This is a fascinating history about the federal process of “red lining” neighborhoods for urban planning at a massive level. At the beginning of U.S. car culture and the federal highway construction of the 1950s, minority (black) neighborhoods in urban areas were systematically devastated and divided for the construction of massive walls and buttresses cutting off communities and killing local concentrations of independent neighborhoods and economies. Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, and Jackson Ward, Virginia are dead testaments to the horrific impact of concrete assassins on community culture and local sovereignty. A closer examination of U.S. history shows the repetitive use of walls, impediments, and divisions as the girding factors keeping the ‘have nots’ away from the ‘haves’.
On a related note, I’m hearing fascinating things about the Black Panther movie and the images of a strong and robust African culture depicted in the movie … one only needs to look at the images of crumbled shells of buildings, roads, and schools in urban neighborhoods to understand the comprehensive devastation and historical fingerprints of internal colonialism in the forming and continued functioning of the Great American Schism.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/feb/21/roads-nowhere-infrastructure-american-inequality
Peace @ClumsySilverDad