The racist history of America’s interstate highway boom

[electricron]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

^ highways aside, this is the classic white ‘all lives matter’ defense.

you are either naively or purposefully leaving out who is disporportionally affected. that is the crux, not that everyone was affected.

it wasn’t whitey.

it never is.

also the passing of civil rights in the 60s did not mean redlining stopped and therefore white flight ensued. white flight ensued because of the great migration, which had everything to do with jobs. it was that friction, coupled with the creation of booming sprawl suburbs marketed directly to middle class folks that lacked melanin.

the even larger background to all that is the usa was the only economic power standing in the 60s as the rest of the world continued recovering from the great war. white boomers in the usa like yourself just don’t get that insanely lucky timing and priviledge they were born into.

Wow! I guess I’m one of the few white kids that grew up on welfare because my dad never paid one penny in child support after abandoning my mom, brother, and me. It is very hard to garnish my dad’s wages with him living in a foreign country. No more money than the black kids living on the same street, neighborhood, or going to the same schools.
My first job was after school washing dishes with the other kids in my neighborhood at a Tex-Mex restaurant. Upon graduating from high school I joined the navy, spending 6 years learning a craftsman blue collar trade which I earned income with the rest of my blue collar life.
Privilege, what privilege?
I repeat, there are more poor white folks living in this country than poor minorities. Maybe not as high in percentage, but in total numbers.
Get off your high horse seeking entitlements for your entire life.

[Nouvellecosse]

Systemic and societal level issues cannot meaningfully be discussed at the level of the individual. Individual anecdotes can neither confirm nor dispel the existence of widespread issues which are only really measurable in terms of rates and proportions. Someone advocating for social change to address systemic inequities isn't seeking individual "entitlements". In fact, whether their policy prescriptions are valid has nothing to do with them as an individual.

I do however, agree that there is sometimes a disproportionate focus on race. It really depends on whether or not the situation is a zero sum game. For instance, if there is 30% of a population that is living in poor conditions, it isn't clear that it's better to ensure that the 30% is the same proportional racial makeup as the general population if it's still the same total number of people. The issue is that there can be many reasons why people end up in living in poor conditions and if you address one of them (such as racial disadvantage), the total number can go down. If say, 1/3 of the people are in that situation because of racial inequity and you manage to address that issue, the total would drop from 30% to 20% which is a major improvement affecting countless people. The fact that the remaining 20% are still in poor conditions for other reasons wouldn't diminish that; it would simply need to be addressed in other ways. And it would NOT be a reason to argue against measures that could help that 1/3. In other words, we must avoid single cause fallacy.

In the case of race, look at things like the significantly higher rates of imprisonment of Black people for things like drug related offenses despite them committing such offenses at the same rate paired with the typically higher sentencing for similar crimes. Without such bias in the courts and law enforcement, fewer people would not end up in prison and saddled with criminal records which puts a huge drag on future success. If there was a set number of convictions that needed to be made and prison sentences that needed to be issued, than yes, any reduction in people from one race would simply be made up by people in another, so obviously that would be different.

In the case of the road system, it isn't necessarily true that the roads would be built through urban neighbourhoods regardless and would be affecting communities regardless because there are cases where such projects were halted by political activism and not built at all. It often may only have been possible because communities with so little power and influence existed and if all communities were heard and respected, the projects may not have been possible. In any non-zero sum case, there's no valid reason to minimize the situation of one group by pitting it against another.

[Delthayre]

*

[TonyTone]

Originally Posted by electricron

Wow! I guess I’m one of the few white kids that grew up on welfare because my dad never paid one penny in child support after abandoning my mom, brother, and me. It is very hard to garnish my dad’s wages with him living in a foreign country. No more money than the black kids living on the same street, neighborhood, or going to the same schools.
My first job was after school washing dishes with the other kids in my neighborhood at a Tex-Mex restaurant. Upon graduating from high school I joined the navy, spending 6 years learning a craftsman blue collar trade which I earned income with the rest of my blue collar life.

Now you understand what being black in the hood is like.

You're arguing against minorities just like yourself even if you are white.

[TonyTone]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Wealthy people are building new, expensive homes right next to the interstate highways in Nashville and other growing cities:
https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1510...7i16384!8i8192

At least 100,000 wealthy people live right next to freeways in Los Angeles, the New York metro area, etc.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lo...4d-118.2436849

Wow you must have missed the past decades when areas like this were once rundown and poor and now building new homes & businesses near highways and the like are popular and hot because of gentrification and lack of land to expand.

[DanielG425]

Originally Posted by electricron

Although there were restrictions on where minorities could live, those restrictions were amongst the first to fall upon passage of civil rights laws. Many urban freeways were built after those civil right laws were passed, and the restrictions you raised were no longer in effect. I remember whole neighborhoods changing rapidly in the 1960s with white flight. A lot of poor white families were impacted by where highways were built. It was not an exclusive act of racism against minorities.
Regeneration of older neighborhoods exists today, squeezing out the poor of whatever color in favor of higher rents affordable by the middle class. You can only consider that racist of you assume most to all of the poor are minorities. But please remember, the poor come in every color, including white.

