No matter what is done it will be called racist by blacks.
Tear it down, racist, you’re taking access to the world away from blacks
Do nothing, racist, not spending money on black areas
Rebuild, racist, its gentrification and more non-blacks will come into black areas
Congress for New Urbanism, a think tank devoted to walkable urban environments.
ah, utopianism. Walk in an urban environment and you’re a target for criminals. From picpockets to polar bear hunters.
There is a New York City highway - the Cross Bronx Expressway - that is held largely responsible for cutting through the heart of many strong Middle Class neighborhoods in the Bronx, upending neighborhood connections, relationships and property values, and helping the deterioration of the Bronx into the majority “minority” lower income area it was by the 1970s. To some people it was safer to go into Harlem in the 1970s than into the Bronx.
Whoa wait a minute so highways are racist?
I find it fascinating that the 1960’s line up of presidents was Eisenhower until early 1961, then Kennedy, Johnson for two terms, and that ended in 1969. So for the decade of the 60’s, there was a conservative president for one year prior to Nixon taking the reins in early 69.
I would guess if there was a problem when it started, they could have terminated the program if they wanted in 8 years. So the question comes out, “Whose worse, the fool, or the fools that follow?”
But Kennedy sped up the highway work by hiring new people into the job and approved the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1961 which increased the gas tax from three to four cents to fund it. Further, the committee that ran the program was under investigation for allegations of corruption while the staff flooded the people with manure advertising like billboards, radio and television spots, and newspaper magazine articles of great success of the program and how it is improving peoples lives.
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/50interstate2.cfm
And it just got worse under Johnson. So the die was cast as it is said. And here we are complaining about conservative president era actions, that were incidentally hidden while the mess was really made.
wy69
— Njeri Camara, 61, can’t visit the Shreveport, Louisiana home where she was born. Like many Black homes and neighborhoods across the country in the 1960s, it was bulldozed to clear space for highways.
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I grew up in San Diego CA - many homes of my relatives are gone replaced with freeways. It is not “racism” as much as location, location, location.
This was back in the Eisenhower-thru-Kennedy era. After a decade of block-busting, our congregation was regrettably unable to integrate; there was violence in the streets, and when MLK would be shot some years hence, riots burned a major street in NE DC and it wouldn't recover for the next twenty years. instead the elders transferred the building to a black congregation.
Our generations-deep, tight-knit congregation and neighbors who kept DC working other than in government scattered all around a 50-mile radius, and some even moved out of state to be near extended family. Members of the church's main women's circle drove hundreds of miles all over the metro area once a month in the ensuing decades to keep raising money for the missionaries, retirement home and hospital, but eventually after 60 years of continuous service, they aged out and it ended.
I was among the first generation not to be a part of these endeavors. When I was grown, I had to find a neighborhood, find a church, interview and pay babysitters, find work contacts and find people to repair my car or things in my house, because was no longer ensconced and networked with family and lifelong friends. It was "liberated," but grew wearisome, expensive and often dangerous. I couldn't take my child around and show him where all his forebearers had lived. When I would hear the lyrics of, "Anatevfka", I would tear up. The couple of times I went back to the old neighborhood to look around, black people asked me, "Can I help you?" as if I were from a foreign country. My skin color tipped them off.
About ten years ago, I dropped by and chatted with the pastor and some of the people who had been "originals" when the church changed over. The church that had held 600 worshippers every Sunday morning was down to about 20 regular attendees. The stained glass windows on the alley side of the sanctuary had been knocked out by vandals, and everything inside was in disrepair.
I later found a news article saying that the congregation had tried welcoming a group of 125 mostly white young people who were gentrifying the area and meeting in a school gym on Sundays, but that the congregants had been offended by the "new" people's white habits, like arriving on time and going straight to the kitchen to make the coffee when it was their turn instead of greeting everyone and talking before doing their chore; so they rejected a merger, and would rather fail than integrate with white oppressors. Seventy years of civil rights efforts and misfires on all sides, and this is what we've come to. Nothing will ever be enough.
For our family, being torn off our roots was like a death. My parents never got over it, and I still think about it often, like one does for a long-gone grandparent. Where's the grave, where I can mourn and lay flowers?
I've lately seen signs in the neighborhood saying, "Stop the gentrification of this historically black neighborhood."
I believe CNN’s towering oppressive headquarters in Atlanta is racist!