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The Bronx population composition was purposely manipulated as part of an organized ethnic cleansing operation. Too many "white" ethnics that were building political power, Paul Blanchard's 1950s best seller American Freedom & Catholic Power describes the need for the Ethnic Cleansing that began in Ernest. These ethnics were dispersed as part of a large ethnic cleansing program that was executed across American cities. Cities with large ethnic populations were on the verge of dominating US political life, tipping the balance towards labor and away from the traditional ruling class banker control of American politics. Slaughter of Cites expands on the program.
The Bronx population composition was purposely manipulated as part of an organized ethnic cleansing operation. Too many "white" ethnics that were building political power, Paul Blanchard's 1950s best seller American Freedom & Catholic Power describes the need for the Ethnic Cleansing that began in Ernest. These ethnics were dispersed as part of a large ethnic cleansing program that was executed across American cities. Cities with large ethnic populations were on the verge of dominating US political life, tipping the balance towards labor and away from the traditional ruling class banker control of American politics. Slaughter of Cites expands on the program.
E. Michael Jones sees subversion of Catholics wherever he looks. He does have a unique view of the US though. From his website, https://culturewars.com/e-michael-jones:
"Jones decided to abandon academe and start a magazine instead. Initially known as Fidelity and now as Culture Wars, that magazine set out to explore the disarray in the Catholic Church that led to his firing. Over the course of the next few years, Jones and a host of like-minded writers began to uncover the sad story of the subversion of the Catholic faith at the hands of fellow Catholics in the years following the Second Vatican Council. In an article which has since become a classic, William Coulson described how Carl Rogers used sensitivity training to destroy the Immaculate Heart nuns in Los Angeles. Jones documented Rev. Theodore Hesburgh’s alienation of Notre Dame from the Catholic faith and Hesburgh’s collaboration with the Rockefellers to undermine Church teaching on contraception which led to that theft of Church property. Jones’s expose of Medjugorje in 1988 caused massive shock waves and equally massive defections from the subscriber base.
Then in the early ‘90s Jones was appointed the biographer of John Cardinal Krol, then archbishop emeritus of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, where Jones had grown up. After years of archival research, Jones told the real story of what happened to the Catholic Church in America during the 1960s with the publication of John Cardinal Krol and the Cultural Revolution. What previously looked like a civil war in the Church turned out to be a lot like Bismarck’s Kulturkampf of the 1870s in Germany. The similarities persuaded Jones to change the name of the magazine in the mid-1990s to Culture Wars, his translation of Kulturkampf. Since that time Culture Wars has become the world’s main resource in understanding how cultural warfare has advanced the interests of the American Empire and its systems of political control. In 2015 Fidelity Press published David Wemhoff’s book John Courtney Murray, Time/Life, and the American Proposition, which explains how Murray collaborated with Henry Luce, head of the Time/Life Empire, and C.D. Jackson of the CIA to infiltrate the Second Vatican Council and changes the Church’s teaching on the relationship between Church and State.
Jones’s book Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control in collaboration with the Polish Bishops’ pastoral led to the complete rout of what the bishops called “gender ideology” in Poland. In the past year, Jones has spoken on this and related topics in the United States, London, Berlin, Dar es Salaam, Musoma, Tehran, and Buenos Aires. Jones’s trip to Tanzania led to the newly released book The Broken Pump in Tanzania: Julius Nyerere and the Collapse of Development Economics."
As always when reading and interpreting someone else's opinion, consider the source. Consider pre-existing biases. Consider their agenda.
Right. I'm sure the Robert Moses stuff didn't help, but it clearly is nowhere near being the number one cause for the decline of the Bronx. The Bronx also had its worst days in the mid to late 70s, years after the Cross Bronx was built. And most Bronx neighborhoods are not split up by expressways.
Bay Ridge was split right down 7th Avenue by Moses's BQE (I-278) connection to the Verrazano. Bay Ridge remained a prosperous desirable neighborhood. Bay Ridge was in better shape before I-278 was built. An upscale area since the 1920s. Mostly one and two-family homes, and well-kept elevator apartment buildings. The areas of the Bronx split up by the CBE were already older neighborhoods filled with less desirable walk-up apartment buildings and frame 1 and 2 famliy homes, many already in poor shape.
Who can forget "Bonfire of the Vanities?" Interesting take on the Bronx from 2018 comparison with Tom Wolfe's novel:
"The Bonfire of the Vanities begins with a wrong turn in the Bronx, a turn that terrifies Sherman McCoy, a wealthy bond trader.
“He had to look twice to make sure he was in fact still driving on a New York street,” Tom Wolfe writes, opening his sprawling satire of 1980s New York City. “Block after block – how many? – six? Eight? A dozen? – entire blocks of the city without a building left standing. There were streets and curbing and sidewalks and light poles and nothing else.”
Seated in a $48,000 Mercedes Benz, McCoy and his extramarital love interest, Maria Ruskin, encounter some people from ethnic minority backgrounds. This leaves Ruskin in need of a vodka and orange, McCoy in need of a Scotch and a black teenage boy – Henry Lamb – in a coma. Sherman also rips his Savile Row jacket.
