I would like to prelude my post with the Ted video, "Greening the Ghetto," by Majora Carter. It is an eighteen minute long video about her personal experiences in the Bronx, NY. She is a very well educated and charismatic speaker, I highly recommend watching the video.
As we talked about in class, social injustice is a major problem in America. As both Majora Carter and Laura Polido stated, the location of power plants, waste facilities, sewage plants and most other undesirable service stations, can be easily locate based on race and class location. Majora Carter stated that over forty percent of New York city's waste is handled in the South Bronx alone. With a population nearing 8.2 million the amount of waste produced alone is not comprehensible to most. If you live in the South Bronx however, all you have to do is look out your window to gain some incite.
During the middle of the twentieth century, Robert Moses, New York's city planner, designed a causeway that connected the nice suburbs with Manhattan, completely bypassing and displacing hundreds of thousands of South Bronx natives. This perpetuated the drastic downturn for the South Bronx. Money was no longer flowing in or around the community so many jobs were lost as well as houses. This gave rise to open land for city officials to make practical use of by placing municipal facilities there. Zoning laws and redlining, as Polido and Carter also discussed, of the South Bronx allowed these problems to escalate and eventually turn the South Bronx into New York City's personal dump.
The people who lived and still live there today have had little say in what happens being that they are poor and mostly African American. Fortunately, for the South Bronx and New York City as a whole, Majora Carter took some initiative and started an organization to create the Hunt's Point Riverside Park. With some help from city officials and a $10,000 grant, the organization was able to levy and turn it into a $3,000,000 park. This event showed city officials,developers and the community that the South Bronx had potential for revitalization. Majora Carter continues to strive for a green and equal opportunity city, while still addressing the need for capitalism to fund and promote these initiatives.
This is a very common problem in the U.S. today. Many city developers are placing the industrial facilities that are seen as problematic in areas where they feel the minority or poor people are so as not to make the middle and upper class angry. By this I mean that these developers would much rather make the poor angry than the middle and upper class. Why? As a political science major, I feel that maybe some of these positions that effect where certain city development happens, such as a mayor for instance, is a political position and they need votes to keep their job. Who is more likely to vote on election day? The middle and upper class people are because they pay the majority of the taxes and feel they can have somewhat of a say in how they're spent by voting for whatever person would spend it best. To secure these votes, officials definately wont put waste facilities in areas where these people live.
ReplyDeleteAs a side note, I wanted to mention something that happened in the county where I'm from that kind of goes along with this topic. There was a coal company that wanted to put in a deep mine near a local town. The problem that the town had was that there was a good chance this mine would mess up a lot of the people's water systems. Keep in mind that only 15,000 people live in the entire county and a mine would add dozens of well paying jobs. However, the town fought tooth and nail and rejected the idea even though the owner of the coal company went to the town meetings in person and said he would personally pay to have everyone's water systems fixed in any way that was needed. I feel like this is an instance where industry was rejected when it should have been welcomed. Yeah, there would be some problems as a result, but it would've boosted the local economy in a way that the benefits would definately outweigh the costs.
Unfortunately, in our society certain people have more access to amenities than others. Suburban development has more green space available than inner city housing. People who are able to afford this housing are able to experience a better lifestyle than others. This includes access to recreational land and land for personal use.
ReplyDeleteHowever, many inner city communities are going through redevelopment. Many planners attempt to improve these neighborhoods. Some argue that easy access to green space is a right and more parks should be implemented into the inner city.
The example of how the South Bronx was able to fund construction for park development should be followed. More grants should be issued for this cause. Creative measure such as this is what our communities need to have a vibrant and appealing place to live.
After watching the current flooding devastation that is taking place along the Mississippi, I think it is interesting how closely the social injustice issues relate to this post and recent topics in class. Although the areas that are being affected are much more rural than the Bronx, there are race and class distinctions between the areas that are being flooded verse the areas that are safe. Due to the fact that this flood is still fresh news, I have not found any statistics on the types of homes and neighborhoods that are being affected. The news media seems to indicate that many trailer parks and other poor areas have already flooded. The photos rarely portray pictures of “nice” homes having water up to their roofs (probably because it rarely happens). Obviously, wealthy people would not buy land close to rivers and flood planes because they have the opportunity to buy safer land. The photos on the news are clear evidence of the inequalities that still occur due to the systems that govern our country.
ReplyDeleteToday on NPR, I heard an interview with a woman who has been displaced from her trailer park for about two weeks now. She said that by tomorrow (Tuesday 5/10), her roof will be underwater. Her family has not had flood insurance for the past year since her stepfather passed away. This disaster is affecting a huge number of people and so far, it seems like most of them are poor and already disadvantaged. On a more positive note, many efforts are currently being made to prevent as much devastation as possible. This includes efforts to diverge flooding away from New Orleans to avoid further damaged. This effort shows recognition of Katrina and other events that have brought negative attention to the social inequalities in the area as well as evidence that people are learning from their mistakes.
Wow! What an interesting post, but even more interesting comments from my fellow classmates. After watching this video I firstly related it to several of the examples I addressed in class that were based in California and Mexico and also had been areas where race and class determined the building of the industries that thrived there. With many companies deciding to go international to create their product and thus make more money, we often forget that there are still many environmentally damaging industries crowding the mostly urban areas where non-white, and lower class individuals reside. These industries not only negatively affect the environment and the living conditions of the population but can provide income to nearby residents thus making a very hard decision when it comes to what is the greater good, at least in the corporate mind. While most of us (at least I would hope so) would see that the costs outweighs the benefits in these decisions, it is obvious that for the people in charge, it doesn't. I do not know if I can agree with Alex that it is all about politics and getting votes, but I do think that it is a very political decision that unfortunately effects a vast amount of people, many of which probably DO vote and feel a certain sort of reliance on the US government. I do feel, as I said in class, that the propensity to retaliate is definitely a determining factor in deciding locations for some of these plants. Perhaps they feel that if they are paying the nearby populations to work there, then the populations thus do not "deserve" to protest for better. Coming from a town where they successfully protested the building of a Wal-mart for over a year, resulting in community initiatives to buy the land that the Walmart corporation had attempted to, I find it shocking that more people in these areas haven't protested or brought more national attention to what is going on.
ReplyDelete