Winterborn wrote: ↑Tue Apr 18, 2023 8:32 am
UNI88 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 18, 2023 5:53 am
What Pete said was stupid and reflects poorly on him and the administration but I not sure you could argue that racism didn’t drive some planners/politicians in determining where to place roads in the past.
The design and materials might not have been racist but using a road to isolate a black neighborhood, obstruct minority access to a desired amenity, or wantonly splitting a black neighborhood and displacing its residents when they wouldn’t do the to a white neighborhood is racist. There are plenty examples of those things happening.
We can be ostriches like desantis and pretend the unpleasant aspects of our history didn’t happen or we can admit and address them.
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But is that the fault of the roads or part of the planning or just a factor of property values and directing traffic to specific spots?
I am not denying that racists people do racist things, but to say roads are built or not built because of black people doesn't make much sense. Now if somebody wants to claim black neighborhoods are treated differently (and Pete did touch on that with his crosswalk comment), I think that would be a much stronger argument but more so because of property values/location not just because it is a black neighborhood. To address his crosswalk comment, those have a pretty defined set of rules when they should be installed and what type and it is based on foot traffic/housing in the area. There are both federal and local regulations that cover that, and in at least the ones around here there isn't much leeway the city has if they area meets a very specific set of conditions. The neighborhood itself is more of the factor, then who lives in it. Road planners do not have a whole lot of leeway where they put a road (at least since the 60's), before that sure it could be possible, that a road was placed to inconvenience a particular ethnic group but then the Irish/Jews/etc would have the same claim that Pete was trying to make on behalf of blacks.
Is it the fault of the roads? No.
Do I think that it was done intentionally? Yes. Maybe not every time but enough.
If a road's location is a part of that road and the location was decided based on racial prejudices, isn't the road racist?
There are expressways in Portland that go right through what used to be black neighborhoods, tearing the neighborhood apart. There are also expressways that bend around what were white neighborhoods to leave them intact. In other parts of the country, there are examples of expressways that were put in between black and white neighborhoods with no or few ramps in the black neighborhood, effectively "protecting" the white neighborhood from the black neighborhood while denying the residents of the black neighborhood access to the amenities in and near the white neighborhood. Is the argument that those roads are racist, not valid?
I don't remember the book(s) that I read about these in so I can't provide a link. I can recommend reading The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein to read about how minorities were discriminated against in housing up to the late 60's and how it impacted their ability to build wealth, get an education, etc.