Are You Spitting Me?

[BmorePat87]

(06-19-2019, 11:25 PM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: Reparations?

I work alongside many people, from many different backgrounds, for an agreed upon wage. We live in the same neighborhoods, pay the same taxes, shop at the same places. Why is a person I live alongside being treated differently than me because of the color of their skin?

I have no idea why this seems to be a "hot topic" among Democratic presidential candidates.

The argument behind it is that, even after emancipation, decades of institutionalized discrimination prevented black Americans from accessing the same opportunities as white Americans, creating a divide that has been very hard to bridge. Housing segregation is almost unchanged since the 1960's, despite legislation to fix it. Whether it was refusal to rent/sell to black people or practices like red lining that used factors like amount of black residents as reasons to deny loans to neighborhoods, we have seen black home ownership trail white homeownership, preventing the development of wealth that often passes from one generation to the next.

2 miles from me is the neighborhood of Edmondson Village. As more black Americans entered the middle class following WWII, more wanted to live in middle class neighborhoods. Unfortunately it was perfectly legal for these new and affordable areas to deny people homes because of their race. A real estate developer started buying homes in this popular area and sold them to black families at above market prices (because they couldn't get a home like that any other way). The developer then told the white neighbors to sell to him at below market value because of all of the new black neighbors who would lower the home's value. In a decade the neighborhood went from 90% white to 90% black. Businesses pulled out of the fancy shopping center and the city stopped putting money into the neighborhood's park and rec areas. 

As more neighborhoods remain segregated, we have schools unable to provide the same resources, access to health care lacking, and access to healthy food lacking. 


I don't think money to individuals will fix this. You need a far reaching solution. Mayor Pete's Douglass Plan is a good start

https://www.nbcnews.com/card/buttigieg-calls-douglass-plan-boost-economic-prosperity-african-americans-n1016936