#Economic Racism

[odinsblog]

“All this happening at once is really startling,” said Joseph Schwieterman, a DePaul University professor who researches intercity bus travel and directs the university’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development. “You’re taking mobility away from disproportionately low-income and mobility-challenged citizens who don’t have other options.”

Roughly three-quarters of intercity bus riders have annual incomes of less than $40,000. More than a quarter would not make their trip if bus service was not available, according to surveys by Midwestern governments reviewed by DePaul University.

Intercity bus riders are also disproportionately minorities, people with disabilities, and unemployed travelers.

A spokesperson for Greyhound, which is now owned by German company FlixMobility, said it strives to offer customers the most options for connections, but has “encountered challenges in some instances.” The spokesperson also said they “actively engage with local stakeholders to emphasize the importance of supporting affordable and equitable intercity bus travel.”

The terminal closures have been accelerating as Greyhound, the largest carrier, sells its valuable terminals to investors, including investment firm Alden Global Capital.

Last year, Alden subsidiary Twenty Lake Holdings purchased 33 Greyhound stations for $140 million. Alden is best known for buying up local newspapers like The Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News and The Baltimore Sun, cutting staff, and selling some of the iconic downtown buildings.

Alden has started to sell the Greyhound depots to real estate developers, speeding up the timetable for closures.

“I don’t know the specific details of each building, but it is clear what is happening here: an important piece of transit infrastructure is being sacrificed in the name of higher profits,” said Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of real estate at Columbia Business School.

“The public sector has turned a cold shoulder to buses,” DePaul’s Schwieterman said. “We subsidize public transit abundantly, but we don’t see this as an extension of our transit system. Few governments view it as their mandate.”

Bus terminals are costly for companies to operate, maintain and pay property taxes on. Many have deteriorated over the years, becoming blighted properties struggling with homelessness, crime and other issues.

But terminal closures cause a ripple effect of problems.

Travelers can’t use the bathroom, stay out of the harsh weather or get something to eat while they wait. People transferring late at night or early in the morning, sometimes with long layovers, have no place to safely wait or sleep. It’s worse in the cold, rain, snow or extreme heat.

Bus carriers often try to switch to curbside service when a terminal closes, but curbside bus service can clog up city streets with passengers and their luggage, snarl traffic, increase pollution, and frustrate local business owners. In Philadelphia, a Greyhound terminal closure and switch to curbside service after its lease ended turned into a “humanitarian disaster” and “municipal disgrace” with people waiting on street corners.

(continue reading)

#politics #infrastructure #bussing #public transportation #mass transit #mass transportation #capitalism #economic racism #the commons #greyhound #flixmobility #greyhound bus #greyhound bus lines #bus stops

[ausetkmt]

The Poverty Paradox: Why Most Poverty Programs Fail And How To Fix Them

How can we eradicate poverty? That is the question that underpins a majority of development programs. But what if by asking that question, we are limiting our capacity to actually eradicate poverty and create prosperity?

In this heartfelt and passionate talk, Efosa Ojomo explains how our framing of the problem of poverty is hindering our progress. He suggests a different way to solve the global poverty problem.

 An alumnus of the prestigious Forum for Growth and Innovation Center at the Harvard Business School (HBS), Ojomo works alongside colleague and mentor Professor Clay Christensen in their shared goal to discover, develop and disseminate robust and accessible theory in the areas of disruptive innovation and general management as it relates to economic development. Ojomo’s body of work will ultimately help entrepreneurs, policy makers and development practitioners spur prosperity in their regions.

Specifically, Ojomo’s research examines how emerging markets in sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South America, and Asia can engender prosperity for their citizens by focusing on investments in market creating innovations, such as M-PESA, the mobile money transfer platform in Kenya. Ojomo graduated with honors from Vanderbilt University with a degree in computer engineering. He earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.  ...

