"I’m still surprised that some people were surprised when I pointed to the fact that if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a White and a Black neighborhood or if an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach — or that would’ve been — in New York was — was designed too low for it to pass by, that that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices."
The question isn't whether Buttigieg got it wrong, but whether the massively respected Robert A. Caro got it wrong in his 1974 book about Robert Moses. And Kessler finds that in the years since the publication of the book, significant doubts have been raised about the part — 2 pages — containing the anecdote about the motivation for the height of the underpasses.
Caro's only source for the story was Sidney M. Shapiro, "a close Moses associate and former chief engineer and general manager of the Long Island State Park Commission."
Bernward Joerges, a German professor of sociology, in 1999 carefully examined the saga of the bridges. In an essay, he acknowledged Moses was an “undemocratic scoundrel” and a “structural racist” but argues that all parkways at the time had low bridges.
“How, then, should one understand that Moses built some 200 overpasses so low?” he asked. “U.S. civil engineers with whom I have corresponded regularly produce two simple explanations for the rationality of the low-hanging bridges: that commercial traffic was excluded from the parkways anyway; and that the generally good transport situation on Long Island forbade the very considerable cost of raising the bridges … Moses did nothing different on Long Island from any parks commissioner in the country. … In sum: Moses could hardly have let buses on his parkways, even if he had wanted differently.”...Kenneth T. Jackson, a Columbia University historian who has said that generations of his students have failed to confirm episodes in Caro’s book, also says the overpass story is not true. “Caro is wrong,” he wrote in an email. “Arnold Vollmer, the landscape architect who was in charge of design for the bridges, said the height was due to cost.” He added: “Also, you can still get to Jones Beach by train and bus, as you always could.”...
But more recently, Thomas J. Campanella, a Cornell University historian of city planning, had a change of heart when he measured the height of the bridges on the Southern State Parkway. “I’ve always had doubts about the veracity of the Jim Crow bridge story. There is little question that Moses held patently bigoted views,” he wrote in an article for Bloomberg News in 2017. But then he recorded clearances for 20 bridges, viaducts and overpasses on other parkways built at the time and compared them to measures of the 20 original bridges and overpasses on the Southern State Parkway. It turned out clearances are substantially lower on the Moses parkway.
“The verdict? It appears that Sid Shapiro was right,” he wrote. “I do believe it is true,” Campanella said in an email to The Fact Checker. “The parkways I looked at were built in roughly the same era as the Southern State — especially Sawmill and Hutch. In fact, the Westchester parkways set most of the standards for parkway design for years in the United States. The lower overpasses on the Southern State parkway are a substantial deviation from precedent.”
Joerges suggested there was a reason for this. “True the bridges were low, but each had to be low differently,” he wrote. “Moses took great care that each and every bridge was individually fitted into its natural context: standardized unicity, as it were, was part of an artfully laid out nature. One can show more generally that, when it came to parkway building, bridge-building culture was connected to a specific politics of nature.”...
So what can you say about Buttigieg's use of the Caro account? Kessler refrains from assigning the usual Pinocchios. When politicians use history — as when judges and lawyers use history — they select the story that works the way they want. But it's a massive intrusion into the mind of America for the Secretary of Transportation to assert — as a truth — that our roads are structured by racism. We are owed a scrupulous adherence to the truth. America is as bad as it is, but no worse.
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77 comments:
Glenn Kessler fact-check's something Pete Buttigieg said
I fact checked this statement and give it Four Pinocchios.
“How, then, should one understand that Moses built some 200 overpasses so low?”
Still tired from freeing the Israelites?
If these are the same people that made us drive on the parkway and park on the driveway I think I see the problem…
Sounds like they were low, but no one brought the slightest evidence or indication that the point of that was blocking buses for black kids. That's a classic fallacy. "Hey, Glenn, then how do you explain the meeting of Trump associate __ with the Russian __?!"
Maybe, but not fully convincing.
The fact is, the bridges are too low to let buses pass, which prevents people, especially black people, from accessing the beaches. We have an eye witness who says racism was the motivating factor and we have a general consensus that Moses was a racist. Against that we have people with no first hand knowledge saying it was done that way because it didn't occur to Moses not to do it that way.
