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1. This is from 1974. Do you have anything a bit more contemporary to make your point?
2. What is your point anyway? The title of this thread is "why do we have housing projects". Your video is about a single family home suburban neighborhood, what does it have to do with public housing projects?
The video shows that the history of the present is built on the past. Once you marginalize people in certain neighborhoods with sub standard conditions in infrastructures, education and lack of proximity to the power centers you create a cycle.
Imagine this you were born black and in poverty. You live in one of the projects. Your parents and most of the people there are not very educated. Many people are on public assistance. Some people get into the drug trade and other criminal activities because while dangerous it could give you some capital to do things with.
The environment is often stressful and sometimes violent incidents occur.
But you are born into this so to you it seems normal. That is a cycle. It becomes tradition.
Now suppose you were born black but in some other part of the city in good condition. You parents are college educated black professionals. That seems normal to you. You are well spoken and knowledgeable because your parents are . You get into a good college and get a well paid job.
The video shows that the history of the present is built on the past. Once you marginalize people in certain neighborhoods with sub standard conditions in infrastructures, education and lack of proximity to the power centers you create a cycle.
Imagine this you were born black and in poverty. You live in one of the projects. Your parents and most of the people there are not very educated. Many people are on public assistance. Some people get into the drug trade and other criminal activities because while dangerous it could give you some capital to do things with.
The environment is often stressful and sometimes violent incidents occur.
But you are born into this so to you it seems normal. That is a cycle. It becomes tradition.
Now suppose you were born black but in some other part of the city in good condition. You parents are college educated black professionals. That seems normal to you. You are well spoken and knowledgeable because your parents are . You get into a good college and get a well paid job.
The thing is it's the far left in NYC who railles against gentrification and race mixing nowadays. Yes, displacement is bad, but the fact is that gentrification has been a hugely positive force in integrating neighborhoods and helping to right this historical injustice. If we had just kept on doing what we were doing under Bloomberg and building 80/20s, replacing NYCHA with mixed-use, mixed income developments we would be better equipped to break this cycle of poor schools, bad environments and poor social outcomes.
But in the end, all these activists do is kill any attempt to rectify the situation by chasing away any major developments (unless they are as-of-right, which means they can't block it). Amazon was their major victory, but they've tried to wreck havoc multiple places like Two Bridges, Lenox Terrace, Inwood and now Industry City...
amazon would have destroyed astoria. It was already nice.
Amazon belongs in Newark. Also, amazon did not need incentives. Other tech companies have come without incentives. Its NYC. Everyone will come...unless deblasio keeps bringing back the 70s.
I don't know about Yonkers, but San Francisco has low-townhouse public housing as pretty as Mediterranean tourist complexes in the south of Spain. It is as rife with gangs, drugs and murder as any other public housing in any large US city. It does not matter what architectural style buildings are, it only matters who lives there. Stuy Town/Peter Cooper Village in Manhattan is built exactly like public housing projects, yet this is a highly desirable private rental housing for young (and older) professionals, with excellent quality of life.
I personally love brick-tower-in-the-park architecture of public housing projects in NYC. It is not the architecture of the projects, it is the BEHAVIOR of PEOPLE who live in the projects... but those people (and their elected representatives) will always find some excuse for their s**tty behavior, no matter how absurd, including the architectural style of the buildings. "He's a good boy, he dindo nuffin, he's not responsible for mugging and murdering, the architectural style of projects is responsible for it, the architecture is criminal and systemically racist" (except that professionals are happy to live in the exact same architecture of Stuy Town/Peter Cooper Village without mugging and murdering anyone)
They've always got an excuse loaded and ready to go to poo-poo away black crime and underachievement. Some people start out in tougher spots but at some point being a loser or a winner becomes a personal choice and there ain't any getting around that elephant in the room.
amazon would have destroyed astoria. It was already nice.
Amazon belongs in Newark. Also, amazon did not need incentives. Other tech companies have come without incentives. Its NYC. Everyone will come...unless deblasio keeps bringing back the 70s.
Never cared for Astoria. Felt "off" to me for some reason.
The video shows that the history of the present is built on the past. Once you marginalize people in certain neighborhoods with sub standard conditions in infrastructures, education and lack of proximity to the power centers you create a cycle.
Imagine this you were born black and in poverty. You live in one of the projects. Your parents and most of the people there are not very educated. Many people are on public assistance. Some people get into the drug trade and other criminal activities because while dangerous it could give you some capital to do things with.
The environment is often stressful and sometimes violent incidents occur.
But you are born into this so to you it seems normal. That is a cycle. It becomes tradition.
Now suppose you were born black but in some other part of the city in good condition. You parents are college educated black professionals. That seems normal to you. You are well spoken and knowledgeable because your parents are . You get into a good college and get a well paid job.
Sounds like you are describing Darwinism even within black culture. The college educated black professionals were the higher IQ and harder working ones and where they ended up was likely no accident.
