AARoads Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

The AARoads Wiki is live! Come check it out!

Author Topic: Can a highway be racist?  (Read 13507 times)

kphoger

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 29128
  • My 2 Achilles' heels: sarcasm & snark

  • Location: Wichita, KS
  • Last Login: March 18, 2024, 09:31:10 PM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #25 on: April 28, 2022, 09:10:08 AM »

This shit again? Didn't we already have one of these threads?

Except that, for now at  least, the OP has gotten his wish:

Hopefully this will be a constructive dialog and not get into the cellar with accusations and recriminations ...
Logged
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. Dick
If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

1

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 14615
  • Age: 25
  • Location: MA/NH border
  • Last Login: March 18, 2024, 09:41:17 PM
    • Flickr account
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #26 on: April 28, 2022, 09:35:26 AM »

A highway itself can't have any feelings whatsoever.

But it can be designed and planned with the intent to harm people of a certain socioeconomic background, of which one factor is race. Denying that there were racist highway planners at the dawn of the Interstate era is akin to denying a lot of historical wrongs.

Righting those wrongs requires some sacrifices that upend the status quo, which of course will create backlash and anger despite having no long-term ill effects if managed properly. Fighting these little steps to mend decades of hurt and damage will make you seem like an aggressor, because you are (either knowingly or not) helping perpetuate it.

Some of these highways have got to go by the way of the wrecking ball. Rip it out and try to recover what's left of the communities that were destroyed decades ago (or even today, in the case of Shreveport).

Removing freeways will not reconnect communities; they're already gone. What needs to happen is to keep what we have, and new communities will form slowly over decades, such as Lawrence MA as I described above and the Cambodian section of Lowell MA.
Logged
Clinched, minus I-93 (I'm missing a few miles and my file is incorrect)

Traveled, plus US 13, 44, and 50, and several state routes

I will be in Burlington VT for the eclipse.

Henry

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 8478
  • Age: 53
  • Location: Chicago, IL/Seattle, WA
  • Last Login: March 18, 2024, 10:22:35 PM
    • Henry Watson's Online Freeway
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #27 on: April 28, 2022, 10:18:50 AM »

The more I think of it, the more I see a "guns don't kill people" deal. IOW, highways aren't racist, the people who build them are.
Logged
Go Cubs Go! Go Cubs Go! Hey Chicago, what do you say? The Cubs are gonna win today!

kphoger

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 29128
  • My 2 Achilles' heels: sarcasm & snark

  • Location: Wichita, KS
  • Last Login: March 18, 2024, 09:31:10 PM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #28 on: April 28, 2022, 10:21:36 AM »

The more I think of it, the more I see a "guns don't kill people" deal. IOW, highways aren't racist, the people who build them are.

Of course.  But the question is, Did the people's racism influence where and how highways were constructed–not whether they were in face racist people or not.
Logged
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. Dick
If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

thspfc

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 4253
  • Age: 1
  • Last Login: Today at 12:25:00 AM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #29 on: April 28, 2022, 12:19:59 PM »

The more I think of it, the more I see a "guns don't kill people" deal. IOW, highways aren't racist, the people who build them are.

Of course.  But the question is, Did the people's racism influence where and how highways were constructed–not whether they were in face racist people or not.
My answer to that would be a little bit, but I think it was more about money. Building on cheap land and where residents were less likely to put up a fight, or even have the means to put up a fight.
Logged

kphoger

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 29128
  • My 2 Achilles' heels: sarcasm & snark

  • Location: Wichita, KS
  • Last Login: March 18, 2024, 09:31:10 PM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #30 on: April 28, 2022, 12:29:53 PM »



The more I think of it, the more I see a "guns don't kill people" deal. IOW, highways aren't racist, the people who build them are.

Of course.  But the question is, Did the people's racism influence where and how highways were constructed–not whether they were in face racist people or not.

My answer to that would be a little bit, but I think it was more about money. Building on cheap land and where residents were less likely to put up a fight, or even have the means to put up a fight.

There could also be a middle-road answer–that racism did not prompt people to construct highways in such a way and in such locations as to purposely and negatively affect minorities in favor of whites, but that racism did prevent them from caring about such effects to the extent that they were known at the time.
Logged
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. Dick
If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

Max Rockatansky

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 24921
  • Age: 41
  • Location: Route 9, Sector 26
  • Last Login: Today at 12:44:16 AM
    • Gribblenation
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #31 on: April 28, 2022, 12:35:41 PM »



The more I think of it, the more I see a "guns don't kill people" deal. IOW, highways aren't racist, the people who build them are.

