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The anti-gentrification crowd wants to complain just for the sake of complaining. There's no substance to anything they ever say.
"We need to preserve black neighborhoods for their culture, etc"
Any white person who says something similar about predominantly-white areas/cities/countries would be tarred and feathered as a white supremacist if they said something similar to this. Not listening to this argument, ever.
"It makes cities too expensive for poor people"
Okay? Why can't they just move to cheaper areas? What do you even propose doing to halt natural price appreciation? Why does like, 50% of the city need to be reserved for low-income people? Is 20% not enough? It's not like the CoA is low on undesirable areas. Maybe they move from an area that's improved a lot to an area that's still behind. I don't see why I should care about this.
"It's bad because history and blah blah"
I can't think of anything less productive than obsessively basing decisions around things that happened generations, and even centuries ago. It's a completely absurd premise.
I can't think of anything less productive than obsessively basing decisions around things that happened generations, and even centuries ago. It's a completely absurd premise.
I can understand why those whose families likely benefited (and still benefit) from those "things that happened" would be more inclined to dismiss their relevance.
I can understand why those whose families likely benefited (and still benefit) from those "things that happened" would be more inclined to dismiss their relevance.
Nobody in America is benefiting from slavery or Jim Crow in 2021. You want to know who is still befitting though? The same very people in West Africa, North Africa and parts of the Middle East who are still to this day practicing chattel slavery. Sit and think how asinine it is for people to obsess over things that ended here in America generations ago yet they are still happening back in Africa over 150 years later. I am starting to think that people like Thomas Sowell and Morgan Freeman are right - the gripes with slavery and all that came after it was abolished in Europe and North America need to be directed at the very people who perfected chattel slavery and are still practicing it to this very day. Those are the people who need to answer for it not people who abolished it many of whom lost their life over it. The slave traders in Africa never stopped yet nobody focuses on that. We are still focused on things that ended forever ago.
I can understand why those whose families likely benefited (and still benefit) from those "things that happened" would be more inclined to dismiss their relevance.
I'm from a family of German farmers who immigrated to the Great Lakes region in the early 19th century...and didn't leave until the 1980's...
Now, those French b*stards who desecrated Bavaria in the 11th century are going to pay! Their misdeeds will never be forgiven!
But you denied that the construction of said roadways disrupted AA communities and you believe that these were not targeted attempts, this is where you are incorrect. While you are correct that GA-400 through Buckhead as well as I-85 through NE metro ATL did disrupt communities regardless of race and that they are necessary corridors, you are overlooking that there is plenty of historical evidence that politicians have purposefully routed (not planned but ROUTED) certain roadways to segregate communities and the effects of them are LONG withstanding.
There's no doubt that early highway planners thought that some of these roads could serve as racial barriers. That was an utterly contemptible motive.
However, it turns out they were wrong. It didn't take long for minority populations to transcend these supposed barriers in massive numbers. For many decades, people in the ATL have settled with little regard to which side of the highway they are on.
And of course, regardless of whatever ideas these nefarious 1950s planners had in mind, the roads were going to be built anyway. And they've likewise been rammed through white communities with no consideration for the damage, destruction and separation they produced.
Fortunately we humans are a hardy lot. You can lay a 1000 foot wide strip of concrete through the heart of our neighborhoods and before you know it, people are going over, under and around it and knitting things back together.
Nobody in America is benefiting from slavery or Jim Crow in 2021. You want to know who is still befitting though? The same very people in West Africa, North Africa and parts of the Middle East who are still to this day practicing chattel slavery. Sit and think how asinine it is for people to obsess over things that ended here in America generations ago yet they are still happening back in Africa over 150 years later. I am starting to think that people like Thomas Sowell and Morgan Freeman are right - the gripes with slavery and all that came after it was abolished in Europe and North America need to be directed at the very people who perfected chattel slavery and are still practicing it to this very day. Those are the people who need to answer for it not people who abolished it many of whom lost their life over it. The slave traders in Africa never stopped yet nobody focuses on that. We are still focused on things that ended forever ago.
Befitting? Calm down.
If you believe the gravity of those conditions have zero effect on current economic and social issues, then it's clear that what you position as arguments and counter points are just fronts for ignorance. I'll mute/block your posts at this time. Enjoy! Pssst: this is the ATLANTA, USA, NA forum.
It's extremely unproductive talk. You can't say out of one side of your mouth that certain groups in America "can't build wealth" then out of the other side of your mouth say when that opportunity arises like selling an expensive intown home or lot that it is "racist", not fair, or nefarious. It can't be both ways. And as you said nobody has ownership of any neighborhood or city. Last I checked anyone is free to move where they want provided they can afford it.
Considering that the median white household's wealth is about $188,000, and the average Black household's wealth is about $24,000, you're failing to address why the wealth gap exists and how that limits the mobility of Black families. While Atlanta is a Mecca for middle and upper income Black professionals, all it takes is a housing crisis or pandemic to wipe out any gains. It's going to take a couple more generations before things stabilize, and all the gaslighting you're doing doesn't help define the problem and come up with solutions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ronricks
You are leaving out I-485 which was a targeted attempt. It destroyed swaths of many intown neighborhoods and in the end there was nothing to show for it but a bunch of rubble, dirt, and uprooted trees.