Of course poor people come in every color. I wish we had a larger emphasis on pulling people out of poverty regardless of color (of course including white people), but we can't ignore that the overwhelming majority of people of color who are poor are poor because there were targeted campaigns to suppress black wealth accumulation. I want to see ALL people who are currently low income/impoverished one day reach a level of financial stability.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by DanielG425

The difference is that back then white people had the luxury of being able to buy property anywhere without those pesky anti-black provisions that banned black families from buying in many neighborhoods, and white people did not have legal work restrictions and active laws that systematically forbade black employment and ransacked black wealth. You're trying to wipe the objective targeted racism of urban renewal under the rug and paint white people as the true victims. Crazy.

What's crazy is this thought that a)property only goes up in value and b)the majority of the net worth of wealthy individuals is their primary residence.

If most of your net worth is your primary residence, you probably don't have much money. And most mom-and-pop landlords break even at best.

Overwhelmingly, real wealth comes from capital gains and dividends from publicly traded stocks, and minorities have never been restricted from owning stock in the United States.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by TonyTone

Wow you must have missed the past decades when areas like this were once rundown and poor and now building new homes & businesses near highways and the like are popular and hot because of gentrification and lack of land to expand.

Well I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing just that so no, I didn't miss it.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

What's crazy is this thought that a)property only goes up in value and b)the majority of the net worth of wealthy individuals is their primary residence.

If most of your net worth is your primary residence, you probably don't have much money. And most mom-and-pop landlords break even at best.

Overwhelmingly, real wealth comes from capital gains and dividends from publicly traded stocks, and minorities have never been restricted from owning stock in the United States.

actually that last comment is not true, if only tangentially. poors of all stripes are locked out of financeworld things like initial ipo offerings and equity. only the connected can get in on that. also, poors are purposefully not made aware of major corporate moves, so they cant act as flexibly as those with insider info. as wealth only shares information with wealth, basically the stock game is rigged and in turn this affects minorities disproportionately.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

basically the stock game is rigged and in turn this affects minorities disproportionately.

Items limited to accredited investors/country clubbers aren't guaranteed to beat the market, let alone make money. Meanwhile, 401ks that are broadly invested in U.S. stocks are up over 20% this year and were up 15% in 2020.

As I already stated, very few of the black residents of those neighborhoods that were bulldozed for interstate highways in the 1960s-1970s owned their homes or apartment buildings. They went from renting in one neighborhood to renting in another. They didn't make or lose any money. The former property owners didn't make much either, since the appraisals were systematic.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Systemic and societal level issues cannot meaningfully be discussed at the level of the individual. Individual anecdotes can neither confirm nor dispel the existence of widespread issues which are only really measurable in terms of rates and proportions. Someone advocating for social change to address systemic inequities isn't seeking individual "entitlements". In fact, whether their policy prescriptions are valid has nothing to do with them as an individual.

I do however, agree that there is sometimes a disproportionate focus on race. It really depends on whether or not the situation is a zero sum game. For instance, if there is 30% of a population that is living in poor conditions, it isn't clear that it's better to ensure that the 30% is the same proportional racial makeup as the general population if it's still the same total number of people. The issue is that there can be many reasons why people end up in living in poor conditions and if you address one of them (such as racial disadvantage), the total number can go down. If say, 1/3 of the people are in that situation because of racial inequity and you manage to address that issue, the total would drop from 30% to 20% which is a major improvement affecting countless people. The fact that the remaining 20% are still in poor conditions for other reasons wouldn't diminish that; it would simply need to be addressed in other ways. And it would NOT be a reason to argue against measures that could help that 1/3. In other words, we must avoid single cause fallacy.

Your post insinuates that able-bodied individuals bear no responsibility for their lot in life. That is completely incorrect. Just because some people are unbelievably lucky doesn't mean there aren't a ton of people who are unbelievably lazy.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Items limited to accredited investors/country clubbers aren't guaranteed to beat the market, let alone make money. Meanwhile, 401ks that are broadly invested in U.S. stocks are up over 20% this year and were up 15% in 2020.

we are talking about being blocked out of the wealthy club here, not your average 401k schmuck. that's not how wealth is made, or even kept by the wealthy. that's just a holding pattern against current inflation in the best of times, which these happen to be for the stock market, but are not always over time, ie., if you had money in there in the 2008 bush era economic disaster your got royally screwed.

also, sure the market done better the last five years, but in reality a moderately aggressive portfolio, around 60% stocks and 40% fixed-income vehicles and cash, posts an average annual return in the 5% to 8% range over time.

so poors are locked out -- they get to work a lot of ot, flip a house, buy lotto tix or maybe play crypto and nft for their crack at major wealth.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

we are talking about being blocked out of the wealthy club here, not your average 401k schmuck.

