4 ms·

>Today's youth think the suburbs was about race now? It was about a lot of people don't actually like living in a concrete jungle, that was what it was about.

>Today's youth think the suburbs was about race now? It was about a lot of people don't actually like living in a concrete jungle, that was what it was about. Race was a huge motivator. Why else would we have racial covenants? Funny how the growth of suburbs came at roughly the same time that schools started integrating and integration accelerated suburban growth. We had Federal suburban housing subsidies available almost exclusively for whites. We have a name for this phenomenon: White Flight. Pre-1950s we had racial covenants, but we didn't social engineer lifestyles in suburbs to build them around cars. Streetcar suburbs for instance looked similar to the cities they were connected to. Smaller and less dense, but walkable urban places in their own right. Look at places like Del Ray, Alexandria, Virginia for an example. In cities themselves we tended to build highways in poor, mostly minority, neighborhoods. The white neighborhoods wouldn't be leveled nearly as often.

theklub 11y ago
I think you might be confusing crime and race although they happen to be tied closely together. My family decided to moved out of the city when they were followed home one day. Not sure race had anything to do with it but crime definitely did.
- wpietri 11y ago
  You are ignoring the key part of what he said. Why else would there be racial covenants explicitly excluding non-caucasians? Sure, fear of crime was one of the mechanisms of white flight, but American fear of crime has a big racial component to it. Historically, America has kept black people poor, confined them to poor neighborhoods, and then blamed blackness for the high crime rates that go with poverty and desperation. This game continues today. Donald Trump recently tweeted something with totally made up statistics blaming black people for murders of whites: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/that-racist-trump-tweet-about-blacks-killing-whites-isnt-just-false-its-neo-nazi-propaganda/ http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/that-racist-trump-tweet-abou... It wasn't just wrong and it wasn't just racist. It was literally neo-nazi propaganda.
  - thedavinci2000 11y ago
    I wonder if the guy is stupidly ignorant or willfully ignorant. He has said some really despicable things.
    - DarkTree 11y ago
      The scary part is that he has gained a large following of people who think he's just saying "what everyone's thinking". There are many, many people in the U.S. who hear what he says, and then think, "Yeah! That's so true!" on their gut instinct without having any background knowledge on the subject. I'm living in the U.S. and it's a scary momentum.
      - zo1 11y ago
        ""Yeah! That's so true!" on their gut instinct without having any background knowledge on the subject. I'm live in the U.S. and it's a scary momentum." This happens on the other side of the fence, and no one bats an eye about it. In fact, they call it democracy, or something like that. Snarkiness aside, if these people agree with him, then that is their vote. Really, we can't have democracy if we don't call it democracy when people vote the way we don't like them to. It's the same as free-speech: we can't suddenly abandon it if we don't like what's being said.
        DarkTree 11y ago
        Right, but this conflation comes up with most political arguments and I think it's a straw man. I don't think that people shouldn't have the right to follow Trump, but it's also true that people are free to hate certain types of people. That doesn't mean it isn't scary.
        wpietri 11y ago
        Populism does have both right and left forms (and others besides), but that doesn't mean that it isn't inimical to democracy. It is not hard to find historical examples of populists who have used the vote to seize power. Democracy is a lot more than voting, and it's certainly more than having one last free vote for a populist who ends free voting. There's also a particularly ugly history of populists stirring up racial hatred as a means to power, which I think is especially dangerous.
CWuestefeld 11y ago
It goes a lot deeper than that, even. Racism was an early motivator behind minimum wage laws [1],[2]. It was also the origin of gun control [3]. Funny how the passage of time can turn our perspective in different ways. [1] http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/16/the-racist-history-of-the-minimum-wage/ http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/16/the-racist-history-of-the-... [2] http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2718/racist_origins_of_the_minimum_wage http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2718/racist_origins_of... [3] http://www.constitution.org/cmt/cramer/racist_roots.htm http://www.constitution.org/cmt/cramer/racist_roots.htm

theklub 11y ago

I think you might be confusing crime and race although they happen to be tied closely together. My family decided to moved out of the city when they were followed home one day. Not sure race had anything to do with it but crime definitely did.

wpietri 11y ago
You are ignoring the key part of what he said. Why else would there be racial covenants explicitly excluding non-caucasians? Sure, fear of crime was one of the mechanisms of white flight, but American fear of crime has a big racial component to it. Historically, America has kept black people poor, confined them to poor neighborhoods, and then blamed blackness for the high crime rates that go with poverty and desperation. This game continues today. Donald Trump recently tweeted something with totally made up statistics blaming black people for murders of whites: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/that-racist-trump-tweet-about-blacks-killing-whites-isnt-just-false-its-neo-nazi-propaganda/ http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/that-racist-trump-tweet-abou... It wasn't just wrong and it wasn't just racist. It was literally neo-nazi propaganda.
- thedavinci2000 11y ago
  I wonder if the guy is stupidly ignorant or willfully ignorant. He has said some really despicable things.
  - DarkTree 11y ago
    The scary part is that he has gained a large following of people who think he's just saying "what everyone's thinking". There are many, many people in the U.S. who hear what he says, and then think, "Yeah! That's so true!" on their gut instinct without having any background knowledge on the subject. I'm living in the U.S. and it's a scary momentum.
    - zo1 11y ago
      ""Yeah! That's so true!" on their gut instinct without having any background knowledge on the subject. I'm live in the U.S. and it's a scary momentum." This happens on the other side of the fence, and no one bats an eye about it. In fact, they call it democracy, or something like that. Snarkiness aside, if these people agree with him, then that is their vote. Really, we can't have democracy if we don't call it democracy when people vote the way we don't like them to. It's the same as free-speech: we can't suddenly abandon it if we don't like what's being said.
      - DarkTree 11y ago
        Right, but this conflation comes up with most political arguments and I think it's a straw man. I don't think that people shouldn't have the right to follow Trump, but it's also true that people are free to hate certain types of people. That doesn't mean it isn't scary.
      - wpietri 11y ago
        Populism does have both right and left forms (and others besides), but that doesn't mean that it isn't inimical to democracy. It is not hard to find historical examples of populists who have used the vote to seize power. Democracy is a lot more than voting, and it's certainly more than having one last free vote for a populist who ends free voting. There's also a particularly ugly history of populists stirring up racial hatred as a means to power, which I think is especially dangerous.

CWuestefeld 11y ago

It goes a lot deeper than that, even. Racism was an early motivator behind minimum wage laws [1],[2]. It was also the origin of gun control [3]. Funny how the passage of time can turn our perspective in different ways. [1] http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/16/the-racist-history-of-the-minimum-wage/ http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/16/the-racist-history-of-the-... [2] http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2718/racist_origins_of_the_minimum_wage http://www.thecommentator.com/article/2718/racist_origins_of... [3] http://www.constitution.org/cmt/cramer/racist_roots.htm http://www.constitution.org/cmt/cramer/racist_roots.htm