I immediately thought of the decrepit and rotting housing I have seen in so many neighborhoods around Pittsburgh that I referred to in my second reply to Mayor Bill Peduto (reproduced in a recent blog post[2]). This housing is allowed to rot, I thought, precisely because the lives of the human beings who live in it are not valued.

To be generous, that would be an imprecise rendering of Andre Perry and Jonathan Rothwell’s point.[3] They really return to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ point, without ever mentioning redlining, about the way that devalued properties rob Blacks of wealth. They merely allude to a larger point that indeed Blacks have been systematically robbed of wealth, beginning—only beginning—with slavery.[4] That said, Perry and Rothwell advocate a series of policy recommendations meant “to restore the value that racism has extracted from them. Those who are chiding protestors should redirect their pleas to policymakers who can do such a thing.”[5]

That said, the deprivation of wealth surely affects Black property owners’ ability to maintain their housing. In effect, redlining continues as lines of credit are constrained by the values of collateral property as well as by the incomes Blacks are most often able to earn.

Andre M. Perry and Jonathan Rothwell, “When Black lives are valued, property becomes worth saving,” Brookings Institute, June 3, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/06/03/when-black-lives-are-valued-property-becomes-worth-saving/


Recession

Associated Press, “1.9 million seek jobless aid even as reopenings slow layoffs,” Los Angeles Times, June 4, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-06-04/jobless-unemployment-claims-coronavirus


Pandemic

It sounds like the Lancet study reported last month that found risks and no benefit to hydroxychloroquine[6] was a meta-analysis, that is, a study that essentially aggregates the results from many studies to reach a conclusion. Here, the full data for one of those studies was not available, so even though the authors might have gained access to all the data for all the other studies, they chose to retract when (I’m guessing) peer reviewers raised questions about the one.[7] This is the intellectually honest thing to do and I have to praise them for it, but it is possible, perhaps even likely, that their conclusions were nonetheless correct.

It looks like the New England Journal of Medicine study also being retracted is being retracted for the same reason for the same data.[8] Whoops.

This is the purpose of peer review. A failure doesn’t mean the conclusion is wrong. It means that the support for that conclusion is inadequate. And yeah, especially in this case, it really sucks.

And my heart goes out to “Peter Lurie, a former top FDA official who now heads the Center for Science in the Public Interest, [who] called the [Lancet study] ‘another nail in the coffin for hydroxychloroquine — this time from the largest study ever.’”[9] Ouch. Seriously, ouch.

Jared S. Hopkins and Russell Gold, “Authors Retract Study That Found Risks of Using Antimalaria Drugs Against Covid-19,” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/authors-retract-study-that-found-risks-of-using-antimalaria-drug-against-covid-19-11591299329

Charles Piller and Kelly Servick, “Two elite medical journals retract coronavirus papers over data integrity questions,” Science, June 4, 2020, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/two-elite-medical-journals-retract-coronavirus-papers-over-data-integrity-questions


  1. [1]Andre M. Perry and Jonathan Rothwell, “When Black lives are valued, property becomes worth saving,” Brookings Institute, June 3, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/06/03/when-black-lives-are-valued-property-becomes-worth-saving/
  2. [2]David Benfell, “The reason the status quo is not the answer is that the status quo cannot be the answer,” Not Housebroken, June 1, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/06/01/the-reason-the-status-quo-is-not-the-answer-is-that-the-status-quo-cannot-be-the-answer/
  3. [3]Andre M. Perry and Jonathan Rothwell, “When Black lives are valued, property becomes worth saving,” Brookings Institute, June 3, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/06/03/when-black-lives-are-valued-property-becomes-worth-saving/
  4. [4]Sven Beckert, “Slavery and Capitalism,” Chronicle of Higher Education, December 12, 2014, https://www.chronicle.com/article/SlaveryCapitalism/150787/; Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” Atlantic, June 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/; Thomas M. Shapiro, ed., Great Divides, 3rd ed. (Boston: Mc Graw Hill, 2005).
  5. [5]Andre M. Perry and Jonathan Rothwell, “When Black lives are valued, property becomes worth saving,” Brookings Institute, June 3, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/06/03/when-black-lives-are-valued-property-becomes-worth-saving/
  6. [6]Ariana Eunjung Cha and Laurie McGinley, “Antimalarial drug touted by President Trump is linked to increased risk of death in coronavirus patients, study says,” Washington Post, May 22, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/22/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-study/
  7. [7]Jared S. Hopkins and Russell Gold, “Authors Retract Study That Found Risks of Using Antimalaria Drugs Against Covid-19,” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/authors-retract-study-that-found-risks-of-using-antimalaria-drug-against-covid-19-11591299329; Charles Piller and Kelly Servick, “Two elite medical journals retract coronavirus papers over data integrity questions,” Science, June 4, 2020, doi: 10.1126/science.abd1697
  8. [8]Charles Piller and Kelly Servick, “Two elite medical journals retract coronavirus papers over data integrity questions,” Science, June 4, 2020, doi: 10.1126/science.abd1697
  9. [9]Ariana Eunjung Cha and Laurie McGinley, “Antimalarial drug touted by President Trump is linked to increased risk of death in coronavirus patients, study says,” Washington Post, May 22, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/22/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-study/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.