People have grandiose expectations of elementary or high school education. At best, you have time to cover topics at a very high level and I’ve never had a class that even made it to the twentieth century.
As important as this historical tidbit is, it’s not a condemnation of history education. More than likely, this would come about in a college level course that is more specific.
Stupid question, but I’ve been to NYC many times and I’ve always considered Central Park to be one of the only enjoyable parts of the city… am I allowed to enjoy it if it was taken this way?
Yes. Or you couldn’t enjoy the majority of the US, which was taken from indigenous people.
It’s not a stupid question at all, it’s actually quite a complex one.
I suppose the real meat of the question is it morally wrong to derive pleasure from something where suffering is involved. You didn’t personally make the decision to harm people, so you have no responsibility there. You also did not consent to existing as a person, which means you largely have no say about where you find yourself as a human being, the circumstances of which led you to that park.
But conversely you’re now burdened with the knowledge, which understandably changes your outlook. By way of utilising the park, you’re implicitly condoning it’s creation, therefore the suffering. Before you were blameless, now it’s a little muddier. You still wouldn’t have condoned the actions taken though, which does count for something.
If we’re taking “allowed” as a social context, some may find it distasteful. It largely depends on who you talk to. I don’t think it should affect your own reasoning much though.
Ultimately what we’re left with is a physical space that has a somewhat difficult history. As it stands, no action you do can alter that fact, it will always be that thing, unfortunate as it may be.
Considering all that, on the range of all possible human activity, I think the enjoyment of a park is fairly reasonable behaviour. I don’t think you can unlearn the context though, so whether or not you can enjoy it largely depends on your own internal moral workings. In the end, I would recommend going with what your heart, gut, and mind tell you.
Now look up the Tulsa Massacre
Once i learned about what they did I can’t forget it and will always bring up to people when relevant. Fucking insane what they burned it to the ground because they couldn’t stand successful black people. And not one person ever faced justice for this.
I have family in Tulsa that had never heard of that until I brought it up when I learned about it a few years ago. Crazy shit man.
There were also a number of similar incidents elsewhere.
I didn’t learn about the Tulsa Massacre until the first Trump term. I’m over 50 years old.
I watched the Watchmen TV series a couple years back (at age 40) and during the Tulsa massacre scene I was like “oh this takes place in an alternate history where the KKK won”
Then next year in college I took a course in American History… oof.
I’m not American, but I also learned about it watching the Watchmen series, then Wikipedia. Wasn’t that surprised, though. The only time I went to the USA some kids threw a heavy rock through our camping tent window while we, Mexican kids, were away. It didn’t strike me like some kids mischief even at that time.
There is an unfortunate anti-homeless sentiment in some parts of the US, where people will wreck camping tents on sight regardless of the occupants’ skin color. I’m sorry you had to deal with such hateful behavior.
It was at some Boy Scouts of America event.
Oh yeah, probably racism then. They have a history of it.
Channel 5 has a video about the Dodgers stadium in LA that was built to push latinos out.
It’s very similar to how a lot of Americans didn’t know about the Tulsa Race Massacre until it was in The Watchmen.
I learned about it because of the show.
But I’m also not from the US. Still felt weird that it wasn’t talked about more
On the one hand, every country has a fucked up history that they ain’t teaching in classes. I learned most of my countries real history through reading books about this times
On the other hand: the US has a particular brutal and fucked up history that they ain’t teaching
On the one hand, every country has a fucked up history that they ain’t teaching in classes
I don’t think it is being intentionally obscured, it’s just too specific for elementary or high school education. There’s a chance a teacher could use it as spotlight type thing, but overall, that level of education is too broad.
The US does teach about screwing over indigenous people and slavery… well maybe not in red states. And now the current administration is whitewashing history.
Also, it sounds like those two things are the same hand. What’s your country?
People are erased all the time, our job is to make sure they were at least documented and were. The current administration is trying to erase recent and distant history. Hoard the data. Keep the dates. Write it down on paper, but still, we are watching the library burn in front of us.
This isn’t just this administration, not even close. My family is from Tulsa, had never even heard of the atrocities that have been done to the black communities there.
It happened quite frequently, for instance when constructing the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago. Somehow it’s always easiest to demolish vibrant black neighborhoods.
Somehow yeah
And Los Angeles building the Santa Monica Freeway.
And St. Paul, MN for interstate 94.
St. Louis arch
The Dunsmuir Viaduct in Vancouver, BC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogan's_Alley,_Vancouver
Halifax, Nova Scotia. Demolished a black community for a bridge.
Brooklyn neighborhood in Charlotte, NC, which is now mostly just parking lots
Ok, that’s it! I’m never enjoying architecture, engineering, landscaping, or roadways in North America again!
Joking aside, it IS really fucked up that all of that was allowed to not just be done, but then forgotten!
It’s not perfect, but Austin, TX did an almost okay-ish job protecting Blackland. It’s not great, but it’s a symbol of what the tiniest amount of progress can look like.
The neighborhood was originally known as Blackland and was settled by Swedish immigrants
Nashville’s i65 on the North West
I-10 in New Orleans
The reason traffic is so bad out to Jones Beach on Long Island is because they built the roads so buses couldn’t go. Black people rarely had cars at the time.
There’s a really good Behind the Bastards about the guy who made those decisions. Can’t remember his name.
Robert Moses
99 Percent Invisible also did a great mini series about the book The Power Broker, which is about the life of Robert Moses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Law_Olmsted
This dude?
Btw just discovered behind the bastards by delving into L Rom Hubbard. Hilarious.
