Репост из: The Daily Poor
One of the most common criticisms I've received when my content gets posted on other channels is in the context of real estate posting. Critics will ask, "how deep in Coon Town is this house?" They'll speculate, "that town must be in Niggerville."
If that were the case, if a house being cheap implies that it's in a highly black area, then we'd expect the correlation between how white an area is and the median home price in that area to be positive. Heck, if it's a general rule, we'd expect the correlation to be both strong and positive.
However, when we check the data, that's not what we find. I ran data from different census levels, assessing the correlation between the percentage of an area that is non-Hispanic White and the median cost of a house in said area.
At high levels--regional, division, and state--the correlation is fairly strong but negative; that is, it's significantly cheaper on average to live in states with a larger white population.
At lower levels--counties, places, zip code tabulation areas, county subdivisions, and census tracts--the trend is weak but universally negative. The pattern tends to be that the trend line starts low, the least white places are cheap, rises significantly as you approach the national average of 60% white, and then it declines, with the whitest areas pulling the trend line under the starting point.
It's definitely not wrong to say that areas with a large amount of blacks tend to be cheap. However, areas with a mixture of whites and other races are what tend to pull the line up, with 90% or higher white areas being even cheaper than the mostly non-white areas on average.
An area being cheap does not imply that it is Coontown. Many of the cheapest areas in terms of real estate are 90+% white.
If that were the case, if a house being cheap implies that it's in a highly black area, then we'd expect the correlation between how white an area is and the median home price in that area to be positive. Heck, if it's a general rule, we'd expect the correlation to be both strong and positive.
However, when we check the data, that's not what we find. I ran data from different census levels, assessing the correlation between the percentage of an area that is non-Hispanic White and the median cost of a house in said area.
At high levels--regional, division, and state--the correlation is fairly strong but negative; that is, it's significantly cheaper on average to live in states with a larger white population.
At lower levels--counties, places, zip code tabulation areas, county subdivisions, and census tracts--the trend is weak but universally negative. The pattern tends to be that the trend line starts low, the least white places are cheap, rises significantly as you approach the national average of 60% white, and then it declines, with the whitest areas pulling the trend line under the starting point.
It's definitely not wrong to say that areas with a large amount of blacks tend to be cheap. However, areas with a mixture of whites and other races are what tend to pull the line up, with 90% or higher white areas being even cheaper than the mostly non-white areas on average.
An area being cheap does not imply that it is Coontown. Many of the cheapest areas in terms of real estate are 90+% white.