Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !
I'm still not ready to talk about Black history. I want to talk about white US history.
Q: "Why don't Black people build any generational wealth? Newer immigrant groups seem to be doing just fine? Must be a lazy and shiftless people!"
A: Because for most of US history, white folk have *intentionally* destroyed the wealthiest Black neighborhoods in the US and stolen all the wealth.
Greenwood. Allentown. Seneca Village. Rosewood. Freedmen's town.
1/N
*Creating* generational wealth is not hard for Black people. It's happened many times in US history. There have been thriving communities.
*Keeping* generational wealth has proved to be nearly impossible. Between racist pogroms, and eminent domain used to create parks, freeways, reservoirs, and shopping malls, Black folk in the US have consistently had their wealth stolen by white folks.
I still run into New Yorkers that go to Central Park every week, but have never heard of Seneca Village.
We are truly in a golden age of TV shows, because now I don't sound like I'm making stuff up when I talk about Greenwood (thanks Watchmen!). But Black towns were destroyed with fire and water.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l3D4hSQcWbk
Imagine in the 70s stealing all wealth from white Dallas residents(oil), and in the 80s from all Manhattan residents (finance), and 2000s all Atherton, SF, and Medina residents(tech)
and then asking why white folk can't seem to build wealth, from your yacht on "Lake Menlo Park."
Why do white Americans learn about the dozens of wealthy Black towns that were destroyed by racism, from:
* Fictional TV shows made by HBO
* Black women comedians (Amber Ruffin)
* Random Black dudes that post on the internet 🙋🏿♂️
Instead of from their history text books?
Again folks will ask "Why was I not taught this in school?" And again, I will say, "You know why." Look at what DeSantis is doing. Look at what the Texas Board of Education has always done.
This is the Forbidden Knowledge(tm)! 🤫
For my friends with MBAs, here are some case studies / interview prep questions.
1) Try and guess the 5 wealthiest white zip codes in the US. Now imagine all of the wealth in those neighborhoods is just stolen and given to Black people. What does that do to the race wealth gap? Hint: Medina Washington alone has about the same net worth as all Black Americans combined.🤡
2) How much does Manhattan real estate *in central park* sell for per square foot? Estimate the value of just Seneca Village.
We all admire Amsterdam for having the vision to replace car infrastructure with bike infrastructure. We see the positive uplift in small business activity, and livability. 🙂👍🏿
Now imagine doing that in reverse. Replace relatively safely walkable and bikeable infrastructure with car infrastructure. In fact, put in freeways. Demolish entire thriving wealthy neighborhoods with freeways that don't serve the neighborhood.🙃
That's what we did to Black folk. That's how we destroyed Black wealth.
We would never even consider bulldozing the nicest homes and businesses in Beverly Hills to make it easier for Black folk who want to work in Long Beach live in the suburbs of Ventura.
We would never consider knocking down skyscrapers in Manhattan to make it easier for Black folk from Brooklyn to work on Wall Street.
But we do this to Black folk in the US *constantly*
Then when we see people living under the freeways we yell "Bootstraps! Why can't you have a nice neighborhood? Asians did it!"
Once we accept the facts that:
* Civil Asset Forfeiture exceeds all other forms of burglary in the US (Black folk are disproportionately targeted).
* Eminent domain has stolen hundreds of billions of dollars of value. (Black neighborhoods are the most common targets).
* Wage theft is one of the largest categories of theft (Black folk are disproportionately targeted for wage theft).
* Prison labor is the only form of slavery allowed by the US constitution (Black folk are unfairly targeted).
It should become clear why Black folk can't seem to build generational wealth in the United States.
This failure is not something intrinsic in the makeup or behavior of Black people.
This failure is baked into how Black people in the US are treated. In other words, racism.
Black folk cannot just "bootstraps" or "education is the key" or "LLC Twitter" or "Hustle, grind, put in work," their way out of this reality. We need to address the racism head on. And we can't do it alone.
Oh, I realize I was too subtle about one aspect of white folk intentionally stealing the wealth.
Most of the time when US newspapers have talked about "Race riots," what they really meant was that there was a Black town next to a white town, and the Black town grew more prosperous than the white one. This made the white folks mad, so one day the white folk just... took a bunch of guns and walked over to the Black town and killed as many people as they could, and stole the Black folks' stuff.
Some US history books will talk about the "Great migration" when about 6 million Black folk fled the South and headed to the North and West of the US.
