Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Golf Courses = Racism?


Once again if look hard enough everything is race based:
http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0612/investigations/golf.shtml

"[D]evelopers have turned to exclusionary amenities, which remain unregulated. The amenity of choice for the last two decades has been a residential golf course, Strahilevitz believes, because “golf participation functioned as a better proxy for race than income, wealth, or virtually any other characteristic.”

I have been told I am white. I live on a golf course. I bought in the 90's.

Here is why I bought:
Lot size. Other neighborhoods offered 1/4 acre or far less.
Quality of construction.
Early 1990s price squish-down" that made much better properties only slightly more expensive.
Land-use assurance. Golf courses don't go smart growth" or "new urbanist" or "transit oriented development" or "blighted urban upzoning" or ...
Taxes. No HOAs, no assesment districts, no Mello-Roos.
Privacy/traffic. Cul-de-sacs and winding tertiary dendritic narrow roads.
Potential for retained value/appreciation.
High civic participation.
Good schools.

Yep, racism just oozes from my list. And I'm sure that if someone of color had offered $100k more at the time it would have not mattered because what was impotant wasn't the green but the black/brown and white.

The author mistakes cultural factors for racial considerations. That makes them the racists in this situation.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

You hit the nail on the head. The author clearly went in with his conclusion already determined and wrote to accomplish his agenda.

Not everything is about race. Sometimes it's about class.

Anonymous said...

Golf is absolutely THE most racist-ass sport in the US. You know it's true. Deal with it.

Rob Dawg said...

The subject is not the sport but the locational self selecting characteristics of the surrounding the associated built environment. Please stay on topic.

Anonymous said...

You really cannot see what an absolute horses ass you are, can you?

Bob said...

It's all good until Al Czervik buys the course to build condos.

Rob Dawg said...

"You really cannot see what an absolute horses ass you are, can you?"

Not with you hogging the mirror apparently.

Rob Dawg said...

Lex, good one. Luckily* I live in bucolic Ventura County with land use conditions that make Portland look like the amateurs they are.

* It ain't bragging to say it ain't really luck. I'd have never bought what I did without first checking out the 'hood.

InfidelSix said...

How is it that a sport is racist? Do you mean golfers are racist or that golf is exclusionary to the poor?

What about hockey, swimming, motocross, auto racing, and worst of all, polo? Suddenly I'm feeling repressed and entitled to a taxpayer-funded pony.

FYI, I don't golf, but I do ride motocross bikes (desert enduro). And I'm sick and tired of The Man trying to keep me down!

Anonymous said...

InfantileDix,

Let's see if you can understand this: Golf differs from hockey, motox, swimming, and auto racing in that golf requires more than just money to participate at a level that could lead to a pro career. It requires acceptance - by white people in private country clubs. Without that acceptance and entre into their world you have zero chance of working your way into the PGA tour. Zero. The same cannot be said about your motox track, a swmming pool, a hockey rink, or a race track.

Understand, you idiotic racist asshole?

Yes, Polo is more racist than golf in the same sense as a KKK bowling league is as well, but who really gives a shit?

Metroplexual said...

"To test whether census data supports his conclusions, Strahilevitz plans an empirical study comparing the racial composition of residential golf communities with other types of gated residential communities, but not until the 2010 data is available. By then he also hopes to measure “the Tiger Woods effect,” believed to have enticed more blacks onto golf courses. Surveys from 1996 and 2003 show that the number of African Americans who identified themselves as “avid fans” of professional golf rose 380 percent. “It’s rare that preferences among racial groups change that dramatically, that quickly,” he says, “so the task for me is to figure out how that might have affected the housing market.”"..................

The tiger woods effect? Robert you are absolutely correct on this one. These types of developments are the "now classic" executive housing type of choice.

Why? Amenities which you pay a premium for and which retain value best in downturns of housing cycles. Why are they typically white, racially? Look at corporate America. The TW effect may actually be more like the executive effect and by this guy's facile analysis he would have his correllation with a specious causation. I would be interested in what the percentage of loans are IO in these communities. Because the typical buyer is transient due to frequent moves required by corporations and that is what the loan was originally intended for due to high transactional costs in house purchases.

Anonymous said...

"Let's see if you can understand this: Golf differs from hockey, motox, swimming, and auto racing in that golf requires more than just money to participate at a level that could lead to a pro career. It requires acceptance - by white people in private country clubs. Without that acceptance and entre into their world you have zero chance of working your way into the PGA tour. Zero. The same cannot be said about your motox track, a swmming pool, a hockey rink, or a race track."

Wow, you mean Tiger Woods is white?!?!?!?!?!?!?!