Under most circumstances, people weighing this evidence would conclude that racism is the more likely explanation.
To paraphrase Lavrentiy Beria, "Show me the man, and I'll show you the racism." If nothing else, Biden and his crew are consistent in their disdain for the USA.
Buttigieg is going to be remembered in history books.
It takes a very egregious deviation from the norm to get your name in the history books as Transportation Secretary.
Do you think he knows just how pathetic and out of his depth he looks?
It really does seem like the people running the Biden Regime chose the dumbest group of people they could find to take the fall.
Wouldn't the exclusion of buses have been more of an issue of class rather than race? Did poor whites at the time generally own cars?
I don't know anything about this story except that I already believe Mayor Pete isn't qualified to be Secretary of Transportation and this post confirms my bias.
I think you can run into racist behavior while traveling on the roads in this country, at least during times in the past, from what my African-American friends have told me as to certain places in the South.
There's a scene in "Driving Miss Daisy" that illustrates that (as to past attitudes towards both Jewish and African-American citizens while traveling by car from one destination to another). Except now I think I'm doing the thing Althouse recently criticized (?) others for, bringing TV shows and movies into everything as a point of reference.
Everything is racist to people who only SEE race. THAT is progressivism in a nutshell. What ISN'T RACIST to them??
It occurs to me that if news organizations actually stuck to reporting facts there’d be no need for this strange class of journalist called “fact checker.” When I was learning from the legendary award winning journalism teacher Christina D Beeson somewhere around 99% of newswriting was establishing and checking facts. Sadly the content of most “news” now is mostly opinion. People crave facts.
Buttigieg's false racism narrative is paved with bad intention.
"Glenn Kessler fact-check's something"
Sorry for that stray apostrophe. It's fixed now.
People could always get to Jones Beach by train and car.
The Left always has to view nearly everything through the lens of race.
Today I awoke from my usual White Supremacist dream of whipping black slaves, threw on my white robe (unfortunately not hooded), then into the kitchen to start the Keurig (good Aryan name, that) brewing intolerably black coffee. But at least the cup is white.
I fixed up the coffee with some white coffee creamer and proceeded to the bathroom where I expelled a dark brown turd and cleaned up with white toilet paper. Brushed my teeth to keep them white and combed my steadily whitening hair.
My racist employer has a dress code, so reluctantly I exchanged the white robe for a suit and tie before heading off to my job as Assistant Associate Director of Oppression at Big White Company.
How's your morning going?
In days gone by, the Secretary of Transportation was expected to do things to improve the nation's transportation systems. Today, he is expected to illuminate the nation's racism and signal the administration's virtue. Mr. Buttigieg is performing his job admirably, and those who await some action on the nation's supply systems misunderstand the Secretary's responsibilities. He is performing, to expectation, the tasks for which he is suited.
I grew up on long Island and was kind of surprised when I grew up and moved and saw how different most highway bridges were: exposed I beams kind of plopped onto the landscape. All the LI Parkway bridges were stone faced, made to look like old timey constructions tucked into the landscape.
There's no Pinnochios for Buttigieg repeating something he believed to be true even if it were false, are there? What's the standard? I think that ought to be limited to statements that are false and that the speaker knew or had reason to believe were false.
I grew up on Long Island in the 1960’s and 1970’s, in a town that straddled the Queens-Nassau border. On the weekends, my father would drive us to the beach in his car. During the week in the summer, when our fathers were at work, my friends and I would take a bus to the beach. There were two of them, one to Jones Beach ($1 round trip) and one to Point Lookout (free).
The problem is more that Buttigieg seized or pounced on this forty year old story about events seventy years ago to distract from the fact that he literally was not doing his job for months. There are questions that are hotly debated by historians -- accounts and interpretations that could be true or not -- but we don't expect arguments about such details to become the pegs to hang new government policies on, certainly not when they are so tangential to the problems of today.
I'm willing to admit that Moses was in general a bigot, whether he was in this case or not, and that racism was involved in midcentury American public policies -- transportation, slum clearance, housing, lending, employment -- but I don't think it's relevant to the difficulties the country is having now or that there's anything Buttigieg can do about it.