Of course.  But the question is, Did the people's racism influence where and how highways were constructed–not whether they were in face racist people or not.

My answer to that would be a little bit, but I think it was more about money. Building on cheap land and where residents were less likely to put up a fight, or even have the means to put up a fight.

There could also be a middle-road answer–that racism did not prompt people to construct highways in such a way and in such locations as to purposely and negatively affect minorities in favor of whites, but that racism did prevent them from caring about such effects to the extent that they were known at the time.

It was once thought that slum clearance would nullify the reasons it existed rather than push it elsewhere.  It is fascinating to read 1950s and 1960s eras studies on the topic in the California Highways & Public Works volume.  They really didn’t have a solid idea what effects would be caused by Freeway and Expressway development, just guesses.
Logged

kphoger

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 29128
  • My 2 Achilles' heels: sarcasm & snark

  • Location: Wichita, KS
  • Last Login: March 18, 2024, 09:31:10 PM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #32 on: April 28, 2022, 12:40:20 PM »

It was once thought that slum clearance would nullify the reasons it existed rather than push it elsewhere.  It is fascinating to read 1950s and 1960s eras studies on the topic in the California Highways & Public Works volume.  They really didn’t have a solid idea what effects would be caused by Freeway and Expressway development, just guesses.

And, even on this forum, people have purported that those whose homes were demolished could have simply moved–presumably into non-slum/non-ghetto housing.  It does seem commonsense to wonder why, if that had been true, they hadn't already moved into better conditions...
Logged
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. Dick
If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

Max Rockatansky

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 24921
  • Age: 41
  • Location: Route 9, Sector 26
  • Last Login: Today at 12:44:16 AM
    • Gribblenation
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #33 on: April 28, 2022, 12:49:15 PM »

It was once thought that slum clearance would nullify the reasons it existed rather than push it elsewhere.  It is fascinating to read 1950s and 1960s eras studies on the topic in the California Highways & Public Works volume.  They really didn’t have a solid idea what effects would be caused by Freeway and Expressway development, just guesses.

And, even on this forum, people have purported that those whose homes were demolished could have simply moved–presumably into non-slum/non-ghetto housing.  It does seem commonsense to wonder why, if that had been true, they hadn't already moved into better conditions...

At the time it likely depended on numerous societal factors outside the domain of highway development.  But all the same, in those California Division of Highways studies were largely concerned with the effects on local business or the flow of traffic on the older through roads.  From how it reads it comes off as bureaucratic and narrowly focused, with very limited scope on the study of the effects on actual people.  I definitely don’t get racism out of it, but I do see new practices at play with then totally unknown long term effects. 

But this is why I feel there needs to be some degree of caution with injecting modern views into past highway development practices.  It is way too easy to make the leap of logic sometimes 5-6 decades on into highway development practices and assume past practices all to be something more than actually were. 
« Last Edit: April 28, 2022, 12:54:11 PM by Max Rockatansky »
Logged

kphoger

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 29128
  • My 2 Achilles' heels: sarcasm & snark

  • Location: Wichita, KS
  • Last Login: March 18, 2024, 09:31:10 PM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #34 on: April 28, 2022, 01:03:39 PM »

But this is why I feel there needs to be some degree of caution with injecting modern views into past highway development practices.  It is way too easy to make the leap of logic sometimes 5-6 decades on into highway development practices and assume past practices all to be something more than actually were. 

There needs to be a large degree of caution when injecting modern views into past anything.  The inability or unwillingness of this generation to view past epochs through any worldview but that of its own modern time and place–this frustrates me often.  The smugness with which this generation considers itself to be the pinnacle of liberal civilization, and with which it sneers at past society as ignorant or misguided or backward or even evil, while ignoring the obvious fact that future generations will likely sneer at ours in similar manner–this irritates me to no end.
Logged
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. Dick
If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

Max Rockatansky

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 24921
  • Age: 41
  • Location: Route 9, Sector 26
  • Last Login: Today at 12:44:16 AM
    • Gribblenation
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #35 on: April 28, 2022, 01:21:51 PM »

But this is why I feel there needs to be some degree of caution with injecting modern views into past highway development practices.  It is way too easy to make the leap of logic sometimes 5-6 decades on into highway development practices and assume past practices all to be something more than actually were. 

There needs to be a large degree of caution when injecting modern views into past anything.  The inability or unwillingness of this generation to view past epochs through any worldview but that of its own modern time and place–this frustrates me often.  The smugness with which this generation considers itself to be the pinnacle of liberal civilization, and with which it sneers at past society as ignorant or misguided or backward or even evil, while ignoring the obvious fact that future generations will likely sneer at ours in similar manner–this irritates me to no end.

