Running racism in America thread

Nikki Haley thinks we can lock this thread. And never should have started it.

 

He made the correct call:

Jury awards $25M to man who sued Oklahoma's largest newspaper after being mistakenly named in report

 

Nothing new about that. It happened all over the nation.

 

That’s evil genius level. Anybody can be a bigot, but it takes a certain commitment to combine engineering with hate.

 

Great stuff -- especially the historic photos. Thanks for posting, @garrow!

The history of highways is fascinating to me (warning: transportation nerd!), and that link makes reference to Mike Royko's "Boss," which explained the racial motives behind placement of the Dan Ryan expressway while Richard J. Daley was still alive. That's a good place to start.

I also highly recommend Earl Swift's 2011 book, "The Big Roads," which details how the Interstate Highway System went from a pipe dream of FDR and Ike to reality. Lots of detail about how politics and racism placed the interstates, with an intense focus on Baltimore and the battle to prevent I-70 from plowing through the Inner Harbor area of the city.

 

It's still happening. A couple of years ago a stretch of the elevated interstate (I-20) that runs through downtown Birmingham reached the end of its service life and had to be replaced. There was some discussion locally about rerouting that stretch of I-20 north on flat ground, the intent being to get the noise, columns and pollution out of downtown, as well as to reopen Black neighborhoods which had been cut off and isolated from downtown by building the interstate. The idea was that building it on flat ground would get the interstate and accompanying noise, pollution, and bridge abutments out of North Birmingham, the newly cut through area would grow, and there would be no need to build yet another elevated highway through downtown in 20-30 years.

The Alabama Dept. of Transportation came in with the plans already drawn up. The city got extremely little say in ALDOT building the exact same thing only bigger. There was one hearing on moving the route north, which was conducted at two in the afternoon on very short notice. There was as little concern about those neighborhoods as there was when they were first cut off, perhaps less.

 

Dear reader, he did not have low blood sugar. He is, in fact, racist.

Matt Rowan, the owner and operator of the streaming service, later told The Oklahoman he was the person who made the remarks. Rowan apologized and blamed his use of racist language on his blood-sugar levels.

 

From the PBS affiliate in Chicago:

https://interactive.wttw.com/chicago-stories/boss-and-the-bulldozer