The Disturbing History of America’s Highways

Rondo Here! We are growing and thriving! They thought they could break us, no way!

Highways are not racists, but the people that design them were either racists or design them to negatively affect a specific population group based on race. I find it interesting that those on the right have often used the term Highways in conjunction with them being "racists" in order be little and deflect from the actual history of how some of the highways were designed in the USA. The ironic part is that the whole lift yourself by bootstraps narrative that they often like promoting was done by those communities and then dismantle by the government entities using the highway to destroy said communities.

In stockton, little Manilla was the same where the filipino community was negatively impacted

Quick answer highways are not racist but americans are.

Who are the white folks who had no issues with this, and where are they (and their descendents) now?

SAME in Louisville, KY. I-264 quite literally runs through the (white flight) Black side of town. It's just sad.

In Waukegan above Chicago there is the Amstutz expressway which is another highway to nowhere. Since it goes nowhere, it’s been used as a filming location for many movies. But that does nothing for the Black families and businesses of Market Street who were displaced in order to construct. Crazy, but not entirely surprising, how common this is.

Nowadays , they make up eleven percent of the population and commit sixty two percent of the violent crimes

These comments are like "😢 won't someone think of how the highways feel"

Some of this falls to agricultural areas being well suited for roads, cheaper, and historically occupied by minorities. Govt targets the cheapest project possible, worth examining through this lens.

One ive heard many times is why would they put the road down by the river that floods, well transportation once relied on grass and water, so you needed to be close.

Oak Park in Sacramento, highway went atraight through black neighborhoods, where a largr portion of rhe land already belonged to the state.

Its tricky and leaves a lasting scar. Roads pick winners and losers, and those losers tend to be the poorer, marginalized folks.

At the same time there are more factors at play than just skin color. The driving factor can be something as simple as elevation, ownership, and land productivity. Racism is intimately entangled with highway placement, but its not the only reason either.

Highways aren’t racist get over yourself

There’s always enough money to displace black and poor people