It is incredibly difficult for a great many people to understand anything immediately out of their small bubble in this world, much less past events.  Rarely does anything historic come with an overt and simple explanation, especially the topic of this thread.  This is why I almost universally dismiss the arguments made by the New Urbanism crowd towards highway removal.  Rarely does that crowd try to actually view anything from a neutral and detached historical analysis in favor of modern assumptions. 
Logged

SEWIGuy

  • *
  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 4070
  • Grid Anarchist

  • Last Login: March 18, 2024, 08:05:19 PM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #36 on: April 28, 2022, 01:31:56 PM »

But this is why I feel there needs to be some degree of caution with injecting modern views into past highway development practices.  It is way too easy to make the leap of logic sometimes 5-6 decades on into highway development practices and assume past practices all to be something more than actually were. 

There needs to be a large degree of caution when injecting modern views into past anything.  The inability or unwillingness of this generation to view past epochs through any worldview but that of its own modern time and place–this frustrates me often.  The smugness with which this generation considers itself to be the pinnacle of liberal civilization, and with which it sneers at past society as ignorant or misguided or backward or even evil, while ignoring the obvious fact that future generations will likely sneer at ours in similar manner–this irritates me to no end.


I am not sure what generation you are talking about, but what you are describing is hardly new.
Logged

kphoger

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 29128
  • My 2 Achilles' heels: sarcasm & snark

  • Location: Wichita, KS
  • Last Login: March 18, 2024, 09:31:10 PM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #37 on: April 28, 2022, 02:04:16 PM »

I am not sure what generation you are talking about, but what you are describing is hardly new.

True.  Maybe it's just because a lot of the older folks I know are highly literate, that by comparison the younger folks seem less able or willing to do otherwise than what I've been accusing them of.

C. S. Lewis lamented the same thing as I've been, several decades ago.

Quote from: C. S. Lewis – “On the Reading of Old Books”  (introduction to Athaniasius' "On the Incarnation")
Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet.  [...]  It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook–even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united–united with each other and against earlier and later ages–by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century–the blindness about which posterity will ask, “But how could they have thought that?” –lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.
Logged
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. Dick
If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

GaryV

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 3737
  • Location: Southeast Michigan
  • Last Login: March 18, 2024, 07:10:05 PM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #38 on: April 28, 2022, 03:11:26 PM »

In some aspects, building of highways was just another feature of "urban renewal", whatever that had come to mean. I was only a child in the 60's growing up in a total white bread neighborhood and school, and I'm still older than most people on this forum, so we really don't have a good understanding of the mindset back then. But there was some sentiment that, if we tear down the slums and build projects, "those people" will be better off. The fact that they were targeting "those" people might reflect on the racial mindset of the time.

Still as someone mentioned, without urban renewal initiatives, many low-income people had no options. If the government would pay you to move out of the path of a freeway or a project, you had an option that you didn't have before when no one wanted the place you were living. And in hindsight we know how the projects didn't work out - they ended up trading one kind of slum for another.
Logged

thspfc

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 4253
  • Age: 1
  • Last Login: Today at 12:25:00 AM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #39 on: April 28, 2022, 04:04:56 PM »

But this is why I feel there needs to be some degree of caution with injecting modern views into past highway development practices.  It is way too easy to make the leap of logic sometimes 5-6 decades on into highway development practices and assume past practices all to be something more than actually were. 

There needs to be a large degree of caution when injecting modern views into past anything.  The inability or unwillingness of this generation to view past epochs through any worldview but that of its own modern time and place–this frustrates me often.  The smugness with which this generation considers itself to be the pinnacle of liberal civilization, and with which it sneers at past society as ignorant or misguided or backward or even evil, while ignoring the obvious fact that future generations will likely sneer at ours in similar manner–this irritates me to no end.
All of that is true, but I don't know understand it irritates you. It's possible to look down upon certain things while recognizing that other things look down upon you.
Logged

Scott5114

  • *
  • *
  • Online Online

  • Posts: 19829
  • Nit picker of unprecedented pedantry

  • Age: 34
  • Location: Las Vegas, NV
  • Last Login: Today at 02:20:41 AM
    • Denexa 100% Plastic Playing Cards
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #40 on: April 28, 2022, 04:43:40 PM »

There needs to be a large degree of caution when injecting modern views into past anything.  The inability or unwillingness of this generation to view past epochs through any worldview but that of its own modern time and place–this frustrates me often.  The smugness with which this generation considers itself to be the pinnacle of liberal civilization, and with which it sneers at past society as ignorant or misguided or backward or even evil, while ignoring the obvious fact that future generations will likely sneer at ours in similar manner–this irritates me to no end.