No, Olmsted was a landscape architect (also did Biltmore in NC). The state or city parks commissioner who did it. Can’t remember his name. He also explicitly didn’t leave room for future light rail expansion when they build the LIE, or some other expressway. Been awhile since I lostened to that one.
Lake Lanier in Georgia too, under that reservoir was Oscarville.
Same in St. Louis, but they went also went right through the “not the right color of white” Italian and other immigrant neighborhoods.
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I375 in Detroit
Where I live they ran an interstate highway right through where the black business district was. Ripped through the middle of town. I hate that highway so much, they keep adding lanes too. Fucking racist twats and the effects reverberate to this day, no transit just more lanes because of handshake agreements between good ol’ boys in the 1960s.
“Nothing changes, even when it wants to” Hayes Carll
630?
they ran an interstate highway right through where the black business district was
Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?
People will see your comment and think “hey that sounds like my city”, but you could say this about basically every major city in the US.
This is part of what’s called redlining.
To offer a refinement, if I can, redlining is adjacent to this highway abuse, so, easy to join them; same racially driven bastardry, different technique.
Redlining was a real estate / financial tool that kept certain homes on a map from having access to resources. Sort of like financial gerrymandering. It’s kinda cool, in a privileged way, to see a city’s ghetto map and a redlined map overlaid; there is little difference.
Anyway, I couldn’t find a term for this neighborhood wrecking highway practice, but did find this article that goes into detail and links the book Dividing by Design.
The Roads That Tear Communities Apart https://share.google/6G6B8K9VNck1Cb0ZW
One more: I thought redlining also conveyed purposeful impediments to black home ownership, like in the refusal of mortgage applications.
- There were communities in suburbs built and federal funded that included racial exclusion provisions.
Ayo Magwood has pulled together a great amount of information about the topic. Recently, she seems to have shifted to economic inequality driving many of the issues that were once, like all the years before the last 5 or so, primarily racial.
Structural Racism — Uprooting Inequity https://share.google/1A6sgjkI0UOwpFxeO
75\85?
…six seven?
Sweet Auburn!
275
From the Wikipedia page
A newspaper account at the time suggested that Seneca Village would “not be forgotten”
Then later
The settlement was largely forgotten for more than a century after its demolition.
Also just kinda interesting that one of the residents was named Edward Snowden.
Nah, time travel and transrace!
Or Tulsa, where the whites were like “go make your own black town!” So they did, and prospered while the whites stayed poor. So the whites just straight up raped, pillaged and burned the black town and got away with it
Worse part of The Tulsa Race Massacre is it took fucking tv show for it to become widely known. My wife and ex wife grew up here never heard of it. Not fucking once had it been taught in schools. Now the local media talks about it constantly. But only because it had been exposed by the HBO show Watchman. Fucking racist fucks all around.
Really? Even I as a random European know about it. I have never heard of the show though.
People outside the US know…kinda like how we’re the ones that know about a lot of atrocities the US committed
Funny about that.
Graduated from an Oklahoma high school, and it was never discussed.
Exactly when I saw that episode turn to my wife asked if true. She said same thing never heard about it.
They did update the standards to include it, and it is more common now for people to know about it now. There was a high school robotics team I remember that might have done something to help with some search for the mass graves, and I know a local university has done field trips to Greenwood.
Viola Fletcher passed away a few months ago. Never got any form of reparations.
Yeah they are doing search have been for few years now.
Not just the local whites, the government bombed and shot them.
i found it pretty interesting that the slur ‘redneck’ originally referred to striking labourers who participated in the battle of blair mountain. I’m incredibly cynical mind you, but it revealed to me why the term is culturally contested even to this day.
Um . . And also the farmer tan. Where the back of the neck gets red from the sun.
To be fair if highschool history covered every act of overtime racism and suppression committed by the US government there would be no time to cover anything else.
So?
So there would be no time for Americans to learn about other countries and the advantages of the metric system. Oh… wait… never mind.
Where are you from?
Oh look he needs help setting up his ad hominem attack.
Afraid to answer the question when it’s not an ad hominem. Go ahead and attack me. I don’t mind cowards.
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https://www.latimes.com/projects/us-freeway-highway-expansion-black-latino-communities/
Still happening to this day. This is in Houston 5 years ago.
Austin wiped out the lower income families for lofts.
Holy fuck I was not prepared for the sheer amount of similar events described in the comments. It’s is almost as if racist people are inferior human beings, unable to understand empathy. Hen and egg problem, I guess. But yeah, w.r.t. structural racism, a Zager & Evans verse comes to mind: “[…] or tear it down - and start again.”
It’s always been this way. Really dumb fucks ruin everything. And the meme of racism simply won’t die as long as there are dumb, gullible shitheads that gobble it up. Humanity exists on a bell curve, and the smart enough people on the top end of the curve basically fight each other for the right to manipulate the idiots for their own selfishness. Racism is an easy meme and extremely virulent among religious. The actually smart people have better things to do and have no interest in all this stupid shit. Humanity is so fucking disappointing. A bunch of stupid fucking apes with nukes.
[…] the smart enough people on the top end of the curve basically fight each other for the right to manipulate the idiots for their own selfishness. […] The actually smart people have better things to do and have no interest in all this stupid shit.
I was going to object to your first bit, but then you objected yourself. Did you notice the contradiction? :p
I would argue that the people trying to manipulate others are not “the smart ones” but a certain level of intellect is the tool you need to act out your psychopathic/sociopathic tendencies, which are actually what triggers the desire to manipulate others.
haha, you’re right. The nuance you add about certain level of intellect is a good addition and it was my intent to communicate that.
That said, most manipulators still look like borderline retarded from my perspective. And there are people way smarter than myself :)