#economic disinfranchisement #The Poverty Paradox: Why Most Poverty Programs Fail And How To Fix Them #poverty #racism and poverty #Efosa Ojomo #global poverty #economic racism

[weedle-testaburger]

there's this kind of youtuber i lowkey really hate who aren't overt bigots or anything but just do this thing where they seem to try stupidly hard to look for reasons to hate media that just so happens to have a lot of marginalised rep in it. especially if it has a thematic point that would involve acknowledging politics

#my favourite example of that (as in i actually find it funny not it annoys me) #is cinemasins complaining the train in snowpiercer and the guy who wants the protagonist's eyes in get out don't make sense #like. they don't have to be explained in the story the point is they're a commentary on socio economic injustices and racism #stories aren't logic puzzles they're parables and if you read them as being logic puzzles you're doing it wrong #and spoiling a lot of really profound media for yourself #having said that the youtubers i hate most are reactionary cunts like nerdrotic critical drinker or turkey tom #they should be punched every time they upload until they fuck off #and the most annoying kind of youtubers (not hatable but annoying) are the ones who try to argue that mainstream media #which is trying to be diverse and progressive is Bad Actually (verilybitchie is awful for that and she doesn't like pan people #so that put me off her pretty quickly which is a shame bc some of her videos and topics are interesting)

[moralomnivore]

The colonial states America and Australia are both famous for their meat production on land seized from native populations. The animosity between cattle ranchers in America and the people they drove out and killed to replace with animals that they saw as more valuable is famous enough that you are already aware of the genre it inspired:

Landback policies pair perfectly with a reduction in land use in colonial states through ceasing the production of animal products.

#colonialism #racism. #veganism #usa map is from bloomberg and they have an article breaking it down further #australia map is from #the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences

[rosacarolina]

I've read your pinned post and wanted to say something, as a white girl but also a South European: the "homestead" term is historically bounded to white supremacy, yes, but only in those countries of the Western world that actively participated in colonialism and built their economic fortune on slavery. I'm a contemporary history graduate and I can assure you NOT ALL OF WESTERN WHITE COUNTRIES WERE INVOLVED IN COLONIALISM. Go ask a Hungarian, a Moldovian, an Albanian if their grandparents were white suprematists because they owned a homestead and they will laugh. Also, some European peoples were themselves victims of colonialism. So please please please when you all talk about specific historic issues consider learning how to divide nowadays political discourse from actual historic work. "Fancy" political discourse has most of the time nothing to do with serious historic researches (at least, in European universities; I cannot speak for the level of academia in the US...).

I am also a history graduate student at a european university, but thank you for this ask anyway. I don't disagree with your general point-- that colonialism is not a strictly racial divide with white people being the colonizing party and all non white people the colonized. Like that's definitely true. When speaking about the term homestead, i am discussing it as a white supremacist dogwhistle, not saying that anyone who grows their own food is a racist. i would expect that the words agrarian subsistence farmers in hungary, moldova and albania used to describe their homes and their lifestyles would not be "homestead" because it is, an english word.

Consider also that this is a tumblr aesthetic blog and not a historical research conference, where the focus of discussion is, in fact the "fancy" (whatever that means in this context) political discourse which pervades the space and has pervaded it historically.

I'm sure as a student of contemporary history you would understand the historical connections between colonialism, white supremacy, and "blood and soil" rhetoric which used the visuals and languages of pastoralism. this is what i am referring to when i say that homestead is used as a dogwhistle.

also, the idea that a country or a people being subjects of colonialism means they cannot also, at the same or another time, be the perpetrators (or beneficiaries) of it is laughable. i would say that yes, EVERY western white country was involved in colonialism, to varying degrees, at the same time that some are/were subjects of it.

my apologies if this response was disorganized; but i found your assertion that political discourse (which i take from context here to be discussions of the current effects and manifestations of colonialism) not only is but should be largely divorced from serious historical study to be misguided at best. In fact I find it difficult to think of an example wherein the discussions are unrelated.

#i am unsure how you are defining 'real serious historical work' #such that is precludes discussion of the major political economic and philosophical underpinnings of the last four centuries #rosa mail #cw discussion of racism #im not an expert on post colonial theory or anything but... ?? #anyway if ive ever ignored ur ask its because when i answer one i immediately get eight more lol

[reasoningdaily]

Children still mining cobalt for gadget batteries in Congo

A CBS News investigation of child labor in cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo has revealed that tens of thousands of children are growing up without a childhood today – two years after a damning Amnesty report about human rights abuses in the cobalt trade was published. The Amnesty report first revealed that cobalt mined by children was ending up in products from prominent tech companies including Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Samsung. 

There's such sensitivity around cobalt mining in the DRC that a CBS News team traveling there recently was stopped every few hundred feet while moving along dirt roads and seeing children digging for cobalt. From as young as 4 years old, children can pick cobalt out of a pile, and even those too young to work spend much of the day breathing in toxic fumes.