Well the NPR/NY Times/Citylab journalists who all jumped on the racist housing policy of the 1960s bandwagon are definitely schmucks. Aside from those lucky homes in extremely specific locations (Manhattan, SF, beachfront), most have broken even at best or even lost money. Hundreds of thousands have been torn down since the highways were completed - who owned all of those abandoned buildings? Mostly white investors. Whitey and Jews lost the money as former white and jewish neighborhoods were abandoned, not blacks.

The dishonest position taken by the journalists writing clickbait urbanist articles is that because blacks were prohibited from buying homes in some neighborhoods prior to the 1960s, that they were kept from gaining equity. Well they were also kept from losing it, since they weren't in the game, in the same way that someone who isn't in stocks isn't immediately affected during a downturn.


[QUOTE=mrnyc;9458358]
if you had money in there in the 2008 bush era economic disaster your got royally screwed.
[quote]

Yeah, if you were forced to sell. And same with primary residences - you know, those things that NPR/NY Times/Citylab tell us are the key to minorities building wealth.

Originally Posted by mrnyc

so poors are locked out -- they get to work a lot of ot

Yeah that's exactly what I've done since I left journalism behind more than 10 years ago - 48 or 49 70-hour weeks per year. I didn't care about the attention I got for being in news. Unfortunately, a lot of people in journalism do care about it (in fact, they get a little dopamine rush when they see their name in the byline), and in order to keep working in the current climate, they're more than willing to feed the Twitter swarm hunks of sensational rubbish like the OP's link.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Your post insinuates that able-bodied individuals bear no responsibility for their lot in life.

No it doesn't.

Recognizing one factor doesn't mean ignoring the existence of any other factor. Unfortunately attempting to place all the focus on the individual level is a commonly used tactic for people trying to hide or excuse systemic problems.

[Nouvellecosse]

The trick is, when discussing individual people's lives, you focus solely on individual issues (their personal choices) because individuals have little direct control over societal systems. So impugning systemic flaws has little utilitarian value. Meanwhile, when discussing broader society you focus solely on society-wide factors because the decisions of an individual is not useful in shaping public policy because policy has to take into account large scale trends.

To use roads as an example, at the level of an individual you offer them ways to drive more carefully for instance. They're responsible for not driving in an impaired / distracted state, not driving too fast for conditions, knowing the rules of the road, etc. But if we're talking about the roads themselves, you talk about sight lines, curvatures, signage, gradients, lane widths, etc. If a particular sharp curve has a high rate of accidents and someone suggests that the road be redesigned in a way that's safer, you don't say "the suggestion insinuates that drivers bear no responsibility for operating their vehicle safely" as an excuse not to address the problem. Sure some of the accidents on that stretch may have involved drivers going faster than they should have, but that's no excuse not to improve a dangerous stretch of road.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

a commonly used tactic for people trying to hide or excuse systemic problems.

Or maybe they don't actually exist, or are merely peas under a stack of mattresses.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

not useful in shaping public policy because policy has to take into account large scale trends.

There is a large-scale trend that recent immigrants to the United States from India and East Asia are earning far, far more than the white Americans who are supposedly "systematically" suppressing black Americans with their "racist" highways:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...usehold_income

People just need to stop clicking on these articles. No doubt putting "racist" in the title of any web article attracts clicks like cleavage.

[DanielG425]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

There is a large-scale trend that recent immigrants to the United States from India and East Asia are earning far, far more than the white Americans who are supposedly "systematically" suppressing black Americans with their "racist" highways:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...usehold_income

People just need to stop clicking on these articles. No doubt putting "racist" in the title of any web article attracts clicks like cleavage.

Just because you do not have the capacity to look at the history of OUR country in an objective matter does not mean that you are correct by offering tangential evidence of a point not being argued on. The fact of the matter is that, yes, black people and their wealth were objectively targeted throughout the course of American history. There are those who were able to buck the trend, but for the most part it was next to impossible to build wealth when you weren't allowed to work in most places, rent in most places, and own in most places. Let alone WALK in most places without the legitimate threat of being lynched or attacked by the mere sight of your skin and all without the same legal protections that white counterparts enjoyed. So you can say whatever you want to justify your outdated and incorrect OPINIONS, but the truth is that you are wrong. That is not my opinion, it is a fact. And yes, now that those RACIST policies have been abolished and society has legal protections (Civil Rights Acts) that ensure the free and fair participation of all races in society the free market has been opened up to those who work hard enough to benefit from it. What a beautiful country we live in. A country with deep scars that are healed slower when we ignore the reasons why they're there in the first place.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Or maybe they don't actually exist, or are merely peas under a stack of mattresses.

And comments like this are why articles that document the history or racial equality are so important. You're literally making the case for why exposing the details on these issues is in fact valuable.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by DanielG425

What a beautiful country we live in. A country with deep scars that are healed slower when we ignore the reasons why they're there in the first place.

BOOM!

It's hard to drop a mic anymore effectively than that!