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This would have been an interesting article if it didn't try to expose the highway system as some giant racist conspiracy.
by theVirginian 11y ago
This would have been an interesting article if it didn't try to expose the highway system as some giant racist conspiracy.
- selimthegrim 11y agoMaybe you want to read a little about Robert Moses and then come back here.
- pekk 11y agoMany different people of varying motivations were involved in making the interstate system. It isn't obvious that any significant part of the motivations for that system were racist, let alone the primary ones. Moses' involvement in road planning around New York hardly makes him the architect of the interstate system. Everybody wants to benefit from good first-world infrastructure, but fewer people want to pay for it, and anywhere you build it there will be NIMBYs who don't want it there.
- selimthegrim 11y agoMoses consulted in a number of other cities and towns (New Orleans, where he wanted to build a highway through what's now the French Market and Jackson Square (!) and under what is now Harrah's), Rio de Janeiro, Portland (OR), etc, etc)
- tedunangst 11y agoStraight from Wikipedia: > Close associates of Moses claimed that they could keep African Americans from using pools in white neighborhoods by making the water too cold.
- Spooky23 11y agoRead the Robert Caro book about Robert Moses. Racism was definitely a part of the man, but his existence wasn't defined by it. He was a man of his times. He screwed over many a German farmer on Long Island, and those low bridges on the Northern and Southern State Parkways weren't seen as a problem for the powers that be in Nassau and Suffolk counties. Hell, the KKK was active there in my dad's memory.
- alexqgb 11y agoIt wasn't a conspiracy. In a country where laws against interracial marriage weren't struck down until 1967 (SCOTUS: Loving v. Virginia), there was no need to be furtive about racism. Quite the contrary, segregation was a selling point.
- pekk 11y agoAmerican history (and the history of many other countries) has lots of open racism. But it doesn't follow that the building of the interstate system was essentially racist.
- jowiar 11y agoSaying "highways should exist" isn't racist. Saying "highways should exist, and we're going to bulldoze neighborhoods where mostly darker-skinned people live to build them and route them to connect mostly areas where lighter-skinned people live" is racist. And it's what we did.
- theVirginian 11y agoYou're right, the major selling points had nothing to do with ease of transportation
- alexqgb 11y agoI said a selling point, not the selling point. That's a distinction clearly made in the article as well.
- sologoub 11y agoThat may be true, in all honesty, I don't know enough, but am trying to learn as much of this history as time permits. Not originally from US... That said, US on average seems to be doing a hell of a lot better in owning up to such injustices than many other place. For example, I was bored last night and reading about the Great Northern War between Sweden and Russia circa 1700s, and somehow managed to find out about TWO distinct ethnic groups and languages that barely exist today, but were more or less thriving as late as early 1900s in the area I would have considered nothing but Russian. If you are interested, read up on the history of Vyborg and Ingria: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingria. Good luck getting the current residents to even knowledge this... At least US is not in complete denial and that is quite laudable. Hopefully, more progress is made to that end.