Post by GUESTBOT on Feb 17, 2023 14:43:25 GMT -5
Discussing the alleged systemic racism of American transportation at a recent press conference, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg used the example of how “an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach . . . in New York was . . . designed too low for it to pass by, that that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices.”
...Conservative commentators quickly pounced on Buttigieg’s remarks, leading Washington Post writer Philip Bump to point out that Buttigieg was merely talking about a well-known story from Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker,” his massive and authoritative biography of Robert Moses. In the book, Caro alleges that Moses designed the overpass bridges on the Southern State Parkway leading to Jones Beach too low to be used by buses that would carry poor minorities there.
To Bump, it was “not only obviously true that American governmental bodies used infrastructure spending as a way to bolster both directly and indirectly racist policies, but it is an equally obvious truth that such systemic decisions have often been ignored in the teaching of the country’s history.” And such omissions were why, Bump maintained, something like the 1619 Project was needed.
...Caro said that he got the information about the bridges from one of Moses’ engineers. But Ken Jackson, the dean of New York historians (and my former adviser), pushed back against the claim. “Caro is wrong,” Jackson told Kessler. “Arnold Vollmer, the landscape architect who was in charge of design for the bridges, said the height was due to cost.” Jackson added that there were many ways to get to Jones Beach by train and bus that avoided the supposedly lowered parkway overpasses. The North Shore Bus Company published a bus schedule specifically for Jones Beach in the summer of 1937; it had a number of daily routes from Flushing to Jones Beach.''
...A few years ago, Cornell professor Thomas Campanella published a thoughtful assessment of the legend of Moses’ “racist parkway.” Campanella compared the heights of the overpasses on the Southern State Parkway with those on the overpasses on Westchester County parkways built around the same time. He found the Moses-built overpasses to be lower than their Westchester counterparts, but this fact alone did not prove that the height differential was based on racial prejudice.
In fact, if it were true that Moses deliberately sought to lower the height of the parkway bridge overpasses to Jones Beach to keep out “undesirable” elements, then most of those excluded in the late 1920s and 1930s would have been working-class urban whites. In 1930, less than 5 percent of city residents were African-American, and the Latino population was negligible; it would be at least 15 to 20 years before the great migration from Puerto Rico to the city began.
...Conservative commentators quickly pounced on Buttigieg’s remarks, leading Washington Post writer Philip Bump to point out that Buttigieg was merely talking about a well-known story from Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker,” his massive and authoritative biography of Robert Moses. In the book, Caro alleges that Moses designed the overpass bridges on the Southern State Parkway leading to Jones Beach too low to be used by buses that would carry poor minorities there.
To Bump, it was “not only obviously true that American governmental bodies used infrastructure spending as a way to bolster both directly and indirectly racist policies, but it is an equally obvious truth that such systemic decisions have often been ignored in the teaching of the country’s history.” And such omissions were why, Bump maintained, something like the 1619 Project was needed.
...Caro said that he got the information about the bridges from one of Moses’ engineers. But Ken Jackson, the dean of New York historians (and my former adviser), pushed back against the claim. “Caro is wrong,” Jackson told Kessler. “Arnold Vollmer, the landscape architect who was in charge of design for the bridges, said the height was due to cost.” Jackson added that there were many ways to get to Jones Beach by train and bus that avoided the supposedly lowered parkway overpasses. The North Shore Bus Company published a bus schedule specifically for Jones Beach in the summer of 1937; it had a number of daily routes from Flushing to Jones Beach.''
...A few years ago, Cornell professor Thomas Campanella published a thoughtful assessment of the legend of Moses’ “racist parkway.” Campanella compared the heights of the overpasses on the Southern State Parkway with those on the overpasses on Westchester County parkways built around the same time. He found the Moses-built overpasses to be lower than their Westchester counterparts, but this fact alone did not prove that the height differential was based on racial prejudice.
In fact, if it were true that Moses deliberately sought to lower the height of the parkway bridge overpasses to Jones Beach to keep out “undesirable” elements, then most of those excluded in the late 1920s and 1930s would have been working-class urban whites. In 1930, less than 5 percent of city residents were African-American, and the Latino population was negligible; it would be at least 15 to 20 years before the great migration from Puerto Rico to the city began.