It's often framed as "Black folk headed North and West looking for jobs." But if you talk to Black folk with relatives that left the South during this time, they'll tell you that their families were fleeing economic persecution in the South: having their money and stuff stolen through lynching, false imprisonment, straight up theft, etc.
Owning a valuable piece of land should ensure generational wealth. But for many Black families, it spelled doom, as a white family would want that land, and they would get it, with the help of corrupt bankers and land assessors.
https://eji.org/news/one-million-black-families-have-lost-their-farms/
I like the term "lost their farms." It makes it sound like they put it down somewhere, and simply forgot where it is.
Yeah, "lost their farms." Well spotted. Words matter, so much!
Like "pedestrian accident" when we mean to say "run over by an automobile."
["Mean to say" also not adequate by itself. Also can be "avoid surfacing culpability by saying," per OP. ]
Warmth of Other Suns helped me see that.
@mekkaokereke sometimes they drove instead of walking.
but otherwise, no notes that's 100% correct.
@mekkaokereke not to mention that when Black PoC carve out communities in which they start building that wealth, my fellow Americans tend to just obliterate entire city blocks, like in Tulsa and Rosewood.
I took several "American History" classes in public schools and universities where I learned about MLK's dream.
It was outside that curriculum where I learned about Tulsa, and nearly a decade later I learned about Rosewood.
@Lyle @KLB @ketmorco @mekkaokereke
The GOP wants us to forget about our racist past to support future perpetration. They try to hide it behind things like all_lives_matter and white_entertainment_television. What they mean is that all_lives_matter except for Blacks, like the “good ole days”.
For the record, all television is white_entertainment_television, leave #BET alone. The GOP is really putting it all on the table for us to see.
@unclepj @Lyle @KLB @ketmorco @mekkaokereke *For the record, all television is white_entertainment_television, leave #BET alone. The GOP is really putting it all on the table for us to see.*
The same can be done with HBCUs. People who resent them disregard why these institutions were established in the first place. Brandeis U was est. as an answer to Harvard's discriminatory quotas on Jewish applicants. That Harvard, et. al. changed practices, doesn't mean Brandeis should close. Same w HBCUs.
@Lyle @KLB @ketmorco @mekkaokereke but that’s the whole point of this drive by the GOP to demonize Critocal Race Theory and African American studies.
They don’t want you to know, and they don’t want to confront the past.
@justinmwhitaker @Lyle @KLB @mekkaokereke This.
On a very personal level I used to feel in my heart of hearts that I wasn't racist (or sexist). But I used terms like "reverse racism".
I *thought* that we had solved racism after MLK marched on Washington, and sure there were pockets of backwards racists out there but it was just corner cases, right?
Until I *listened* to the experiences of Black PoC. And learned about Tulsa. And I realized that maybe I wasn't quite as good as I thought.
@justinmwhitaker @Lyle @KLB @mekkaokereke I *used* to think, "I can't be racist, I'm a good person."
But as it turns out, it doesn't matter if I believe that I'm good if I'm stomping my metaphorical boot into someone's metaphorical face.
When I realized that I'm actually a sexist and a racist (not because I want to, because I grew up a white male in the USA) that opened the possibility for me to consider: "Are these actions/words racist or bigoted? Yes? Don't do it then"
@jeromio @ketmorco @mekkaokereke Not just the South. The Massachusetts Turnpike came through Newton and the rest is American history.
(Growing up 1/2 mi away about 10 years later, I only learned as a teen that the Myrtle Baptist church was an escapee of the gutting of that part of what had been a fuller neighborhood. The remaining black families of course knew it since always.)
https://patch.com/massachusetts/newton/a-city-divided-the-building-of-the-mass-turnpike-in-n8b55de003a
&
https://www.brandoncrowley.com/myrtle-church
@mekkaokereke @ketmorco of course we can’t teach that it school: it might make some white kid feel bad /s
(Actually, it probably won’t. It will make some white kids question their parents’ racist attitudes, and that’s the **real** objection.)
@cohomologyisFUN @mekkaokereke @ketmorco We can teach anything we want.
What gets us is the community response and political environment.
What I can and do get away with in NY would probably get me lynched in FL.
@ketmorco @mekkaokereke @Yugoboy as a parent, I understand wanting to have a voice in what your child learns. But to get angry that your kid is learning accurate history… it’s ridiculous.
Keep fighting the good fight. Don’t let the fascists win.
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