Microblog Memes

It happened quite frequently, for instance when constructing the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago. Somehow it’s always easiest to demolish vibrant black neighborhoods.

Now look up the Tulsa Massacre

From the Wikipedia page

A newspaper account at the time suggested that Seneca Village would "not be forgotten"

Then later

The settlement was largely forgotten for more than a century after its demolition.

Also just kinda interesting that one of the residents was named Edward Snowden.

It's very similar to how a lot of Americans didn't know about the Tulsa Race Massacre until it was in The Watchmen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre

Or Tulsa, where the whites were like “go make your own black town!” So they did, and prospered while the whites stayed poor. So the whites just straight up raped, pillaged and burned the black town and got away with it

Where I live they ran an interstate highway right through where the black business district was. Ripped through the middle of town. I hate that highway so much, they keep adding lanes too. Fucking racist twats and the effects reverberate to this day, no transit just more lanes because of handshake agreements between good ol' boys in the 1960s.

"Nothing changes, even when it wants to" Hayes Carll

To be fair if highschool history covered every act of overtime racism and suppression committed by the US government there would be no time to cover anything else.

https://www.latimes.com/projects/us-freeway-highway-expansion-black-latino-communities/

Still happening to this day. This is in Houston 5 years ago.

People have grandiose expectations of elementary or high school education. At best, you have time to cover topics at a very high level and I've never had a class that even made it to the twentieth century.

As important as this historical tidbit is, it's not a condemnation of history education. More than likely, this would come about in a college level course that is more specific.

Holy fuck I was not prepared for the sheer amount of similar events described in the comments. It's is almost as if racist people are inferior human beings, unable to understand empathy. Hen and egg problem, I guess. But yeah, w.r.t. structural racism, a Zager & Evans verse comes to mind: "[..] or tear it down - and start again."

To add to y'all's reading list:

Dulles Airport (the big international airport that serves Washington DC and Northern Virginia) did the same: https://travelnoire.com/town-destroyed-international-airport

Also, maybe tangentially related, The Tulsa Race Massacre: https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=TU013

On the one hand, every country has a fucked up history that they ain't teaching in classes. I learned most of my countries real history through reading books about this times

On the other hand: the US has a particular brutal and fucked up history that they ain't teaching

People are erased all the time, our job is to make sure they were at least documented and were. The current administration is trying to erase recent and distant history. Hoard the data. Keep the dates. Write it down on paper, but still, we are watching the library burn in front of us.

Stupid question, but I’ve been to NYC many times and I’ve always considered Central Park to be one of the only enjoyable parts of the city… am I allowed to enjoy it if it was taken this way?

Writing races/skin colour with a capitalized letter seems strange when it doesn't include a continent name

The Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis was also a black community that got bulldozed. Unsurprisingly common

And for Latinx people in LA it is being evicted from their homes to make Dodger Stadium

Africatown Mobile, Alabama

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africatown

In recent years they've done an archeology mission to find the Clotilda.

was formed by a group of 32 West Africans, who in 1860 were bought and transported against their will in the last known illegal shipment of slaves to the United States.

So as I remember the story--and perhaps the references in the article will be more accurate, bur a slaver made a bet with somebody that he could still traffick slaves after it became illegal. He arrived in Mobile, AL with slaves on his boat and went to collect on his bet. He left the crew with instructions to burn the ship and everyone on board (i.e. get rid of the evidence) if he did not return. And that's what they did. The people who founded Africatown escaped the fire.

The Wiki article says similar, but that the slaves were removed before scuttling the ship. Good if true, I guess. My memory isn't great.

Edit: typos

WTF

Per the Wikipedia article, fewer than 20% of the Seneca Village residents owned the land they lived on - most was owned by local landlords who were paid pretty exorbitant amounts for their land in the final settlements (the final cost of the land was more than the US would later pay for the entirety of Alaska, and the Wikipedia article also notes one landowner who made more than 10x on his initial investment).

Also worth noting that of the ~1600 total residents displaced for the construction of Central Park, ~225 were from Seneca Village and large numbers of those displaced were also Irish and German.

Should have seen my face when re-watching The Pitt, getting to the part of the pacemaker/first paramedics arc. Opening wikipedia and being blown away by what I learnt.

But no, let's keep the fact that "black people invented peanut butter" as the cool fact. Not "black people helped standardise first aid"...

The USA has always been hostile to non-white people.