Sunday, May 31, 2020

Andre M. Perry's "Know Your Price"

Andre M. Perry is a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at The Brookings Institution, a scholar-in-residence at American University, and a columnist for the Hechinger Report.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities, and reported the following:
Page 99 of Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities discusses the Ensley neighbor of Birmingham, AL, and efforts to revitalize this once economically thriving area gutted by racist social policies of the past, “In 2018, the city began working with the Brookings Institution to create a strategy that would revive unused facilities in Ensley, including the former U.S. Steel industrial park. [Mayor] Woodfin also seeks to help landowners develop a retail corridor, extending transit lines to the area and relocating city departmental services in the section of town.”

Page 99 gives only a slight taste to the various issues, i.e. education, school reform, and the importance of black teachers, pitfalls of data and testing, the need for more black politicians-especially black women politicians, importance and value of black-owned businesses in a city’s economy, incubation firms, racism in research, in the cities discussed in Know Your Price, such as Detroit, New Orleans, Atlanta, Washington, DC, Wilkinsburg, PA in addition to Birmingham, AL.

As Henry Louis Gates, Jr., notes, “In this groundbreaking and important volume, Andre Perry brilliantly addresses the importance of fixing the racist governmental policies that have ‘created housing, education, and wealth disparities,’ especially in Black communities. Not only a rigorous analysis of the dynamics of devaluation, Perry has written a powerful personal narrative that will captivate his readers.”
Learn more about Know Your Price.

--Marshal Zeringue