What's life like for kids mining cobalt for our gadgets?

So, what exactly is cobalt, and what are the health risks for those who work in the DRC's cobalt mining industry?

What is cobalt?

Cobalt – a naturally occurring element –  is a critical component in lithium-ion, rechargeable batteries. In recent years, the growing global market for portable electronic devices and rechargeable batteries has fueled demand for its extraction, Amnesty said in its 2016 report. In fact, many top electronic and electric vehicle companies need cobalt to help power their products.

The element is found in other products as well.

"Cobalt-containing products include corrosion and heat-resistant alloys, hard metal (cobalt-tungsten-carbide alloy), magnets, grinding and cutting tools, pigments, paints, colored glass, surgical implants, catalysts, batteries, and cobalt-coated metal (from electroplating)," says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than half of the world's supply of cobalt comes from the DRC, and 20 percent of that is mined by hand, according to Darton Commodities Ltd., a London-based research company that specializes in cobalt.  

Health risks of chronic exposure 

According to the CDC, "chronic exposure to cobalt-containing hard metal (dust or fume) can result in a serious lung disease called 'hard metal lung disease'" – a kind of pneumoconiosis, meaning a lung disease caused by inhaling dust particles. Inhalation of cobalt particles can cause respiratory sensitization, asthma, decreased pulmonary function and shortness of breath, the CDC says.

The health agency says skin contact is also a significant health concern "because dermal exposures to hard metal and cobalt salts can result in significant systemic uptake." 

"Sustained exposures can cause skin sensitization, which may result in eruptions of contact dermatitis," a red, itchy skin rash, the CDC says.

Despite the health risks, researchers with Amnesty International found that most cobalt miners in Congo lack basic protective equipment like face masks, work clothing and gloves. Many of the miners the organization spoke with for its 2016 report – 90 people in total who work, or worked, in the mines – complained of frequent coughing or lung problems. Cobalt mining's dangerous impact on workers and the environment

Some women complained about the physical nature of the work, with one describing hauling 110-pound sacks of cobalt ore. "We all have problems with our lungs, and pain all over our bodies," the woman said, according to Amnesty.

Moreover, miners said unsupported mining tunnels frequently give way, and that accidents are common.  

Miners know their work is dangerous, Todd C. Frankel wrote late last month in The Washington Post. 

"But what's less understood are the environmental health risks posed by the extensive mining," he reported. "Southern Congo holds not only vast deposits of cobalt and copper but also uranium. Scientists have recorded alarming radioactivity levels in some mining regions. Mining waste often pollutes rivers and drinking water. The dust from the pulverized rock is known to cause breathing problems. The mining industry's toxic fallout is only now being studied by researchers, mostly in Lubumbashi, the country's mining capital."

"These job are really desired"

Despite the dangers and risks of working as miners in the cobalt industry, at least of the some miners in the Congo "love their jobs," according to Frankel.

"When I talked to the miners there, none of them want to lose their jobs or give up their jobs. They love their jobs," Frankel said Tuesday, speaking on CBSN. "In a country like Congo, mining is one of the few decently paying jobs to be had there, and so they want to hold onto these jobs."

They also want fair treatment, decent pay, and some safety, "and they would love for their kids to not work in the mines," he said.

"It's a poverty problem," Frankel said. "These parents I talked to – they don't want their kids working in these mines. The problem is that their school fees – schools cost money, and you know, food costs money, and they sort of need their kids to work in there."

Poverty also drives children into the mines instead of school – an estimated 40,000 of them work in brutal conditions starting at very young ages.

The thousands of miners who work in tunnels searching for cobalt in the country "do it because they live in one of the poorest countries in the world, and cobalt is valuable," Frankel wrote in the Washington Post article.

"Not doing enough" 

CBS News spoke with some of the companies that use cobalt in their lithium-ion batteries. All of the companies acknowledged problems with the supply chain, but said they require suppliers to follow responsible sourcing guidelines. Apple, an industry leader in the fight for responsible sourcing, said walking away from the DRC "would do nothing to improve conditions for the people or the environment."

Read company responses here

Amnesty said in November, however, that "major electronics and electric vehicle companies are still not doing enough to stop human rights abuses entering their cobalt supply chains." 

"As demand for rechargeable batteries grows, companies have a responsibility to prove that they are not profiting from the misery of miners working in terrible conditions in the DRC," the organization said. "The energy solutions of the future must not be built on human rights abuses."

