To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [permaculture] anti-semitism or naivete
Date: Mon, 28 May 2007 11:15:11 -0500
I think it is naive to think that the invisible
structures that support racism in the United
States and elsewhere have somehow shriveled up and
gone away never to bother us any more.
For example, here in Oklahoma City, over the last
20 years, thousands of units of housing, mostly
occupied by African Americans and Hispanics, have
been destroyed by various government urban renewal
and road building schemes. Somehow these projects
are never sited in neighborhoods populated mostly
by white people. The property owners are
typically paid less than the actual value of the
property. I spoke recently with an elderly woman
who was forced to move three times in the last 20
years by Oklahoma City. Each time she had to go
deeper into debt, and she ended up losing property
ownership entirely when she lost her job. Her
original home was owned without a mortgage.
This process also has the effect of raising the
price of rents for the lowest tier of housing --
less supply meets growing demand yields higher
prices. This constitutes a non-market,
politicized transfer of wealth from the have-nots
to the haves. Increasing the financial problems
of low income people drives a host of urban
problems.
I don't personally wallow in shame and guilt about
this, because I have always vigorously opposed
these land grabs. But I think a lot of white
people in Oklahoma City could use an increase in
their personal shame and guilt quotas on this
issue, in the hopes that it would induce a change
in their tawdry behavior. These events are
essentially "due process pogroms", by which urban
areas are taken by coercion from the poor and
given to the non-poor and politically well
connected. The fact that money changes hands is
best compared to the scene in one of Victor Hugo's
novels where an aristocrat's carriage runs over
and kills a peasant's child, and the aristocrat
leans out of the window and throws a few coins
back at the grieving parents.
Racism is alive and well in the United States. We
just don't call it by that name anymore.
Bob Waldrop, OKC
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>
it's been 141 years since the end of slavery and
40 years since the end of segregation
and we're to continue wallowing in a burden of
guilt and shame?