#PeteButtigiegWhiteSavior
The whole affair reeks of the Harvard-Oxford guy who knows nothing about the real world, but can't get a story he heard back in college out of his head. I note that Robert Moses was himself a Yale-Oxford guy, so maybe that is the root cause of all this.
American is also as good as it is.
Buttigieg is a putz. A bizarre, walking example of everything that is wrong about our political system. A mediocre Mayor of South Bend, IN who would not have even been reelected to that job, runs for President- not because he's skilled at anything, but because he's gay. That doesn't work out once people get a dose of him. So he gets promoted (the Democratic Party way is to fail up) to a Cabinet position as Secy of Transportation- a job which he is fundamentally unprepared for in any way. And the two most important marks so far on his stint as Secy is that (a) he was off on parental leave with his partner for 8 weeks while our country was grinding to a halt due to the supply chain collapsing at various points (particularly at SoCal ports), and (b) standing up and letting us know that he's surprised we did not realize how racist our bridges were.
That we have a member of the media sending up that prepared softball to him is something that might have been questioned- had we any real reporters with an ounce of curiosity. This administration runs a full-time operation denouncing the country it leads, and requiring us to flog ourselves for perceived slights of past generations. A highway built in 1925-27 with low bridges that matched the approaching ground levels and had an appealing look, was above all- built to look good and last. Henry Ford was a noted anti-Semite but I doubt he cared if Jews bought his Model T. He just didn't want them living in Dearborn. I doubt Robert Moses, who apparently was a noted racist, thought that 'out of the box' about school buses full of black kids heading to the beach on his highway.
But then, I don't think like Pete Buttigieg or April Ryan. Thankfully. And it would be nice if we had optimistic leaders who looked positively on our country and our future instead of repugnant people who scowl at us and look to tear it all down by claiming racism when it cannot be either proven or disproven. This has to end. People like Petey should be laughed out of every room they enter.
For what it's worth, I grew up next to one of Robert Moses parkways...actually was the one named after him, The Robert Moses Causeway. Traveled my youthful years on the Southern State, Sagtikos, Northern State and Meadowbrook, and others. They were wonderful roads, no commercial traffic (certainly accounting for lower overpasses), wooden dividers, wooden light posts, and stone overpasses. Never occurred to me or anyone I knew to take their design to be racist in origin. In retrospect, it is believable that they were designed to keep out an unwanted element. It is also eminently believable that they were designed to be visually appealing, and fit into the flat landscape. Perhaps that is why the Southern State had lower overpasses, the topography of southern Long Island is very flat with no available hills to utilize when designing. Of course, this interpretation isn't helpful to the narrative so it will be roundly dismissed by the cognoscenti.
"But it's a massive intrusion into the mind of America for the Secretary of Transportation to assert — as a truth — that our roads are structured by racism."
The massive intrusion you refer to is progressivism. It poisons everything.
The reluctance of nice liberal women to recognize the very long, very consistent, very intrusive pattern has allowed it to spread. At some point, treating each new instance as an instance--it's terrible Mayor Pete would say that! it's an intrusion--becomes a form of denial.
Mayor Pete means to transport us into the era of complete progressive dominance.
"Everything is racist to people who only SEE race. THAT is progressivism in a nutshell. What ISN'T RACIST to them??"
Well, first you have to ignore a lot of the evidence in order to see racism, but once that's done, it's a piece of cake. Look: "Under most circumstances, people weighing this evidence would conclude that racism is the more likely explanation."
The best that can be drawn from the totality of the evidence presented is that Moses wasn't actively anti-racist enough to spend large amounts of money, which could be justified in no other way, to ensure that blacks had additional routes to get to the beaches, beyond the buses and trains that already went there. He was a white supremacist because he wasn't far-seeing enough to know that all of the other parkways built at the time must have been racist in intent, and by the logically infallible law of extrapolation by belief, our entire highway infrastructure is not only racist, but without question, white supremacist. Update your children's school curriculums accordingly.
So, the bridges were too low for buses, but no worries because you could still get to the beaches by train or bus.
Okay I'm lost
So just another liar discovered in the Biden cabal?
I'm slightly perturbed that the US Secretary of Transportation doesn't know the difference between an underpass and an overpass.
The funniest part of this saga is that nobody actually measured the bridges’ clearances until Campanella did. It’s the story of our times: narratives trump facts.