An estimated two-thirds of children in the region of the DRC that CBS News visited recently are not in school. They're working in mines instead. 

CBS News' Debora Patta spoke with an 11-year-old boy, Ziki Swaze, who has no idea how to read or write but is an expert in washing cobalt. Every evening, he returns home with a dollar or two to provide for his family.

"I have to go and work there," he told Patta, "because my grandma has a bad leg and she can't."

He said he dreams of going to school, but has always had to work instead.

"I feel very bad because I can see my friends going to school, and I am struggling," he said.

Amnesty says "it is widely recognized internationally that the involvement of children in mining constitutes one of the worst forms of child labour, which governments are required to prohibit and eliminate."

#cobalt #PD Congo #PDR Congo #cobalt mining by children #amnesty university #The toll of the cobalt mining industry on health and the environment #Congo Economic Theft #minerals #rare earth minerals #tesla #iphones #cellphone batteries #ev batteries #lithium batteries #child labour #forced child labor #poverty #systemic racism

[anarchistin]

You've probably heard of the "Tragedy of the Commons," which claims to be a "realist" account of what happens when people try to share something – a park, a beach, a forest – without anyone owning it. According to the "tragedy," these commons are inevitably ruined by "rational" actors who know that if they don't overgraze, pollute or despoil, someone else will, so they might as well get there first.

The Tragedy of the Commons feels right, and we've all experienced some version of it – the messy kitchen at your office or student house-share, the litter in the park, etc. But the paper that brought us the idea of the Tragedy of the Commons, published in 1968 by Garrett Hardin in Science, was a hoax.

Hardin didn't just claim that some commons turned tragic – he claimed that the tragedy was inevitable, and, moreover, that every commons had experienced a tragedy. But Hardin made it all up. It wasn't true. What's more, Hardin – an ardent white nationalist – used his "realist's" account of the commons to justify colonization and genocide.

#commons #capitalism #peter thiel #garrett hardin #racism #elinor ostrom #economics

[ausetkmt]

Inequality – how wealth becomes power (1/3) | DW Documentary - YouTube

Please don't sleep on this because all the tricks are laid out so you understand why the dollar is worth less in the hands of POC. There is a lot of money circulating but it's not being directed to your circles; Find out Why by Watching this

#Economics #US Wealth Gap #POC #Economic Racism #money gaps by race #class worth by race #american economic disinfranchisement #economic trickery

[hussyknee]

If you fucking dare equate protestors who took over the Presidential Secretariat simply by finally outnumbering the cops, without any property damage let alone injury, after weeks and months of being absolutely brutalized by army and police for protesting completely peacefully, I hope you fall into a sewer and have to swim upstream with your mouths open.

The only violence has come from cops and military. They shot two people today, and injured 40 more. One died. Two journalists have just been assaulted on live TV, one of them a 23 year old kid who is in a bad way. There has been no property damage, or assaults on anyone.

Even before, the protests were kept 100% peaceful even when we were attacked repeatedly with tear gas, water canons, rubber bullets and even live rounds, beaten and bashed on the head with batons and dragged off and arrested. Right up until the PM literally sent bus loads of goons into the heart of the country's protest camp and destroyed it. Only then did people finally lose it and burn down all the government MPs homes and offices.

Even then innocents were not harmed and the houses were completely sacked and evacuated first. Not saying it were good or right, but it's was a shatteringly human response to over 18 months of starving, tormenting and bankrupting us, and kidnapping and terrorising anyone who protested. Far, far longer for marginalized communities. But the international media and US social media just grabbed the footage of the riots and fires and made us out to be rabid, violent beasts who had been storming buildings and terrorizing politicians and state forces.

This is the callous, racist, unthinking violence you whites and Westerners do to us. Especially USAmericans. You don't understand how much damage a stray reblog or retweet can do just by virtue of you being USAmerican and sitting on the world's largest information hegemony. Our government steals our rights and lives and you strip us of our dignity and agency and the right to tell our own stories.

We are not you. We are our own people. Let us tell our own stories in our own voices, and stop inferring and assuming shit without knowing jackshit about what's going on on the ground.

Does this look like the Capitol riot to you?

