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Comment by jadell | Hacker News Reader

"We need to build an interstate highway system, to modernize our logistical capacity and connect our commercial centers. But we need land in those cities, and all the prime real estate is developed."

"Hmmmm...we could eminent domain some of the land."

"But from whom? A lot of those commercial centers are owned by white people!"

"How about the equally affluent Black neighborhoods in those cities? Let's just bulldoze those, wiping out generational wealth that took them decades to build, and permanently dividing them off from their cities' downtowns, making it next to impossible to share in the prosperity the new infrastructure will bring with it!"

"Brilliant! Smith, you're a genius!"

It's not always as obvious as firebombing and massacres. Those are the exceptions. It's usually much more insidious and subtle than that.

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This is the reason I made the above comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23395293

I replied to it at the time with a reference to the Black Wall Street Massacre.

I just thought I would try to preempt similar remarks here.

It's possibly a waste of my time and possibly not, but it's my time to waste as I see fit.

I don't disagree with anything you said in your original comment. I was adding additional commentary that systemic racism isn't always overt acts of violent destruction. Many times it's subtle acts of state-sponsored legal maneuvering using the excuse of "for the greater good."

The problem is your comment is unnecessarily inflammatory and accusatory. Often, the unfortunate outcomes you describe aren't due to overt willful interest in actively destroying the assets of people of color. It's very often even more insidious and subtle than that and to some degree grows out of blind spots rather than willful destruction.

My remark is not an exaggeration. One* cannot claim this massacre was some unfortunate oversight.

Those distinctions need to be made for two reasons:

1. It is important to make it crystal clear that racism absolutely involves malice and isn't simply a case of "Well, we didn't realize it was impacting people that way or we surely would have done something else because we are good-hearted people."

2. In cases where it does involve some degree of obliviousness, this must be acknowledged because in cases where people are just blindly going along with historical patterns and genuinely don't wish to harm anyone, educating them that people are, in fact, harmed even if you didn't intend to do harm is the best remedy.

Both points are essential information for finding a path forward. Taking only one of those points and overgeneralizing it actively undermines efforts to find real solutions.

* Changed "you" to one" for the sake of clarity. Apologies for the confusion.

In no way did I claim the massacre was an unfortunate oversight.

In the case of the Interstate Highway System, it was legitimately the stated idea to go through Black neighborhoods because those were considered less desirable than white ones, and the land could be had for cheaper. It was absolutely malicious. In several documented cases, the routes were originally supposed to go through white neighborhoods until they complained, and the highways were rerouted through Black neighborhoods (who also complained, but were ignored.)

And the federal program became a model for state and local programs that did the same thing. Great example is NC 147, which destroyed the prosperous Hayti neighborhood of Durham, NC, and wiped out the city's own Black Wall Street. And it was absolutely done intentionally.

Before life got in the way, I wanted to be an urban planner. So I'm familiar with such patterns.

But the very fact that in several documented cases, the initial proposed route went through a white neighborhood disproves your position that it was intentionally done to destroy black wealth as some kind of malice aforethought master plan.

It happened because the white neighborhood was able to defend itself and the black neighborhood was not. There's absolutely an element of racism there, but that racism is not as blunt as "unbridled malice aforethought."

I want real solutions. You don't find them by inflating accusations because you are justifiably angry about the outcome.

I want real solutions and I think I know something about getting real results. Inflating the amount of active and intentional malice aforethought involved is generally counterproductive.

You seem to be claiming that, in general, the destruction of Black neighborhoods for the interstate did not have racist “malice aforethought”. That it was more of a case of white neighborhoods being able to defend themselves ... but not a maliciously-chosen routing in the first place.

I think your claim here is more false than true.

This is a pretty well-known story in American history, as you point out. Most people who spend time in major American cities know of some very specific examples where one or more Black neighborhoods were torn down or split to put a freeway through. These choices were made deliberately.

For just one review of these deliberate choices, see pages 14 and 15 of: https://www.nashville.gov/Portals/0/SiteContent/Planning/doc...

From the conclusion:

“The highway construction process was essentially used by some planners both as a step towards enhanced national infrastructure and connectivity, as well as a tool to achieve discriminatory objectives along the lines of race and class.”

Please note the focus on deliberate intent in the last clause.

I'm not denying there was deliberate intent in some cases. But your own quote says "some planners" not "all planners."

Some planners were intentionally pursuing an explicitly racist and classist agenda. And some were just doing what other planners did because "monkey see, monkey do" and some were just trying to do their job and get their paycheck and make their own lives work.

Planners don't always have the kind of god-like powers to rearrange the city as they see fit that outsiders seem to routinely imagine them having. There is often a political process involved and planners themselves are frequently tearing their hair out about their own inability to do as they please.

I've had conversations where people characterized large swaths of single family detached homes -- aka the modern suburb -- as "racist architecture" and I tried to say "I don't think that is helpful framing. I think to some degree, we made large swaths of single family detached homes because greenfield development was expedient and not because single family detached homes are, per se, racist architecture."

And someone was upset and trying to tell me I was denying racism or something and I finally said "Let me put it this way: I'm sure they would have found ways to keep out people of color even if they had been building condos in towers in the downtown area. Racism is a social phenomenon and should not be conflated with a particular form of architecture."

That's very similar to what I am trying to say here. If that's still not clear, I think I need to just let people be confused. I don't know how I can more clearly state my meaning.

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