You put a smart and industrious black person in the projects (like if they magically woke up there one day for whatever reason), they wouldn't be there long. Likewise you could offer some lazy underachieving loser black person all the advantages and they will still be be a loser.
Anybody with even the slightest belief that they are in charge of their own life knows this. The apologists always want to outsource blame and never put it where it belongs.
The video shows that the history of the present is built on the past. Once you marginalize people in certain neighborhoods with sub standard conditions in infrastructures, education and lack of proximity to the power centers you create a cycle.
Imagine this you were born black and in poverty. You live in one of the projects. Your parents and most of the people there are not very educated. Many people are on public assistance. Some people get into the drug trade and other criminal activities because while dangerous it could give you some capital to do things with.
The environment is often stressful and sometimes violent incidents occur.
But you are born into this so to you it seems normal. That is a cycle. It becomes tradition.
Now suppose you were born black but in some other part of the city in good condition. You parents are college educated black professionals. That seems normal to you. You are well spoken and knowledgeable because your parents are . You get into a good college and get a well paid job.
As some other posters responded to you, those are just excuses. The famous economist Thomas Sowell from the video earlier in this thread grew up in deep poverty 80+ years ago, I believe in Harlem. People in public projects were not marginalized with substandard conditions - on the contrary, projects were built as modern structures, and were offered for free as a starting point to anyone without resources. One of the posters on this forum, who did well financially in life (Mathjak), who isn't black, grew up in a NYC project. People stay in projects because they DECIDE to stay in projects. In one of the threads, probably this one, an interviewee is bragging (!?) about having lived in the same project for 75 years. The laws of the US and public schools in the US have made half a century of extreme effort to erase racism, and posting your 46 year old video, claiming that it in any way represents present conditions in the US is beyond ridiculous. Information has been so pervasive and accessible in the past 20 years that the millenial generation of people in the projects have zero excuse for saying they have not been exposed to the ways of getting self-sufficient.
I grew up with less than what people in the projects get from taxpayers, in a bankrupt "socialist" country that was sliding into a civil war, with parents of two different ethnic groups/religions that hated each other (not my parents who have loved each other for 66 years, but their social groups that hated each other), where I was routinely told that my father marrying my mother was like mating with a dog. So? How would that excuse me from learning chemistry? And how would that give me an excuse to mug and kill?
Adding some context - White Flight Canarsie Brooklyn. An Italian/Jewish neighborhood "abandoned" in the late 80's and by the 90's was immigrant West Indian, Jamaican, Haitian or black neighborhood. These were suburban homes, nice lot sizes, that was aspirational at some point, that deteriorated slowly. By the mid 90's metal detectors were installed, children had to open up their bags and possibly searched - weapons and gangs.
Having grown up through all of this as a child, in the public school system in Canarsie, I watched it transition from a solid core of public schools with G&T, Astral program that would eventually deteriorate into top programs by names only and schools that no longer considered top tier. By this I meant, we were above grade level learning, applied to Mark Twain, Lagaurdia, and Hunter for Junior HS. Our goal was to go above and beyond, despite being a mix of kids from the neighborhood - inclusive of those that lived in the PJs.
However, the transition led to a decline. Same neighborhood, but the family structures changed completely. Parents working 2-3 jobs, no one showing up for parent teacher conferences. Children's education were directly related. South Shore and Canarsie HS were both closed and reopened as 4 different schools within the same building.
Those with the means sold for cheap and left. With it was the family culture, the aspirations to excel and succeed, ultimately replaced by how to survive, not get robbed for your sneakers, or beat up in the lunchrooms. Again same neighborhood and same teachers for some time just different cultures and people. Point is, you can't force or motivate children to want greatness when it never existed in their family life. The concern was being the king of your block and no longer conquering the world.
Those with the means sold for cheap and left. With it was the family culture, the aspirations to excel and succeed, ultimately replaced by how to survive, not get robbed for your sneakers, or beat up in the lunchrooms. Again same neighborhood and same teachers for some time just different cultures and people. Point is, you can't force or motivate children to want greatness when it never existed in their family life. The concern was being the king of your block and no longer conquering the world.
Better yet, the goal should not be to be the king of anything or conquer anything, but just to be normally functional and civilized. Being able to live in peace, and lawfully earn the necessities for self (and family if you have it) should be the general goal. Less than that is unacceptable, more than that is unimportant/optional. In Scandinavia, the popular prevailing form of social behavior is something they call Jantelagen or the Law of Jante (Jante is an invented village from their old novel). This folk law of common behavior basically says "you are not special, you are not better than anyone else, and it is very embarassing/idiotic to try to stand out from the average normality". Scandinavian countries are happy, prosperous, and largely free of crime (ie, almost everyone in those countries who is not prosperous, or is a criminal, is an immigrant that does not understand the Jantelagen :-).
and you still try to pretend that history does not create tradition
and you still try to use anecdotal accounts to ignore the realities
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