#jan 6 capitol attack #racism #sri lanka politics #sri lanka protests #sri lanka economic crisis #gotagohome2022 #gohomegota2022 #american media #social media #world politics #state violence #attacks on journalists

[tricornonthecob]

"If modern day people went back in time they'd be fucked" this, "you'd never survive a day in x time period" that, I like to think time-travel isekai had at least one thing right: someone, *someone* would watch you floundering about like a wee little baby fawn and go "oh god oh nooooo oh sweetie come here something is terribly wrong with you but you're trying so hard, let me help you, dear"

#time travel #time travel tropes #this could be the feral youngest sibling energy telling me that though #I apologize for all eldest siblings thats a raw deal #I mean this is also barring all the medical/health things and the socio economic bullshittery and the racism and the sexism #as a gorl I can assure you I DO NOT want to be in the past #ADHD medication is hitting pardon me #we love a time travel story in this brainspace

[constantvariations]

One of Hello Future Me's videos on revolution brought up an event from the Philippines back in the 80s: the dictator sent a battalion to crush a supposed revolt, only for the soldiers to be met with nuns and children offering food and water. The majority of the army defected as a result

I'm going to use rwby to try hammering this abstract concept into a coherent thought, but this incident got me thinking about how nonviolent protest is theater

If a similar event were to occur in rwby, for it to be successful, the protestors would have to be the cutesy faunus types: rabbits, cats, dogs, and the like because they're non-threatening. Attacking a sweet cat faunus would be akin to attacking a child or nun, paragons of innocence and virtue respectively. Only a monster could cut them down, and no one wants to be seen as a monster

A scorpion faunus, though? Their mere existence is a threat. That tail is dangerous, a weapon available at all times. Bull faunus have horns they can use to gouge out eyes and organs. Claim they attacked and most people would agree that killing them in self-defense is justified

Because nonviolent resistance relies on public perception, people who could possibly taint the image of the movement will get left in the dark no matter how important they are. Bayard Rustin was the one who taught Dr King about civil disobedience and was an organizer for many major events, but he opted to ride to events in the trunk of people's cars so his status as an openly gay man wouldn't harm the movement's image

There would be little wonder why the White Fang would be more popular with the "scarier" faunus. Public perception is already against them, so it's not going to change much for them if they join a violent organization, but this in turn will be seen as justification for discrimination against these types of faunus. A hellish self-perpetuating cycle

These faunus would also be far more likely to experience violence at a much younger age, akin to how black children are treated as adults even if they're literally six years old

The strategy behind nonviolent protest like the ones Dr King did is to show the world the mistreatment of the innocent, but when your existence is deemed a threat, there's little hope that you'll ever get enough support to change the system. This is why bigots constantly spew the "queer groomer" and black crime "statistics": by portraying someone's freedom as a danger to the innocent, any level of violence is justifiable defense. The police aren't attacking queers, black, and brown folk discriminately, they're attacking dangerous criminals, so it's okay!!1!

Theater can't save those already condemned and to try is wasted effort

#rwde #antiblackness tw #<- in the link #Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat a whole 9 months before Rosa Parks yet wasnt the face of the movement #good choice considering she was only 15 and shoving a teen into the racist public eye is Not Good but her pregnancy was also a major factor #idk hopefully i got the point across #somewhat related is the trend of the privileged being the biggest advocates for peaceful protest #while the ones who've endured violence - both economically and physically - are the ones who call upon violence #which almost always means violent *self defense* #the few occasions ive read where there were actual attacks its been targeted like the BLA ambushing cops #cant say i blame them considering the mcfucking everything the cops had going on #the bpp was basically destroyed by the police and fbi at this point and that was probs a major factor in their decision #and targeted violence was exactly what the white fang was doing before cinder showed up and ruined everything #literally nothing the wf does in the show is actually for faunus liberation bc its all cinder/salems orders!! #and no one is allowed to have a brain or personality or anything so no one questions why theyre suddenly switching targets #gr8 discussion abt activism here shawluna. love that you reduced the anti racism movement to mercenaries to avoid saying anything at all #ffs they even fucked up weiss's side of the convo! obvs the fumbling of blakes ball is much worse but come the fuck on #'the wf may have assassinated company board members and family friends but were teammates now so who cares!! team rwby go!!' #fucking barf

[sparksinthenight]

Why we need Land Back

We should talk about current issues Indigenous people face.

In Canada at least there are many problems still happening.

Indigenous children are being ripped away from their loving families and put into foster care simply because the families are poor or the parents struggle with mental illness or something like that.

Women are being forcibly sterilized against their will.

