The After-effects of Interstate Highways

Out of sight out of mind. This is the mentality of many U.S. citizens who believe that policies that do not necessarily affect them are ok no matter how they affect someone else. The U.S. government approval of the Interstate Highway in 1956 was seen as a tremendous success but the underlying negative impact that the highways had can still be seen today. The poverty and crime in major cities in the U.S. is at an all-time high and the educational systems in cities are getting worse. The black communities have suffered the most in many of the major cities that these interstate highways passed through. The U.S. government essentially created a de facto segregation system right under the noses of the U.S. Public. De facto segregation means "racial separation that occurs "as a matter of fact”, e.g., by housing patterns (where one lives) or by school enrollment (where one goes to school)." (Adversity)

By far the biggest impact that affected the urban black community was the division that occurred between the white and black communities in the cities. The interstate highways essentially divided cities into two distinct sections, which consisted of a suburban exterior, where many of the white communities flocked, and the urban interior, where most of the black communities are concentrated. The division occurred because the interstate highways essentially eliminated any reason for a person to live directly in a city if they wanted to work there. The white community used this to their advantage and began to move out of the inner cities, which were just beginning to integrate schools, and created the suburban communities we see today. The black communities, however, were not very wealthy during the fifties and sixties therefore unable to afford a similar move away from the inner city limits. "We were investing billions of dollars in a highway system that segregated the nation by allowing people to be able to run away from urban areas that were integrated to suburban areas that were all white," says Angela Glover Blackwell, the head of PolicyLink, (Back of the Bus) This eventually led to the deterioration of the educational systems in the inner city and created and increase in crime and poverty.

Still to this day, you can see the effects that the interstate highway system had on the inner cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, and Atlanta to name a few. These urban cities continue to be riddled with the same problems that originally occurred i.e. inadequate school systems, segregated schooling, and increased crime and poverty. There is no easy way to alleviate these problems quickly, but we need to continue to create policies which can save these urban cities from the potential doom that may happen if these trends continue. We must eliminate the division that we see between the black and white communities in the city as well as upgrade the schools in these areas so that the citizens of the urban areas able to gain an education and not fall into the traps of crime and poverty.

Bernstein, Andrea, and Nancy Solomon. "Back of the Bus: Race, Mass Transit and Inequality." Transportation Nation. Web. 12 Sept. 2011. .

"Definition of 'Segregation'" Adversity.Net Home Page. Adversity.Net. Web. 14 Sept. 2011. .

Covert Segregation

Segregation will always be part of the past of the US; a smudge on the story of a country that had originally been created in order to house all people with justice. So many parts of the daily lives of people were filled with segregation that separated the races. Luckily, this was not taken lightly and movements such as the Freedom Riders began to sweep across the country in a flurry of nonviolent discontent. This wave could not be ignored and suddenly, the civil rights movement was just as important, if not more important, than the Cold War itself. Even the Kennedy’s could not give the pressing matter the cold shoulder and began to exercise many of their powers for the safety of those protesting, and, in the end, for the sake of supporting the national change of mindset that colored people were meant to be looked down upon and slandered.

Problem solved? Perhaps a majority of it. It certainly isn’t as visible today as it was pre-civil rights movement. But to say that it was completely wiped out would be a lie, and one that is evident once a person looks in the right places for the remnants of that age-old enmity between whites and colored people. It’s a bit like the changes that followed the Civil War; de jures, the idea of slavery was eradicated and American blacks were meant to be embraced as newly made citizens of the United States, but we know that the problem was not solved de facto and continued to plague the country in the form of segregation and the Jim Crow laws.

Though it seemed like the civil rights movement struck the death blow to the separation of the races, it seems that Jim Crow is still alive and pecking away at the relations of races. The acts of segregation may seem like accidents: houses of an African American community being razed in order to create a highway, the separation of African American and Anglo-American communities through the building of roads (from Regina Martin), transit systems created in order to allow people who were newly to the suburbs (mostly middle and upper-class whites). However, with some detective work, people have been uncovering disturbing secrets: that many of these were specifically created in order to separate classes, and in particular, the low class black Americans and higher class white Americans. There are frighteningly real documents from government officials stating that the prime reason for the placement of the highway was to take advantage of the low income (and thus the low prices of houses) of neighborhoods owned by poor American blacks, that buses were placed to support white flight away from neighborhoods that began to house black Americans. Clearly, extermination of racism is still to come.

