[micromacrofoot]

That's actually a racist causal interpretation made about the data when it was originally compiled and analyzed... which raises a lot of alarm bells:

> At low to moderate levels of B, an increase in B should have a negative influence on housing value if Blacks are regarded as undesirable neighbors by Whites.

[kbelder]

> At low to moderate levels of B, an increase in B should have a negative influence on housing value if Blacks are regarded as undesirable neighbors by Whites.

Isn't that true? It's almost a tautology.

(Bad things can be true.)

[micromacrofoot]

It's significantly more complicated. This presumption assumes that black people are responsible for depressing housing values and ignores a myriad of other factors (i.e., it assumes that this is caused by black people moving in, not white people moving out). It's such a narrow view of the problem that it makes me question the motivations of collating such data to begin with.

For example ignores the fact that on the whole black people are significantly poorer.

In Boston the average white family has a net worth of $200k+ while black families in the same city have a net worth of <$10 (that's not a typo, it's less than ten dollars). Poorer people by nature can not afford houses in more expensive neighborhoods, so naturally you have a concentration of black people in poorer neighborhoods... it's not because white people find black neighbors undesirable, it's that black people are disproportionately poorer.

This kind of oversimplification tends to perpetuate a lot of negative stereotypes about black people while hand-waiving away the chronic issues black people are faced with that creates this kind of disparity.