Girls, women, and 2 spirit people are being kidnapped and sold into sex slavery and are also getting murdered and raped and their bodies are being thrown into the landfills.

The land that Indigenous communities need for their cultures and livelihoods is being destroyed by resource extraction companies that cut through the landscape and leave open wounds, that pollute the land, air, and water, and destroy the biodiversity and health of the ecosystems.

There is police brutality against Indigenous people, and people are killed by the police every day. There are hate crimes against Indigenous people.

Social services on reserves, including education, healthcare, utilities, housing, etc, are horrifically underfunded, and are funded much less well than the same social services off of reserves.

There’s discrimination in employment, in healthcare, in pretty much everything. And Indigenous people are kept in poverty and homelessness by the discriminatory society.

We need Land Back.

Land Back will allow Indigenous people to stop their land from being destroyed. Their cultures and livelihoods and mental health and spiritual health and well-being is so deeply tied to the land/nature. And actually, having them be able to effectively protect the land helps all of us because all humans are dependant upon the land even if we don’t realize it.

It will also allow Indigenous communities to force the government to stop discriminating against them by giving them worse social services. It will allow them to force the government to give them the same social services everyone else gets.

It will also allow them to force the government to stop taking their children. All children deserve to be with the families who love them and they should not be ripped away from their families, because this causes deep and devastating lifelong trauma.

It would allow Indigenous communities to stop rapists and traffickers and murderers from entering their communities. It will allow them to force rapists and traffickers and murderers out of their communities. And it will allow them to make sure every case of people getting raped or kidnapped or trafficked or killed is properly investigated and the victims are saved and the perpetrators get justice. Same with other hate crimes.

It will allow Indigenous people to have the power necessary to push back on police brutality and build better models of law enforcement, including community-ventured models.

Indigenous communities will also likely get a flow of money that they can use to lift their people out of poverty. They’ll have the power to stop healthcare discrimination and forcible sterilization. And they’ll have the power to force us to give justice to unethical healthcare professionals and to force systemic change in the healthcare system so that medical mistreatment doesn’t happen.

Indigenous people would also have the opportunity to do more outreach to settler communities and teach them about Indigenous culture and values and stuff, so that people learn to be less racist and discriminatory.

Land Back will help pretty much every marginalized community because stopping racism and discrimination for one race usually leads to there being decreased racism and discrimination for other races too.

Ultimately Land Back is about giving Indigenous people and communities the power to keep themselves and each other safe in a society that is actively against them. It is also about keeping the ecosystems that we all rely upon safe, and about stopping discrimination and racism.

Giving Indigenous people power to protect themselves and their communities isn’t going to prevent any other community from protecting themselves. It will create more equality and social justice for everyone in Canada.

I support Land Back. I’m a settler girl and I support Land Back, and you should too.

#climate crisis #leftism #left #left wing #leftist #social justice #economic justice #equal rights #equality #racism #racial justice #discrimination #prejudice #racial prejudice #stop prejudice #bipoc lives matter #BIPOC lives matter #indigenous lives matter #indigenous rights #indigenous sovereignty #canadian #canada #canadian politics #cdnpoli #land back #genocide #colonization #colonialism #systemic oppression #systemic inequality

[reasonandempathy]

Americanismᵀᴹ, the version of extreme capitalism practiced in the US, can't be separated from its racist foundations, the "Original Sin" of the US.

That's the first thing you need to grasp if you're going to look at Suburbia or White Flight in general. Slavery was upheld for profit motives, explicitly, by what would later be called Capitalists. It was built into the model of the U.S. that blacks were dangerous, dumb, and lesser, making White Flight a foreseeable outcome of "but what if the [racial slurs] move to the city?" The two were linked at the start.

While mansions and elite neighborhoods were always a thing, White Flight didn't happen the same way when cities were just poor or immigrant. You can make a case that there being a larger middle class was part of it, which certainly is relevant, but saying that only betrays the point that it was explicitly tied into the economic structure. If whiteness isn't/wasn't an economic benefit, why was the flight of the Middle Class qualitatively White?

It picked up explicitly in the prelude to the Civil Rights Act, and increased after its passing. It was the foreseeable outcome of situations where capitalists successfully implemented explicitly and demonstrably racist structures that lost legal power but not all political or economic power, where both rich and middle-class folk had shared anxiety over a group of people they could visibly tell "wasn't one of them."

#racism #white flight #sociology #suburbia #slavery #economics #original content