It can be seen as a feature and not a bug–such people are not afraid to stand up for what's right, even if the one they stand against is powerful or has entrenched interests. (After all, that worldview is fundamentally incompatible with "that's the way we've always done it".) Such a mindset can be a powerful force for good if applied in the right place at the right time.

Applied in the wrong place at the wrong time, it's just annoying, though.
Logged
uncontrollable freak sardine salad chef

abefroman329

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 4871
  • Age: 44
  • Location: Chicago
  • Last Login: October 17, 2023, 11:38:46 AM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #41 on: April 28, 2022, 04:55:06 PM »

future generations will likely sneer at ours in similar manner
One would hope, particularly since we seem to be at a metaphorical precipice before the rights people have earned through decades of hard work are rolled back.
Logged

kphoger

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 29128
  • My 2 Achilles' heels: sarcasm & snark

  • Location: Wichita, KS
  • Last Login: March 18, 2024, 09:31:10 PM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #42 on: April 28, 2022, 05:01:07 PM »


future generations will likely sneer at ours in similar manner

One would hope, particularly since we seem to be at a metaphorical precipice before the rights people have earned through decades of hard work are rolled back.

Perhaps you're missing my point.  In the area of equality and rights and such, even today's progressives will certainly, seventy years from now, be found to have had quite unpalatable positions.  We just don't know right now which positions those are.  And seventy years from now, today's progressives will be called backward and biased and bigoted.  One would hope that future generations will be able to view our current society with more gracious eyes than those through which we today tend to view generations past.
Logged
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. Dick
If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

thspfc

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 4253
  • Age: 1
  • Last Login: Today at 12:25:00 AM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #43 on: April 28, 2022, 05:09:11 PM »

future generations will likely sneer at ours in similar manner
One would hope, particularly since we seem to be at a metaphorical precipice before the rights people have earned through decades of hard work are rolled back.
Hasn’t that been 10 years away for about 50 years now?
Logged

1

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 14615
  • Age: 25
  • Location: MA/NH border
  • Last Login: March 18, 2024, 09:41:17 PM
    • Flickr account
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #44 on: April 28, 2022, 05:15:24 PM »

future generations will likely sneer at ours in similar manner
One would hope, particularly since we seem to be at a metaphorical precipice before the rights people have earned through decades of hard work are rolled back.
Hasn’t that been 10 years away for about 50 years now?

No, it hasn't. It's been the last few years only.
Logged
Clinched, minus I-93 (I'm missing a few miles and my file is incorrect)

Traveled, plus US 13, 44, and 50, and several state routes

I will be in Burlington VT for the eclipse.

abefroman329

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 4871
  • Age: 44
  • Location: Chicago
  • Last Login: October 17, 2023, 11:38:46 AM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #45 on: April 28, 2022, 05:37:34 PM »

One would hope that future generations will be able to view our current society with more gracious eyes than those through which we today tend to view generations past.
(a) I'm really tired of being lectured on the need to show "grace" to the oppressors and not the oppressed
(b) There's a long list of things that were OK when I was my son's age and aren't OK now, and I don't look back on it and think "oh, that was OK then," because...it really wasn't.
Logged

Max Rockatansky

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 24921
  • Age: 41
  • Location: Route 9, Sector 26
  • Last Login: Today at 12:44:16 AM
    • Gribblenation
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #46 on: April 28, 2022, 05:44:32 PM »

One would hope that future generations will be able to view our current society with more gracious eyes than those through which we today tend to view generations past.
(a) I'm really tired of being lectured on the need to show "grace" to the oppressors and not the oppressed
(b) There's a long list of things that were OK when I was my son's age and aren't OK now, and I don't look back on it and think "oh, that was OK then," because...it really wasn't.

Just throwing this out there, but is that not a broad based assumption that most people past tense were the ones doing the oppressing?  Certainly history is full of horrific villainous types who deserve scorn for their racist ideals and actions.  That said, as jaded as I am towards humanity I can’t bring to myself to really believe the majority of people were willfully malicious on mass by default. 
« Last Edit: April 28, 2022, 05:47:02 PM by Max Rockatansky »
Logged

abefroman329

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 4871
  • Age: 44
  • Location: Chicago
  • Last Login: October 17, 2023, 11:38:46 AM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #47 on: April 28, 2022, 05:51:43 PM »

One would hope that future generations will be able to view our current society with more gracious eyes than those through which we today tend to view generations past.
(a) I'm really tired of being lectured on the need to show "grace" to the oppressors and not the oppressed
(b) There's a long list of things that were OK when I was my son's age and aren't OK now, and I don't look back on it and think "oh, that was OK then," because...it really wasn't.