Needless to say though, improvement is always on the rolls and will continue to, but it is in our power to push forward the progress of complete integration. All people, both colored and white, must act in order to create a unified position on the issue of segregation and the mistreatment of different races. Already, our president of this day and age has promoted the change by simply residing in office. If one man can promote this change, imagine what we can do together.

http://transportationnation.org/backofthebus/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/watch

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/2011/tag/kaitlyn-whiteside/

Racism in Atlanta Transportation

In my previous blog post, I promoted walking and other forms of public transportation as superior alternatives to personal automobiles as a primary mode of transportation. My main reason for promoting public transportation over private automobile use was its accessibility to all, regardless of income. In a sense, public transportation minimized economic and racial segregation by giving transportation power to everyone. Unfortunately, transportation power isn’t everything. Class-based segregation and racism continues to exist and separate black and white Americans from each other, further spreading the discrimination of the white American upper class and the disadvantage of the black American lower class.

Class-based segregation is something that we’d all like to think we’re past, but the reality is that many of us are the ones promoting it. In class on Monday, we discussed our impressions of busses in Atlanta. Several students claimed that they felt dark, dirty, and unsafe, although they offered no concrete evidence of their assertions. The issue here is that lower class individuals are the ones who most benefit from bus systems like MARTA. Middle and upper class individuals can afford a wider array of transportation options, while many lower class individuals have no choice but to rely on MARTA. At any given time, a MARTA bus will be full of mostly lower-class people. Because the lower class is typically the class with the homeless, the gangsters, and the thieves, many middle and upper class people are frightened by the idea of subjecting themselves to public transportation when they could just as easily use their cars. Wealthier people may even view it as “lowering their standards” by resorting to a method of transportation available to everyone rather than using a method only available to those who can afford it. To put it simply, many wealthy people don’t like poor people because they’re poor. This mentality is one of the main reasons that class based segregation exists in our public transportation. Unfortunately, the class based segregation isn’t the worst of it all.

Racial segregation runs even deeper than class-based segregation, especially in public transportation. Andrea Bernstein and Nancy Solomon write about racism in Atlanta’s transportation system.

“Public Transit was equated with black people and poor people and crime and poverty. And when the Metropolitan Atlanta Transportation Authority was created MARTA, it was a running joke that MARTA” – he spells it out – M-A-R-T-A – “stood for moving Africans rapidly through Atlanta.” (Back of the Bus)

Most of the lower class people who depend on MARTA are black Americans. MARTA is funded and governed mostly by socio-economically advantaged white Americans. This is inherently racist because of a group of people primarily one race and class was governing a group of people primarily of another race and class. A vote was conducted when MARTA was initially put into place to see where it would station busses. In theory, this would’ve solved the aforementioned racism issue, but in Clayton County, which at the time was “a mostly white, rural place,” (Back of the Bus) but the majority voted against servicing MARTA because the white Americans didn’t want to attract minorities.

Regardless of what many Georgians and Americans would like to think, class-based segregation and racism is still an issue. Many of those who claim it no longer exists are the very ones propagating discrimination. As a country, we need to recognize that the first step to recovery is realizing and admitting our problem.

Works Cited

“Back of the Bus: Mass Transit, Race, and Inequality.” By Andrea Bernstein and Nancy

Solomon. American Radio Works. WNYC, New York. Podcast.

Reducing the disparity between rural and urban areas

By Yihang Yan

The Freedom Rides which were evoking widespread social disorder and racial divergence sent shock waves through American society. Facing lots of violence and danger on their behalf, freedom riders impressed blacks throughout the south who formed the major power of civil right movement. The history of civil right movement shows the importance of transportation to people of color. In contemporary society, transportation is also closely related to the standard of living and rights of citizens.

In the article Back of the Bus: Mass Transit, Race, and Inequality, the authors (Andrea Bernstein, Nancy Solomon, Laura Yuen and Casey Miner) revealed the fact that transportation system lagged far behind in rural places and people had to walk in most of time. They also mentioned that Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Center at Clark Atlanta University said “Public Transit was equated with black people and poor people and crime and poverty.” However, even today, the equity of transportation in rural and urban area is difficult to achieve. Building excellent public transit is an indispensable process of poverty alleviation.

According to recent Census estimates, less than 5% of urban work trips were made by public transit; but this varies significantly by race and location. Minorities are less likely to own cars than whites and are more often dependent on public transportation. For example, during the period of Hurricane Katrina, many African Americans could not evacuate due to lake of transportation^<1>. This tragedy reminded us to pay attention to the people and the places which are severely affected by transportation deficiency. Development of transportation in rural area cannot keep pace with the increasing demands of people in various aspects, such as cultural life, medical care and religious services. Maybe people living in the cities cannot imagine the truth that some people even are unable to get to shop for basic necessities in fast and effective way. Lack of accessibility to urgent medical help leads to greater injuries and deaths and lack of accessibility to fresh food leads to different kinds of health problems. If things are allowed to go on like this, the gap between rich and poor, urban and rural area is going to be widening. As a result, transportation development in rural areas really plays an important role in alleviating poverty and improving standard of living for needy people.

