Quote:
Originally Posted by Obadno
Its a reductive ad absurdum analysis that just leads into a spiraling drain of sophistry.
its not productive and the only thing that can be gleaned form these racial analyses is.... what? What is the "highways are racist" supposed to inform us to do? Repent? give money to people? what?
Its stupid. rivers of ink and the lives of great thinkers sucked into a black hole of racial analysis for no reason other than to lament that the past wasn't like today.
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Not productive? It's highly productive and its importance can be argued on a purely utilitarian basis.
First of all, you learn from past mistakes to avoid making future ones. It's not like the country is "finished" and all infrastructure has already been built. There will be future infrastructure projects, both road and otherwise and it's important to approach them in ways that minimize harm. The same way you would learn from more technical or engineering mistakes leading to things like bridge failures, you learn from mistakes in the realm of culture and society.
The second aspect is that it's important to place all the facts on the table to inform general policy decisions whether or not they relate directly to infrastructure. With any policy intended to help disadvantaged groups, discussion always arises with people arguing that the group doesn't need or deserve any help because their problems are somehow all their own fault. Whether as individuals or groups, they're not sufficiently ambitious, intelligent, moral, hard-working etc. and therefore they're just naturally at a disadvantage and therefore no intervention is warranted. Over the centuries we've heard this at various times about women, different racial/ethnic, groups, religions, nationalities, etc.
Yet in cases like what the article discusses, the infrastructure that destroyed and divided communities mostly still exists, mostly still divides the effected communities, and still subjects certain people to harmful externalities (like air and noise pollution) at greater rates than others. Not just as a coincidence, but because of active systemic policy decisions. So it isn't just an issue of things in the past such as slavery but, but rather the present world.
Yet there are many people arguing that any systemic discrimination is in the past and has no relevance today. And I'm not talking about years ago; I hear this stuff on a regular basis
now. It's important to shut down such spurious argument if there's any hope of effective policy passing. Not that it's possible or practical to reverse all the damage, but there are ways to improve things. But as with most things, the first step is acknowledging that you have a problem.