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Comment by eric-hu | Hacker News Reader

I did a search to check the history of this claim, but maybe I wasn’t searching for the right thing. Would you mind sharing a link?

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-family_zoning

It's the first sentence in the History section

I admittedly rolled my eyes at the WP link. To atone for this, I’ve copy and pasted the relevant references from that line in the History section:

[1] Baldassari, Erin; Solomon, Molly (October 5, 2020). "The Racist History of Single-Family Home Zoning". NPR. Archived from the original on November 14, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20201114004918/https://www.kqed....

[3] Hansen, Louis (March 1, 2021). "Is this the end of single-family zoning in the Bay Area? San Jose, Berkeley, other cities consider sweeping changes". San Jose Mercury News. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/03/01/is-this-the-end-of-si...

[4] Ruggiero, Angela (February 24, 2021). "Berkeley to end single-family residential zoning, citing racist ties". San Jose Mercury News. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/02/24/berkeley-to-end-singl...

[5] Yelimeli, Supriya (February 24, 2021). "Berkeley denounces racist history of single-family zoning, begins 2-year process to change general plan - Council unanimously approved a resolution that will work toward banning single-family zoning". Berkeleyside. https://web.archive.org/web/20210301140957/https://www.berke...

[8] Baldassari, Erin (March 13, 2021). "Facing Housing Crunch, California Cities Rethink Single-Family Neighborhoods". NPR. Archived from the original on March 31, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210331194917/https://www.npr.o...

Why did you roll your eyes at it if it provided exactly the correct type of referential value it’s supposed to?

Well because I had to click thru WP itself.

Also, as a sibling comment put it, it does weird me out that all cited sources are from such a limited pool.

Accurate or not, I hate that all of these references are from one 6-month regional news cycle. They may as well be 1 citation, rather than 5. The excess just makes the inclusion of claim look more motivated by political investment than a desire to be informative.

I hate that people's instinct is to play 4D chess with the intent of some random Wiki editor instead of even glancing at the data contained in the references. Here are some aged references for your discerning palate:

Density Zoning and Class Segregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas (2010) https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2010.00724.x

Distributive politics, ward representation, and the spread of zoning (1993) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01047991

Urban Land Developers and the Origins of Zoning Laws: The Case of Berkeley (1986) https://escholarship.org/uc/item/26b8d8zh

Fifty Years of Zoning (1966) https://www.jstor.org/stable/25723800

This disputes the claim it originated in SF and the reasons listed. Odd that Wikipedia is centered on SF and its claim is backed up by (several experts believe.) Looks to me like another example of Wikipedia pushing a narrative and pretending it’s fact.

https://economics21.org/history-zoning-america-flexible-hous...

Zoning and SFH zoning are aren't the same thing, and wikipedia concurs with your article w.r.t. early US zoning policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning#United_States

Looks to me like another example of HN guy pushing a narrative and pretending it’s fact. Or maybe someone just made a mistake and a more charitable reading would show that there is perhaps not a conspiracy going on but instead just a misunderstanding.

If you have an interest, the most comprehensive book I'm aware of is "Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation" by Sonia Hirt. Cornell University Press. 2014. ISBN 978-0-8014-5305-2.

She's the one quoted in the LA Times article: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-01-19/single-fam...

Full disclosure, I was so impressed with Prof. Hirt's book that I wrote her Wikipedia page.

Also The Color of Law: https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten...

If you want something more rigourous than a wikipedia article, that article's oldest source is the 2020 NPR article which links to this paper: http://www.schoolinfosystem.org/pdf/2014/06/04SegregationinC...

TLDR: the real estate developer that founded Claremont (Mason-McDuffie Co spearheaded by Duncan McDuffie) imposed conditions in its titles that explicitly bared non-whites and prohibited commercial enterprises. However, those title conditions couldn't control neighboring areas, so McDuffie pushed to get zoning laws passed that were explicitly inspired by anti-chinese laundry regulations in LA. The Berkley regulation was "expedited" to prevent a "negro dance hall" from opening.

To me, the existence of the anti-commercial provisions in the McDuffie title restrictions in addition to explicit racial exclusions indicates that racial exclusion was not the only motivating factor in adopting single family zoning laws. However, the context and immediate usage does make it pretty clear that racial exclusion was a significant part of the motivation.

No it’s just completely untrue. This is a common tactic today to say something was created for <racist|sexist|homophobic> purposes so the entire concept is bad naturally.

See how activists say policing was invented to catch slaves or some ridiculous claim. There’s a bunch of others.

I said literally and I meant literally. You can just look up the Berkeley city council meeting minutes! That's why they said they were doing it!

But are you sure Berkeley was the first place in the world to create a residential only zoning? If not, they don't deserve the inventor label.

Okay, they didn't invent racist policies that persist to this day, they just furthered their racist goals by using existing policies that persist to this day. Better?

It's a shame that our national history is ridiculous.

Yes, it is absolutely ridiculous that slave patrols existed and formed the basis for later police departments in the south. It is also ridiculous that labor-busting squads existed in the north, which formed the basis for later police departments in the north.

The history is there, it is what it is, as ridiculous as that is. You might argue that modern police have far outgrown their origins, and then it would be up to readers to decide which whether your claim is also ridiculous, given how many police departments generally exhibit qualities consonant with their origins.

Ancient Rome had police. Get real. Boston has the oldest police department. And although some slave states used police for it, it’s ridiculous to compare todays policing as anything like it.

Yes, the slave society of Rome had a police force within the city, which was mostly made up of slaves under supervision. The two main functions of this police force? Fighting fires and catching runaway slaves. So the gap between "police" and "slave patrols" has been nonexistent for a very long time.

I already mentioned that northern states had union-busting squads who formed the basis of modern police forces, so yes, I'm aware of Boston, too.

Once again, you use that word. I agree that it's ridiculous to compare today's policing to anything like historic policing or ancient slave patrols. Today's police are far less accountable, more violent, and heavily armed.

I guess there's been a long weekend, keeping us both away, but since you brought up ancient Rome, I keep remembering fun things from reading about this a couple of years back, inspired by Mike Duncan's excellent podcast on the history of Rome.

Within the great city, there were, as you pointed out, police. As I pointed out, they were mostly there for fire-fighting and as a slave patrol, and were themselves made up of mostly-slaves. But you might be thinking, what about investing crimes? That's what police do when there aren't traffic stops to make, right?

In that great city, if you wanted a crime investigated, you did it yourself. Evidence gathered? Find it yourself. If you wanted to accuse someone of something, you grabbed them and at least one witness and dragged them before a judge. So justice, what there was of it, was largely available to the wealthy, who could afford to hire people to drag other people before judges, and if you were a poor person wanting to accuse a rich person of a crime, well, good luck with that.

So modern cops might have a really poor clearance rate for most crimes, barely exceeding half even for murder[0], but at least they try, which is more than can be said for Roman vigiles urbani. And at least they pretend to be impartial, even if one can clearly see that crimes are prosecuted unevenly, and that US prisons are filled with more than their fair share of the poor.

0. https://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-r...

> This is a common tactic today to say something was created for <racist|sexist|homophobic> purposes so the entire concept is bad naturally.

I've yet to see a good counter-example.

No, it's completey true. The first businesses affected by Berkeley residential zoning were Chinese and Japanese laundries (c.f. Ordninance 575-NS). Another zoning ordinance was passed to block a "negro dance hall." See Pollard's "Outline of the Law of Zoning in the United States," and Paul Ong "An Ethnic Trade: The Chinese Laundries in Early California." (Journal of Ethnic Studies, Winter 1981)

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