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I don't know what is worse, blaming the lack of cicadas on racism or global warming? Both can certainly be the reason for the lack of bugs. I don't think it is segregation or redlining that did it but who knows. Leave it to a Lefty to slither through the weeds to emerge with some whacky theory about why city kids are not seeing cicadas.
Maybe the bugs got the word that cities are not the place to be due to Covid concerns, rising crime, shootouts in the streets, random assaults, the woke mob cancelling everything and the SJW's tearing down the rest and not to mention the defunding of Police. Who would want to visit a city? It turns out not even the bugs.
Sounds equally absurd as say many; our nation's debt deriving from 1 form of Welfare (impoverished Urbanites) oppose to various forms; write offs & corporations receiving great welfare handouts.
Like a teacher named Joanne Barber. she says she uses the violent Black Lives Matter protests, ignited by the death of George Floyd last year, “to teach more about race”in her second-grade class. "I am willing to be that teacher that has those hard conversations.” She boasted that she injects"race and equity into every subject” and “every day" in her class "is filled with race education.”
Status:
"This too shall pass. But possibly, like a kidney stone."
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The point of the article is specific to Indy, where like many cities, there is a toxic dumping ground right in the middle of where people of color live.
Same thing here, in Austin, off Montopolis and it took a heroic environmental effort to clean it back up, after decades of toxic waste dumping, an effort that's still ongoing, to restore healthy greenspace in East Austin. Similar to what you can find in west Austin, that has never been site a toxic dump.
Saying, "well grow some trees" is this generation's "let them eat cake".
The reason there aren't cicadas in the poorer parts of Indy, is because the brownfields. That don't exist in the wealthier sections.
As far as private Urban development, that happens because for financial reason and has absolutely nothing to do with the color of skin. Companies and developers might pull out of urban investments but it has ZERO to do with skin color.
Sure it's for financial reasons - because low-income black neighborhoods are less expensive to bulldoze and redevelop. Low-income people have fewer resources to fight city hall.
In 1960, the city of Cincinnati purchased and razed nearly every single property in the West End neighborhood of Kenyon-Barr. The West End was predominantly black and predominantly low income. The Kenyon Barr neighborhood had a population of more than 25,000. After forcing the residents and business owners to leave, the city then resold the properties to private developers, creating the commercial neighborhood of Queensgate, which mostly is concrete and warehouses - so likely fewer cicadas there, too.
Today, Queensgate has a population of about 150. More of the West End was destroyed in the 1960s to build I-75.
All of this was done under Republican leadership, by the way, starting in the late 40s with the city's master redevelopment plan. Before anyone goes blaming Democrats.
The story of Kenyon-Barr is an interesting one. If anyone's interested:
I'm not saying this hasn't happened in primarily white neighborhoods; of course it has. But "urban renewal", especially in the mid-century, seemed to target black communities.
I don't know as much about the history of urban renewal in Indianapolis. Perhaps someone with a more intimate knowledge of the city can chime in.
I was driving down I-81 first week of June. The cicadas were so thick between Carlyle Pa and the First rest area in VA that I had to pull over one time to get all the guts off the window. Based on the noise, at the PGA event in Ohio (Jacks place) and what I drove through. They were in a relatively narrow band PA, MD, WV and northern VA.
They're all dead at this point. You see them, you hear them, they'll fly into you, land on you, prune your trees for you, and when they die, you can smell them.
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