At the end of article, the authors of Back of the Bus thought we should try to avoid a form of 21^st century segregation that some people run the risk of having almost a push out of low-income, minority communities away from our inner cities. Besides better transportation facilities in rural area as I mentioned above, integration of rural and urban public transport is also a necessary and useful policy in economic development and poverty alleviation.

Basically, this linkage is trying to create an equal environment for resident in both rural and urban areas. According to the government report in China, cities like Jiangsu and Chengdu actively promote interconnection and increase the share of public transport between inner and outside of city^<2>. In the same time, government also encourages people in rural area to integrate into urban life by providing more convenient and complete public transit so that all residents of the city, no matter farmers or people of other races, can move freely and have equal access to basic public services and social welfare. The end of 2002, the National Highway mileage reached 252 million km, highway mileage 1.758 million kilometers, the development of rural roadway length to 130 million km, the national total 1.409 million passenger operations, township roads pass rate of 99.4% and the rate of pass bus reached 98%, administrative villages, highways rate of 92.5%, bus pass rate of 81.9% ^<3>. The integrated development of urban and rural transport is able to make more rural residents move in and enjoy the same rights and public service as original urban residents.

The equity of transportation cannot be achieved in the short time but it undoubtedly promotes the race equity and linkage among different region. We should try to make the best use of public transportation to contribute the alleviation of disparity between rural and urban.

Work cited:

<1> Poverty & race (Thomas W. Sanchez & Marc Brenman)

http://www.prrac.org/newsletters/julaug2010.pdf

<2> Urban Transportation in China: Current State of Reform and Future Trends (Lu Huapu)

http://www.ltaacademy.gov.sg/doc/J09Nov-p07Lu_TransportInChina.pdf

<3> Content of rural and urban road passenger transport integration and development of meaningful

http://eng.hi138.com/?i161453#

<4> Back of the Bus: Mass Transit, Race, and Inequality (Andrea Bernstein, Nancy Solomon, Laura Yuen and Casey Miner)

Sidewalks-Public Enemy #1

Who knew sidewalks were one of the most dangerous places in America. We as Americans tend to blame many crimes on either the assailant or the lack of police in the area, but we never look upon a situation and think that if we as Americans put in the work to make our streets a safer environment, we could prevent many of the minor crimes that happen in our urban metropolitans i.e. Muggings, Robberies, Fights. Increasing the awareness of urban citizens as well as increasing the initiative for change on urban streets would go a long way in making everyone feel safe while traveling the sidewalks of cities no matter what time of day.

In Jane Jacobs novel, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs makes many points of how she feels would help create a safer and much friendlier culture around both cities and the sidewalks that are within them. She states that, “Streets and their sidewalks, the main public places of a city, are its most vital organs. Think of city and what comes to mind? Its streets. If a city’s streets look interesting, the city looks interesting; if they look dull, the city looks dull…if a city’s streets are safe from barbarism and fear the city is thereby tolerably safe from barbarism and fear.”(Death and Life pg. 30) When you make the streets of urban cities safer and secure, people would more than likely attempt to travel or live in your city exponentially more.

Think of the city of Chicago. The city has two main urban areas, North side and South side. North Side is considered to be only the upper and upper middle class families who work in the business structure in the city. While they still have crime, it is relatively tame compared to other areas. South side on the other hand, is where over three fourths of the African-American population in the city resides and has the largest percentage of poverty stricken families in the city. The streets of South side Chicago are considered to be some of the most dangerous streets to travel on in America. Which streets would you choose to walk on? Many people would argue that the neighborhoods of South side Chicago are beyond repair but I believe that they don’t realize how much we can do to change the attitude and culture of the streets of urban areas.

Jane Jacobs' three main points which she believed would change the culture of city streets were, to clearly show a difference between public and private space, have “eyes” on the street at all times, and that there must be a consistent use of the sidewalks by users. When you combine these three things, you create the sense of safety and security for users of your streets. Think of how much safer you would feel on the streets of South side Chicago if there was always somebody examining what was going on around you and there were other users who were walking just as freely as you were. Those are things we need to have happen to our urban streets in order to make people feel as though they can walk anywhere without fear of any danger. I know these changes could not be made in an instant, but through strong leadership and initiative, the streets of urban areas could become vindicated from the ugly moniker they have today.

-Jared Thompson

Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. [New York]: Random House, 1961. Print.