Thanks Tol,
You get into cause and effect here. They identify the highway as the only cause of the one-thriving, or at least self-sufficient, black community there dying. But all black communities died over the country, all at the same time, many without having highways anywhere near them, like Harlem.
The culprit - if you ask Thomas Sowell, it was CIVIL RIGHTS - that enabled the better off blacks to flee and it was game over for the inner cities, just the trash left.
So tear down all they want, until they force educated, better-off blacks, into these communities, NOTHING WILL CHANGE - that simple.
People aren’t trash just because they’re poor. Even if they lack ambition or for some other reason are unable to raise themselves up. There’s no moral imperative that everyone go to college and get rich. One thing you learn quickly about the poor is that their lives are chaotic and everyone’s story is different and complex. Even when this is the result of life choices (not talking about crime here) driven by culture and environment, being poor shouldn’t be a crime. It’s shameful to despise people for it.
And, according to Sowell, it was the self-interested lighter-skinned Blacks who fled, leaving the darker-skinned folks to languish in their ghettos.