Blockbusting proved the pudding

Fortunately, in a way, multiple generations may be growing up and growing old without ever hearing the word, but the history of racist blockbusting can still teach.  Richard Rothstein uses blockbusting as another example of how government aided, enforced, or at times instigated segregation -- by creating the conditions that allowed unscrupulous realtors to panic white homeowners and simultaneously exploit and overcharge black buyers (and of course, somewhat ironically, propagate segregation in  the process).  It wasn't just individual pref.

Eye-opening as his history may be (and valuable) there are actually more general lessons here, too, about the nature of American politics and the fallacies of classical/neo-classical econ.  For one, the two Big Tent 'parties' aren't as left or right (or black and white, so to speak) as you might think.  A Republican may oppose segregated housing projects just because he opposes public intervention in the housing markets, or a Southern Democrat may support the right for industrial workers to unionize because he knows unions will take down the Northern industrialists a notch.  And if legislation proposes to make blockbusting illegal -- is that intervention in the markets because individual realtors are profiteering like they oughta, or rectifying a legacy of slavery and undoing the mess the VA and FHA created with government intrusion?  Hm...

Anyway, do the panic-prone white homeowner and the evil realtor further prove markets do not run on the inherent rationality of buyer and seller?  I mean, black homeowners actually tended to jack up property values, not lower them, because they were willing to pay more (and did!).  Opportunities were after all limited by federal refusal to insure their mortgages, etc.  So if the white homeowners had not panicked, they could have made money, not sold at plummeting prices to the puppetmaster realtors.  Or were they caught in a classic prisoner's dilemma?

In other words, since the white homeowners don't trust one another to stick it out, perhaps because they see in them the same racial fears they themselves harbor, they all lose.  But if they were organized, stayed in communication, and developed trust, community, solidarity (first among themselves and then including their new neighbors), they could have just gained not just in property values but in community power to resist evil and do good.  They might have learned about the value of sticking together and not allowing themselves to be divided, not being tricked by xenophobic fear of the unknown and the parasitic profiteers who prey on such fears.  They might have learned that people can be ungrateful, devious, backstabbing pains in the hind end, no matter the color, religion, etc., and they can also come to your rescue when you least expect it.  They might have learned to judge people "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."  And they might have learned that if a little solidarity can work wonders, a lot can be transformative.

But blockbusting proved how individualism makes people saps, dupes, fodder, victims of their own stupidity.  Organizing is the only answer.