Racial tensions are stirred. A charismatic black reverend capitalises on the ire of the local community. A cynical district attorney uses the incident to get black votes. A washed up journalist spies a chance at redemption. McCoy goes on trial. He is acquitted but he loses his job, his wife, his child and his home.
More than 30 years later, in the days after Wolfe’s death at the age of 88, the Bronx is far removed from the dystopia he described.
In the 1980s, the South Bronx was still reeling from the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway, a road designed to ease traffic through Manhattan that essentially cut the most northerly borough in two, causing businesses to leave and residents to flee. Buildings were abandoned or set on fire, so owners could claim insurance. Unemployment and gangs were rife."
Bay Ridge was split right down 7th Avenue by Moses's BQE (I-278) connection to the Verrazano. Bay Ridge remained a prosperous desirable neighborhood. Bay Ridge was in better shape before I-278 was built. An upscale area since the 1920s. Mostly one and two-family homes, and well-kept elevator apartment buildings. The areas of the Bronx split up by the CBE were already older neighborhoods filled with less desirable walk-up apartment buildings and frame 1 and 2 famliy homes, many already in poor shape.
That's only true West of The Bronx River
East of it is mostly private homes and those neighborhoods were (too my knowledge) not destroyed by the arson wave
Well, I don't believe in conspiracy theories of any ethnic cleansing of the Bronx. Simply, once the opportunity was created for crime to move into the formerly peaceful neighborhoods in the borough, the crime naturally moved in, and peaceful folks were displaced out. The way to enable the return/new influx of peaceful folks into the Bronx would be exactly the reverse: remove the crime. Remove the criminals from the borough (into, eg, prisons), regardless of their race or economic status, but only on the basis of criminal activity, and that would fix the problem. The Bronx would be a normal place to live again in no time.
It downloaded automatically when I just clicked on the link. I have an Android phone, and nothing crashed, but this forum does not go through a secure connection, so such an automatic download worries me a bit.
Anyway, that is a technical side-issue of the thread itself. The Bronx areas mentioned in the link were changed beyond recognition after the increasing crime in these neighborhoods caused displacement of the original population of first occupants that lived there at the time those neighborhoods were built, and for a couple of decades later. This increase in crime was the only reason for the decline of quality of life in the neighborhoods - there is no reason to invent highways and other preposterous "reasons" for the change. It was crime, nothing else.
People who originally resided in these neighborhoods loved living there, and would have never left (expressway or no expressway) if they had not been forced out by crime. Hundreds of folks who grew up in Parkchester in the 1950s and 1960s (and 1940s if they are still alive :-) fly from everywhere for periodic very emotional reunions, marked by tremendous nostalgia for the neighborhood of their childhood. Just google "Parkchester reunion". It even has a Facebook page, though I think it might be a closed group.
But urbanistic/architectural trends go in and out of fashion all the time. These neighborhoods in the Bronx could be revitalized only if there is a major resurgence of interest in mid-century architecture/design, and the 1950s ways of family living in NYC. I don't see that happening, but nothing is ever either expected or impossible when it comes to trends and fashions - unpredictability of periodic loss of interest in something, or return of interest in it, is the essence of trends and fashions.
It was a combination of things. Crime was one of them. The construction of expressways certainly didn't help. Are you telling me you would've moved to Parkchester if it was right next to the Cross Bronx Expressway? Me thinks not. :hamd
It was a combination of things. Crime was one of them. The construction of expressways certainly didn't help. Are you telling me you would've moved to Parkchester if it was right next to the Cross Bronx Expressway? Me thinks not. :hamd
I haven't moved to Parkchester, and am not planning to (I described the situation a million times, so am not going to repeat it). I live in one of two best parts of Boston, close to the entrance into Mass Pike - have lived here for 20+ years, this is my primary address. I installed extremely good sound insulation windows, which is what I would do if I chose to live near an expressway anywhere. An expressway would be no factor in my decision to live somewhere, I obviously do not have a problem with it, since I actually DO live very close to an expressway. I don't buy that as even a remotely contributory reason for deterioration of a neighborhood.
I haven't moved to Parkchester, and am not planning to (I described the situation a *million times, so am not going to repeat it). I live in one of two best parts of Boston, close to the entrance into Mass Pike - have lived here for 20+ years, this is my primary address. I installed extremely good sound insulation windows, which is what I would do if I chose to live near an expressway anywhere. An expressway would be no factor in my decision to live somewhere, I obviously do not have a problem with it, since I actually DO live very close to an expressway. I don't buy that as even a remotely contributory reason for deterioration of a neighborhood.
I'm confused. You BOUGHT a *condo* in Parkchester, didn't you?
I'm confused. You BOUGHT a *condo* in Parkchester, didn't you?
I have bought a condo in Parkchester, correct. What I have in that condo is a mattress with linens to sleep on, a lamp, a chair, some cosmeticals in the bathroom, a few basic dishes in the kitchen, and about a dozen reference books/ visitor guides about NYC. I do not consider that "moving in". Let's not split hairs about terminology here again, but you move in somewhere when you move all your belongings there, when you have all you need to live there, and when the place is your legal mailing address. You don't move in a hotel if you spend a few weeks there on/off, so likewise I have not moved in a condo which I use only for sleeping there when I go visit NYC.
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