The aftermath of George Floyd’s death while in police custody has created a moment for radical truth-telling. So here’s some ugly truth about the city of Los Angeles: Our freeway system is one of the most noxious monuments to racism and segregation in the country. — The Los Angeles Times
Mattew Fleischer, Senior Digital Editor of The Los Angeles Times pens an editorial for the newspaper highlighting the indefensible, racist legacy of highway construction in American cities.
Citing historical research regarding the ways in which highway construction and urban renewal practices helped to institute and literally cement racial and income segregation, Fleischer writes, "Local officials rerouted the elaborate designs of freeway engineers — often at considerable expense — to destroy thousands of homes in racially diverse communities."
These highways, Fleischer explains, continue to fuel environmental racism and other negative impacts for communities of color. Should they be torn down too?
61 Comments
Fuck whitey.
Who do we marry, then?
fuck yourself b3ta? I'm confused...
Definitely ^this twat. Good morning nancy. It seems I'm living rent free in your empty head, i must say, it looks, rather...dim.
Now now, b3tadine[racist], no need to be so mean...why can't we all get along? Oh wait, you're a racist and I don't like you, go eat some tarmac...
Lets break down the freeways, and transport us to being the third world nation many want us to be.
Better yet, let's run them through white neighborhoods, and displace white people?
My city recently ran a subway line through some very rich (and presumably white) hood. Displaced many and cost the taxpayers an additional 200million kangaroos in property buy-outs.
Robert Moses
Journalism and analogy logic at its finest. So people are tearing down statues for reason A, let's find something similar that can be linked to reason A and ask - can this also be torn down?
Why stop at Freeways...
McMansions : which are a cheap derivatives of Mansions. Mansions had servant quarters and sooner or later you'll find not all servants were white. Let's tear down McMansions! (Indentured servitude in British America)
Colonial Style Suburban house: Colonial, need I say more?
Empire State Building - Empires are not democratic. An empires state is like old school Europe...
Olive Garden Restaurant - I'll bet people back in the day were underpaid working in Olive gardens and today too!
....
Now you're talking! Empire furniture, burn! White Castle, torch!
Quit threatening us with a good time, Sheds.
White Castle! that's at least 4 points. haha
Really curious what the Endgame will be...I thought Trump was somehow the personification of Idiocracy, 'but wait there's more!'...[Jazz-hands waiving]
Rondo Neighborhood, A Vibrant Black Neighborhood Destroyed By I-94 Because Of Affluent White Neighborhood
Nowhere in your link does it state that the neighbourhood was destroyed BECAUSE of an affluent white neighbourhood, it was to link business districts, no? Because of a road.
And also, the neighbourhood was NOT destroyed:
"Although the African American community was injured, it maintained a strong identity."
“If New York has its Lenox avenue, Chicago its State street, Philadelphia its Wylie avenue, Kansas City its Eighteenth Street, and Memphis its Beale street, just as surely has St. Paul a riot of warmth, and color, and feeling, and sound in Rondo street.” --Earl Wilkins, The St. Paul Echo, September 18, 1926
By the 1930s Rondo was the heart of St. Paul’s African American community, not only housing the majority of African American residents in the city, but also home to critical community businesses, organizations, and institutions such as the Pilgrim Baptist Church, the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center, and the Sterling Club. However, by the late 1950s this tight-knit community would be shattered by the construction of Interstate 94, connecting the downtown business corridors of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Initial expressway plan for the Minneapolis-St. Paul connection was known as the St. Anthony Route, which would follow St. Anthony Avenue (parallel to University Avenue) and extend right through the heart of the Rondo neighborhood. St. Paul city engineer George Harrold opposed this plan--citing concerns about loss of land for local use and the dislocation of people and business--suggesting the alternative Northern Route, which would run adjacent to railroad tracks north of St. Anthony Avenue, leaving the street intact. Ultimately, the St. Anthony Route was chosen and approved by government officials citing its efficiency.
In 1955, Rondo community leaders Reverend Floyd Massey and Timothy Howard worked to lessen the effects of freeway construction and gain support for a new housing ordinance through the formation of the Rondo-St. Anthony Improvement Association. Their advocacy was successful in achieving a depressed (below-grade) construction of I-94, however, the route still split the Rondo neighborhood and forced the evacuation and relocation of hundreds of people and businesses. One in every eight African Americans in St. Paul lost a home to I-94. Many businesses never re-opened.
Although the neighborhood would never be the same, the spirit of Rondo lives on. In 1983, the first annual Rondo Days festival was held in July celebrating the history and continuing legacy of the community. The experience of Rondo and I-94 was also frequently cited and discussed as a cautionary tale informing and impacting the construction of the Green Line light rail service connecting St. Paul and Minneapolis, which opened to the public in 2014.
Most of the original Rondo Avenue and much of the historic Rondo neighborhood were destroyed when Interstate 94 was built. The street was named for an early settler, Joseph Rondeau. Part of the original street is now the frontage road near the Best Western Kelly Inn.
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, Maas recently gave St. Paul the same treatment. As you'd probably expect, the same conclusions hold true, though the severing of St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood provides perhaps the starkest example of how interstates disproportionately affected poor (and often minority) Twin Cities communities.
The construction of I-94 shattered this tight-knit community, displaced thousands of African Americans into a racially segregated city and a discriminatory housing market, and erased a now-legendary neighborhood.
