Great, but I feel you've buried the lead a bit. The issue isn't wanting a garden if you can pay for it, it's demanding that all your neighbours have gardens too (the analogy with racially-based convenants is pretty obvious). You get to that point, but too far down.
Isn’t the correct NIMBY counter that this isn’t actually racist, it’s really just classist, and any racist outcome is due to the uneven allocation of wealth across racial groups (kind of a systemic racism definition).
Basically, the people in Beverly Hills just want to be around other astoundingly rich people and if that means it’s mostly whites (because whites tend to be more astoundingly rich) nothing much they can do about that.
Btw, this isn’t a good (or morally right) argument. But it does attempt to move away from the charge of racism specifically.
John Mirisch is always amazing with the twists and turns he takes arguing how the real racists are the people who want a subway that will force Beverly Hills High to close the functioning oil well on its grounds.
I like that he cites Zev Yaroslavsky approvingly - the guy who banned the use of federal funds to build surface rail in the San Fernando valley, so the Orange Line was put in as BRT instead - and then blamed Metro for not running rail to his district and demanding that they convert it to light rail several years after it turned out to be popular.
Great, but I feel you've buried the lead a bit. The issue isn't wanting a garden if you can pay for it, it's demanding that all your neighbours have gardens too (the analogy with racially-based convenants is pretty obvious). You get to that point, but too far down.
Isn’t the correct NIMBY counter that this isn’t actually racist, it’s really just classist, and any racist outcome is due to the uneven allocation of wealth across racial groups (kind of a systemic racism definition).
Basically, the people in Beverly Hills just want to be around other astoundingly rich people and if that means it’s mostly whites (because whites tend to be more astoundingly rich) nothing much they can do about that.
Btw, this isn’t a good (or morally right) argument. But it does attempt to move away from the charge of racism specifically.
John Mirisch is always amazing with the twists and turns he takes arguing how the real racists are the people who want a subway that will force Beverly Hills High to close the functioning oil well on its grounds.
I like that he cites Zev Yaroslavsky approvingly - the guy who banned the use of federal funds to build surface rail in the San Fernando valley, so the Orange Line was put in as BRT instead - and then blamed Metro for not running rail to his district and demanding that they convert it to light rail several years after it turned out to be popular.