You fail to talk about how and why 485 was never completed. The planned route was full of well-educated, wealthy white people who had the political and social clout to stop it. This is around the same time people were emboldened with the Save the Fox movement that saved the theater from demolition for BellSouth's tower. Considering the wealth and desirability in the neighborhoods near the planned route for 485, I'd say those neighborhoods have managed to turn the gash into an amenity.
When I-20 and the Grady Curve was cutting through the heart of Black communities in the 50s, there was no way those communities would have successfully stopped or altered the paths of those highways. Because of redlining by banks and other means of acquiring funds to keep up those homes and the war on drugs, those neighborhoods didn't have a fighting chance at maintaining their middle-class character.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ronricks
The America we have today is a direct result of the Industrial Revolution which was built mostly off the backs and sweat of Irish, Italian, German, English, Jewish etc. immigrants in the Northeast who worked in deplorable conditions for little to no pay. Black people who fled the South to places like Detroit and worked for Ford, GM, and Dodge were paid more money than the people in the factories in the Northeast. It's why there was a healthy black middle class in Detroit and the surrounding areas while the other people I mentioned lived in squalor in the Northeast.
For someone who likes to talk about history, you sure did miss the dates of the Industrial Revolution in the U.S. by about 150 years, which began in the late 1700s with the textile industry, which was mainly in the Northeast. Where do you think those textile mills got their cotton? How do you think the banks of Wall Street got their money? Did you know that the first bond market in the U.S. was backed by enslaved Africans as collateral? Some of those very banks like Chase are still in existence today. Many educational institutions also used slave labor and some schools like Georgetown had to sell their slaves in order to avoid bankruptcy. The very existence of this country, its institutions, and its wealth is because of the centuries of free labor long before we started cranking out cars.
As for the Black middle class in Detroit and what we now consider the Rust Belt, they were refugees from the deplorable treatment they experienced in the Jim Crow South. The North didn't turn out to be quite the promised land they thought it would be, but it was better than were they'd come from. It could be argued that if the brain drain of those families from the South hadn't happened, that this region would be much farther along. There's a book out by Charles Blow called "The Devil You Know" that talks about how much political and economic power Black communities could have had if they'd stayed, but he says it's not too late and that everyone should leave the North and return to cities in the South, which was a big part of why Georgia turned Blue this past election cycle.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ronricks
I live in 2021 not 1921. That is the difference here. Continuing to dwell on the past does absolutely nothing for anyone. Continuing to play the blame game and make excuses does absolutely nothing. That is the difference. A state being Red or Blue doesn't determine someones success or failures in life. That is just the kind of rationalization I am talking about.
Yes, we live in 2021, but as the pandemic has shown, if we ignore the lessons learned of 1921 with The Spanish Flu, then we are doomed to make the same mistakes in 2021. We're quickly approaching nearly the same amount of deaths of 675,000 people, but you'd think 100 years of medicine and lessons learned about social behaviour would have prevented us from being in this situation. You can act like history doesn't matter, but decisions made by your parents and grandparents and some of the policies and laws that were to your advantage because of race (and class) play a huge factor in who you are today.
Last edited by cparker73; 03-05-2021 at 01:11 AM..
The anti-gentrification crowd wants to complain just for the sake of complaining. There's no substance to anything they ever say.
"We need to preserve black neighborhoods for their culture, etc"
Any white person who says something similar about predominantly-white areas/cities/countries would be tarred and feathered as a white supremacist if they said something similar to this. Not listening to this argument, ever.
You're right that there are different standards, and that is because of the historic prioritization of one group at the expense of the another. Let's take it out of a Black vs. white context and think about what the city would lose if the Buford Hwy. corridor becomes another strip of "luxury" townhomes and brew pubs. If you go to the Atlanta History Center, they have a whole section that talks about the importance of that corridor to various Asian and Central American ethnic groups, who also have been marginalized. I understand neighborhoods change, and that areas need to be revitalized, but too often, that means wiping out what exists without trying to empower the people who have built the social fabric of a neighborhood.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Smocaine
I'm from a family of German farmers who immigrated to the Great Lakes region in the early 19th century...and didn't leave until the 1980's...
Now, those French b*stards who desecrated Bavaria in the 11th century are going to pay! Their misdeeds will never be forgiven!
Luckily, you're far enough removed from whatever tragedy your family went through that it seems more like a fairy tale than reality, but the last enslaved African American in the U.S. died in the 1970s. The last slave ship, The Clotilda, arrived just 160 years ago in Mobile, so there are Black people still alive today who had relationships with formerly enslaved people in their families. The psychic, physical, and economic harm is tangible and fresh despite the need for some people to try to diminish the impact it still plays today.
Last edited by cparker73; 03-05-2021 at 12:57 AM..
I lived in Cabbagetown from 1987 to 1993. I lived on the very streets and interacted with original natives who had generations of their families work in that cotton mill. I heard their life experiences straight from their own mouths. I know what it was like for them to live in Atlanta. Despite them being poor and white nobody advocated for them or tried to help them stay in their homes like we have today with various programs for intown minority neighborhoods. They were told to eat a **** sandwich and deal with it. Excuse me if I don't need to take your word for it. I heard it with my own two ears and saw it with my own two eyes.
Your arguments make no sense!! So because the city didn't protect those residents back in the 90s, and got told to "eat a **** sandwich, you yourself acknowledge that this was wrong! Yet today when it's happening again, you claim you can't see a problem with it?
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