The Economic Policy Institute has a partial history. White flight was involved, but there was a lot of governmental action at all three levels which influenced its demographic shifts over the past century.
White flight certainly existed, and racial prejudice was certainly behind it, but not racial prejudice alone. Government policies turned black neighborhoods into overcrowded slums and white families came to associate African Americans with slum characteristics. White homeowners then fled when African Americans moved nearby, fearing their new neighbors would bring slum conditions with them.
That government, not mere private prejudice, was responsible for segregating greater St. Louis was once conventional informed opinion. A federal appeals court declared 40 years ago that “segregated housing in the St. Louis metropolitan area was … in large measure the result of deliberate racial discrimination in the housing market by the real estate industry and by agencies of the federal, state, and local governments.” Similar observations accurately describe every other large metropolitan area. This history, however, has now largely been forgotten.
It’s a long report, but it’s an important one. We need to refresh our memories.
It wasn’t just St. Louis, either. These policies were in place nationwide and affected hundreds of American cities.
This is what burns me up about the people (some people I know personally) who keep focusing on Michael Brown’s character specifically… as if this one person, and all that he was or wasn’t, is the end all be all of the people protesting in anger.
The news has neglected to put the protesters in real context.
And most people seem to have no incentive to find the context on their own. They’re too busy being worked up from their own myopic viewpoint.
When you think about the foreclosures, the school board issues, and yes, the segregation and the appearance of taxation without representation…
It’s a whole stew of things that would make anyone putting up with it for years to be fed up.
Even if it was, undeniably, from everyone’s point of view, a justified shooting… the fact that Mr. Brown’s body was left in the street for such a long time would’ve been enough to make lots of people feel enough is enough.
And even many racist conservatives are abhorred by the police gassing any citizens at their own homes.
But no… it’s easy for fairly comfortable people to just keep focusing on the fact that Mr. Brown wasn’t a saint, and keep believing that protesters are merely defending less than stellar behaviour.
It seems so easy in our sensational news culture nowadays to believe in false either/or scenarios.
Like that because Mr. Brown wasn’t a paragon of virtue, the officer who shot him must be?
It’s not just about one black man and one white cop and what did or didn’t, should have or shouldn’t have, happened that one day in that one town.
This is a civilization problem. An economic policy problem. A sociological problem.
And a journalism as entertainment problem.
Watermelonpunch, if your comment were on Facebook I would “like” it.
Yeah, me too, multiple times.