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Comment by kbolino | Hacker News Reader

Ok, cool?

I don't think that was the issue at hand.

You listed a bunch of reasons that you personally don’t want to live in an apartment building, but the issue at hand is whether other people should be allowed to build them on the land they own.

Ok, as I understood it, you were saying that the primary reason why zoning has become less flexible is that white homeowners used the zoning process to maintain discrimination.

I was challenging that. Though my experience may not be universal, I don't think all of those issues are unique to me.

You say that as if the prospect of such disturbances weren't used as a pretext for discrimination - because, of course, "those people" are loud/smoke/have rotties and pitbulls/don't take care of the property they're renting. /s The characterization also ignores that the reason those things (lax maintenance, smoking indoors as sequela of tobacco company propaganda/anti-marijuana laws, etc.) do occasionally happen are closely intertwined with social disregard for marginalized groups. In other words, treatment of a symptom, not the cause.

GP's point is that it's difficult to solve the issue without acknowledging that we made a stupid policy decision predicated mostly on class and racial hysteria. If we recognize those decisions for what they are and stop making them, maybe we can get somewhere. It's quite unlikely that your local zoning board forbade duplexes and low-rises 50 years ago because they were concerned about mold.

I have dealt firsthand with all of those things, I didn't make them up. It can't be a mere "pretext" if it's real. I think there's more to the story than just SFH vs multi-unit, of course, but there's a pretty strong correlation in my experience, much stronger than anything racial.

Myself and the other poster are asking you politely to stow your ego and self-interested focus, and to think about why sweeping, nationwide changes in policy might have come about. I don't deny that you've experienced those issues firsthand; I'm saying it doesn't matter.

Put yourself in the time period: babes born after MLK was assasinated aren't even in elementary school yet, and we're at the height of white flight and the Marlboro Man and asbestos-infused flooring. You can't seriously hold that the shift to SFH-only zoning was predicated on smoking and mold concerns, can you?

If you honestly believe that such concerns, wholly divorced from racial and class politics, were the impetus for this shift, you're being irrational, and selfish. I apologize, because I know saying so can be considered rude, but it is the crux of our disagreement: it's not about you. Your personal concerns do not, by themselves, define the scope of a national problem.

This is unnecessarily antagonistic. People are allowed to bring their personal experiences to the table, and just because you don't think that those, alone, change the big picture - which is a perfectly reasonable thing to point out - that doesn't mean that they should simply not share those experiences or the opinions that are informed by them. It certainly doesn't make them "ego(tistical)", "irrational", and "selfish". There's just no reason to treat people this way.

In this case, it does. It (and accusations of incivility) is also right in-line with the historically racist and classist character of these discussions. You think that you're being polite, but it's a "measured" tone in service of monstrous ends: continuing a status quo that sees Americans routinely without shelter, or insecure in it. It is selfish, it is irrational, it is egotistical.

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