This intertwined history of infrastructure and racial inequality extended into the 1950s and 1960s with the creation of the Interstate highway system.
As in most American cities in the decades after the Second World War, the new highways in Atlanta—local expressways at first, then Interstates—were steered along routes that bulldozed “blighted” neighborhoods that housed its poorest residents, almost always racial minorities.
— The New York Times
Writing in The New York Times, Kevin M. Kruse connects the dots between highway planning and America's historical campaign to keep African Americans "in their place," an impetus that can be traced back to slavery and its modern day manifestations: segregation, urban renewal, redlining, gentrification, and mass incarceration.
The story is part of The New York Times' 1619 Project, a collection of stories and reports that "reframe the country's history" by foregrounding America's conception in its historical relationship to slavery.
We live in a society with extremely stratified class privilege. That said, there is a very strong overlap between class and race because of formerly codified racist structures that we, as a society, refuse to deal with because we've convinced ourselves that if we just wait a while they'll go away. They're not going away, wealth is generational and the grandchildren of those who became rich or poor because of a past racist policy are still rich and poor because of that racist policy.
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This can very easily be seen if one looks at one of Atlanta's "Negro Maps" from the 1950s and compares it to the contemporary highway planning maps. They're very similar maps.
These highways are awful, oddly shaped, poorly maintained, and Atlanta drivers are shockingly bad. Brought to you courtesy of 140 years of Democrat leadership. And I'm sure that in the last decades of having African Americans leading in top positions of power nothing could be done for this, or for the mass transit options mentioned in the article. I know, let's blame the ordinary suburbanites who may still be worried about the higher crime rates and messy streets in cities! The answer to all modern problems must be racism decades ago.
Do we know you? Get the fuck outta here with your blinders.
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^ Exactly. Be gone with your unwelcome, different opinion. This is Archinect!
It's not that it's different it's that it's oversimplified, dumb, and wrong.
You again? White supremacy. = complex, consideration of power dynamics and urban challenges = dumb. Thanks tduds, I learned. Any honest considerations to why nothing has been done since this problem began would still be appreciated.
That's not what I said.
Only rich people, black and white, can afford to live in the expensive, protected enclaves in most American cities and send their kids to private schools. Everyone else, black and white, commutes to the 'burbs to find affordable housing and good schools. The real people who are harmed are the black kids who go to crime-infested inner city schools taught by morons who couldn't maintain a learning classroom environment if their NEA union job depended on it - which it doesn't.
If we continue to blame everything on racism we won't solve any of our issue s. Can we agree that the new "ism" has little to do with the color of your skin or even your ethnicity and a lot to do with your income and social status? I particularly prefer small neighborhoods with walkable areas but they are increasingly prohibitive by their cost or in places crime. I am pushed to live in a suburb where I have to drive everywhere and take one these ugly asphalt mazes to work.
We live in a society with extremely stratified class privilege. That said, there is a very strong overlap between class and race because of formerly codified racist structures that we, as a society, refuse to deal with because we've convinced ourselves that if we just wait a while they'll go away. They're not going away, wealth is generational and the grandchildren of those who became rich or poor because of a past racist policy are still rich and poor because of that racist policy.
At some point we've got to learn to stop feeding the beast.
Identifying groups as white suprematists and attacking them only gives supremacy sustained existence, and, in the eyes of too many, validity. Others will be put on a fence in the fray where they might swing either way. And it brings the nuts out.
Kevin Kruse, who wrote the NY Times piece you cite, also wrote, along with Julian Zelizer, the very recent history Fault Lines, where he notes:
The polarization of the past four decades had divided the country but, in an odd paradox, that polarization provided for a stable floor even with the most unconventional, unorthodox, and divisive president the nation had ever seen. For many Republicans, the simple fact that Trump enraged Democrats proved to be enough reason to rally around him.
Trumps's outbursts and the reactions against him have not hurt him in the least. Rather, they sustain him and his base.
The forces that led to the national prejudice are historically long and diffuse and insidious. Too often they were combined with supposed values and good intentions. Similarly, the growth of our suburbs is mixed not just with our prejudice, but also our questionable views of progress and the good life. Not only have suburbs divided us racially, but have helped polarize us by increasing separations of race and class and have left suburban inhabitants with impoverished world views.
There's a lot to sort out here and think about that won't be solved with barbs and blows. We are supposed to be more intelligent and more sensitive. We need to find a way to build a valid, vital, and sustainable identity, as well as valid, vital, and sustainable places to live.
Trump is nothing more than a reaction to politics as usual, a.k.a. Hillary Clinton.
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"...left suburban inhabitants with impoverished world views."
What planet do you live on? My new neighbor just moved to my central Virginia town after retiring from the US State Department. He was fed up with DC, the crime, the traffic, the noise, the foul air, and the obscene cost of living. Does he have an impoverished world view after being stationed around the world and happily rejecting his last duty station (DC) as a place to live?
The loss, V, is that suburbanites—not your neighbor, of course—will be less inclined to deal with the very problems you list, perhaps less sympathetic, even less capable of understanding them, simply because they are removed from them. We're all in this together, or should be.
Bingo.
I can keep going. Separation by class and race creates a breeding ground for suspicion and prejudice. As we have seen. And the physical separation has only grown larger as suburbanites keep moving out further.
It is intentional. Divide and conquer.
I think there is a level of intention in this narrative that doesn't quite add up. The conventional wisdom of the time was that cities were overcrowded, unhealthy messes and the automobile offered freedom. Bureaucratic city planners were building highways and modern public housing because they though them efficient, clean, fair for all. Pruitt-Igoe was meant to be both black and white together until, surprise! all of the white people wanted their own houses in the suburbs and the minorities were left behind.
The city planners likely had a paternalistic attitude toward minority neighborhoods that they tore down, thinking the projects would be a big improvement. And they were, at first, until all of the wealthy residents left and the maintenance disappeared. The dark reality of urbanism is it worked out great for the people who escaped to the suburbs and weren't left behind.
History, it's more complicated than a NYT project! What would be more interesting is looking constructively on how public transportation could run parallel to highway paths to reverse this city killing aspect of car travel--perhaps eventually replacing them.
Stubbed your toe on a coffee table? Blame white supremacy!
Can't use your head for anything other than a hat rack? Could be white supremacy.
There's a difference between not getting it and refusing to get it. The former is at least forgivable.
Refuse to 'get it'? Blame white supremacy!
Exactly.
and i'm wearing a white supreme hat. blame white supremacy!
White supremacy is being able to turn serious attempts to address structural racism into jokes, because at the end of the day you know it won't affect your life in any negative way.
I speak with my parents about this stuff all the time and they're always adamant that they did their part and now are tired and should be left alone. My explanations that their ability to make that choice is privileged and part of the problem fall on willfully closed ears.
In addition, if you want to be "left alone", GTFO out the way & stop shitting all over other people's genuine attempts to make progress.
guys and gals, today whilst stuck in traffic, HORRIBLE traffic, i came to the realize that my white privilege and my support of the white supremacist trump regime has caused all of this. please forgive me and please help me progress past this structural system of oppressive oppressiveness.
Welcome to the ignore list, FRaC.
ignore lists? i blame white supremacy!
Exactly.
Are you this dense in real life, or is it just a pose you put on because the anonymity of the internet gives you the courage to act like a moron with impunity?
real life, too : ' (
bye
YOU are my density!
ignore me plz k thks
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