Just throwing this out there, but is that not a broad based assumption that most people past tense were the ones doing the oppressing?  Certainly history is full of horrific villainous types who deserve scorn for their racist ideals and actions.  That said, as jaded as I am towards humanity I can’t bring to myself to really believe the majority of people were willfully malicious on mass by default.
I agree that it's overly broad, but I'm also not sure where to draw the line.  I guess it depends whether you think silent assent/complicity constitutes participation.
Logged

kphoger

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 29128
  • My 2 Achilles' heels: sarcasm & snark

  • Location: Wichita, KS
  • Last Login: March 18, 2024, 09:31:10 PM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #48 on: April 28, 2022, 07:57:36 PM »

I agree that it's overly broad, but I'm also not sure where to draw the line.  I guess it depends whether you think silent assent/complicity constitutes participation.

But even participation in something that hardly anybody–whether individuals or society as a whole–considered at all wrong to begin with hardly deserves such scorn and derision as people tend to throw.  We should be much more willing and eager to deride someone for acting out of step with the current canon of social standards and expectations, but much less willing and eager to deride someone from a different age for acting out of step with those same current standards.  Instead, a fair assessment should at least involve some pretense of attempting to understand the worldview in which they operated.

None of that should at all imply withholding grace from the oppressed.  And neither will it necessarily lead one to the conclusion that something done back then was 'OK'.  But without any attempt to put oneself in the mind and world of a bygone age, it is impossible to fairly judge the actions done by someone during that age.

Tying it back to the topic of the thread, it seems highway planners of decades past (1) were primarily focused on the cost of land acquisition and on traffic flow, not primarily on marginalizing the already marginalized among them; (2) did not have the benefit of hindsight as to how their decisions would affect the future of said marginalized people; and (3) in at least some cases genuinely believed that the removal of derelict properties in those neighborhoods would actually improve the lives of the people living there.  We can call their actions short-sighted or socially irresponsible, and we might have a point to make there.  But to simply smear them as 'racist' and to smear their decisions as 'racist' is not only a huge gloss over a complicated history, but it is moreover unfair to the character and intentions of the individuals involved.  And all because we impose our own sensibilities and standards, and especially the knowledge and understanding we have accumulated since then, on people in the past–who had a different perspective than we have, both in terms of social standards and of the tools at hand with which to measure the ramifications of their actions.
Logged
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. Dick
If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

brad2971

  • *
  • Offline Offline

  • Posts: 497
  • Native Roadgeeking Son of the Great Plains

  • Age: 53
  • Location: Denver, CO
  • Last Login: March 17, 2024, 04:42:41 PM
Re: Can a highway be racist?
« Reply #49 on: April 28, 2022, 08:21:20 PM »



The more I think of it, the more I see a "guns don't kill people" deal. IOW, highways aren't racist, the people who build them are.

Of course.  But the question is, Did the people's racism influence where and how highways were constructed–not whether they were in face racist people or not.

My answer to that would be a little bit, but I think it was more about money. Building on cheap land and where residents were less likely to put up a fight, or even have the means to put up a fight.

There could also be a middle-road answer–that racism did not prompt people to construct highways in such a way and in such locations as to purposely and negatively affect minorities in favor of whites, but that racism did prevent them from caring about such effects to the extent that they were known at the time.

It was once thought that slum clearance would nullify the reasons it existed rather than push it elsewhere.  It is fascinating to read 1950s and 1960s eras studies on the topic in the California Highways & Public Works volume.  They really didn’t have a solid idea what effects would be caused by Freeway and Expressway development, just guesses.

And what's to say today's focus on light-rail and commuter rail in urban cities won't be seen as wrong-headed in another 20-30 years. The folks at the Bus Riders Union in L.A. have more than a few things to say about LACTMA expansion of light-rail in L.A. County, none of them good:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_Riders_Union_(Los_Angeles)

Maybe the Bus Riders Union is committing the (more often than not) unpardonable sin of being ahead of its time.
Logged

 


Opinions expressed here on belong solely to the poster and do not represent or reflect the opinions or beliefs of AARoads, its creators and/or associates.