The historic Rondo neighborhood once spanned much of what is now Summit Hill and ran north to University Avenue. By 1950, more than 80% of St. Paul’s African American population lived there, leaving Rondo almost completely independent from the white neighborhoods surrounding it. But as the neighborhood thrived, Minnesota legislators began plans for a new highway system. In 1956, when the Federal Aid Highway Act was passed, St. Paul officials felt the pressure to start building. Concerns voiced by residents and city planners were almost entirely ignored as construction began on what would in 1968 become Interstate 94. Any debate over possible routes centered mostly on the concerns of (white) business owners, in their efforts to boost stagnating sales.
When the route through the historic Rondo neighborhood was finalized, the city demanded that residents sell their homes to the city for dirt-cheap prices — often only a fraction of the actual property value. People that refused to vacate their homes and businesses were met by police with sledgehammers — destroying walls, smashing windows and even tearing apart the plumbing. A lush and vibrant neighborhood was effectively sliced in half, displacing nearly 600 families, 300 businesses and forcing thousands of African-Americans to seek alternative housing in a highly segregated city.
Thanks b3ta for more context, this still contradicts your initial post though
well b3ta is r**ist, but would never admit it.
Merriam Park
That's just sloppy writing then...
"Although the African American community was injured, it maintained a strong identity. Playwright August Wilson lived in the Rondo area in the 1970s and 1980s and wrote many of his plays while living there. In 1983, the first annual Rondo Days Festival was held; in 2006, the Rondo Community Outreach Library opened with a mission to support community engagement."
I said ravist (kid at a rave Ricky)...;) You guys are technically arguing different time periods from what I can tell or arguing move 1 was bad but reaction 2 made it better....it's real easy to take data and history and spin it however you like.
.
And I wasn't arguing, just highlighted parts of the link b2ta posted himself .
my reading is b3ta is suggesting you took something out of context, you're suggesting his posting is claiming one slight but missing the overall outcome, etc...
maybe, yes :)
Two things "can" be true, at the same time. Rondo has one of the preeminent Jazz Festivals in the Midwest, the community is vibrant, and it was also destroyed because of race, and the ability of whites to use their power structures. I didn't shy away from characterizations that paint a more rosy picture. However, who is writing, and who is editing, and who the audience is, matters. I dare say that the community affected, would rather have their community intact, whole, instead of having a highway rip through, and displace people because of the color of their skin.
The community can not be vibrant and destroyed at the same time I guess, can it? Because something that's gone can't be vibrant. Semantics, schmentics. But the community sure as hell was injured and afflicted by that highway construction. I actually thought the people of Rondo, regardless of the colour of their skin, were displaced because of the construction of a highway, now it is because of the colour of their skin. So apparently white people (still?) living in Rondo (the French Canadians, Germans, Russians, Irish, and Jewish families not affluent enough to have moved away) were not displaced or something, and before it was destroyed because of an affluent white neighbourhood and so "fuck whitey". It is confusing, to say the least...
At the same time, b3ta, at the same time. If you keep trying to inject nuance into this rando will be forced to resort to limiting the discussion further and further until he is correct and you are wrong. Making him do this is racist. Please stop.
I mean we all know that something that is destroyed can't ever be rebuilt, and we FURTHER know that using words like destroyed can ONLY EVER be used literally, so... he wins!
I know! Imagine losing your leg, below the knee, and having a clown like this explain, you didn't lose a leg, you still have a femur.
Shut up.
You. Don't. Know. What. You're. Talking. About.
You may lose a brain but you are still alive.
Let the past wrongs stand because those motherfuckers are DEAD. Unimpeachable logic, tiny.
Perfectionist Fallacy inbred with the Slippery Slope Fallacy. You really suck at logical thinking, Rick.
Are you a racist? Yes. Yes, you are.
I don't trust idiots like Rick Balkins or RickB-Astoria or whatever is they are idiots. They are engaging in stupidity which is actually not a crime. They are not under authorized legal authority to comment intelligently on any topic. They do not possess the qualifications, training, and anything else that resembles any sort of training. It's basically handing over your forum to the kindergarten class of the likes of little Timmy (eats his boogers) and Tina (sniffs glue) .
Rick-Roll-Racist; you mention training as a legitimating qualifier, which brings me back to you, you fucking dilettante, why are you here, you illegitimate hump?
Aaaand once again, to those of you just joining us, I am not (just) rambling like an idiot, I am replying to posts (since deleted) by Richard Balkins III of Astoria, Oregon. The post by me above this one is a copy and paste with some edits made, but the poor grammar and writing style are all from the original (now deleted) post written by Richard Balkins III of Astoria, Oregon. And while it may seem like I am telling b3tadine[sutures] to shut up and b3tadine[sutures] may seem like he's telling me I don't know what I am talking about, there were half a dozen racist or ignorant (or both) screeds by Richard Balkins III of Astoria, Oregon in there, too.
SneakyPete, the racist writing "fuck whitey" as first comment is supposedly injecting nuance into this train wreck of a thread? Please stop indeed...
You ARE an expert in irony. An unintentional living example.
The irony of it all is that there's nothing unintentional about it...you just can't handle it and looking for a way out, painted yourself in the corner again...
Don't dislocate your shoulder patting yourself on the back.
I'll see what I can do.
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