Back then if they didn't want a particular group to use a beach or park they would have put up a sign reading NO (fill in the blank) ALLOWED. I'm old enough to remember some of those signs. Bridges weren't necessary to block the use of beaches, just a sign.
Moses was a Jew and a democrat in case you wanted to know.
He also demolished low income housing to make space for his parks.
The left is required to overlook facts in order to slander America’s past which was dominated by white people (white supremicists). By definition things were always done with racist intents. But, don’t worry. Progressive socialists are here now to right old wrongs. And don’t complain about anything our new saviors do or you will be showing your racism.
I guess it's too much to ask that people remember that during Moses' working life it was not very hard for NY to declare a beach "White Only". There was no need to go to great lengths to build physical barriers.
I certainly hope Pete runs for President again. Who else can the Dems run? Harris? Newsome?
Robert Caro = why say something in x words when x^x words can be used.
Explain the huge Geary Blvd. built to run through the black Fillmore District of San Francisco.
" but no worries because you could still get to the beaches by train or bus."
The parkways were not the only way to get to the beach.
I recently went on a drive to Niagara Falls and there is a Lake Ontario Parkway there, in New York State, obviously, which is very beautiful, but so little used that grass grows between the slabs of concrete in places. They might have done better to leave the countryside un-despoiled, but highways must be built, I guess. If they had skipped that one, I don't know that anybody would have complained, however.
"Of course, this interpretation isn't helpful to the narrative so it will be roundly dismissed by the cognoscenti."
Just call it what it is: "Mid-Century Modern."
Explain the huge Geary Blvd. built to run through the black Fillmore District of San Francisco.
BootyBoy is just showing off his high class education. I mean indoctrination.
"Buttigieg is a putz. A bizarre, walking example of everything that is wrong about our political system."
I think this sums it up nicely.
wild chicken: "So, the bridges were too low for buses, but no worries because you could still get to the beaches by train or bus.
Okay I'm lost"
No, you aren't.
You are just having a difficult time internalizing the fact that the insane democraticals truly believe each and every tangible item in the Universe is racist and must be dealt with....probably by starting all over Pol Pot style with "Year Zero".
Blogger BillieBob Thorton said...
Moses was a Jew and a democrat in case you wanted to know.
Moses was born a Jew but converted to Christianity as a young man, perhaps around the time that he married the granddaughter of a fairly prominent Methodist minister.
A 1939 article in The Atlantic refers to Moses as "a young independent Republican." Caro's book confirms that Moses usually described himself as an independent Republican. In fact, Moses' only run for elective office came in 1934, when he challenged Herbert Lehman, the incumbent Democratic governor. Moses ran on the Republican line in that election.
Khematite, thanks I stand corrected.
From what I've read, blacks were a very small minority in NY at the time.
So even if it were true it probably affected Italians and Jews.
But blacks tend to be taller than whites, so if they were walking the bastard made them stoop down.
And Thank you to all our veterans
"Explain the huge Geary Blvd. built to run through the black Fillmore District of San Francisco."
They did the same thing to poor white neighborhoods in my home town in Upstate New York to build a four lane highway between the Dog-n-Burger and the scrap metal yard. The black neighborhoods were bypassed completely. But nobody is trying to argue that racism didn't exist, or doesn't exist, BTW. Just that not every single decision was racist in intent, or even in fact.
I have a friend who is a partner in a syndicate that owns something like two sections, half a square mile, of land in the South. It's kind of interesting to hear about the kind of politics that goes into building highways. A lot of money is made building highways. Lots of huge contracts are awarded, for the materials, the construction, etc; palms are greased. The way you get a highway built is to cook up a plan, and start working on the politicians, it starts out with that kind of human engineering. There is no Mandarin class of experts in the government who disinterestedly look at what would be best for the country as a whole behind these decisions. Moses might have been such a person, but now It's driven by business interests, and by their lobbyists, ambitions businessmen getting local politicians elected.
I would be fine if Biden called a halt to the construction of any new superhighways. That would be something positive.
A fine example of "The supply of racism in America does not meet the demand."
Temujin said...
"...Secy of Transportation- a job which he is fundamentally unprepared for in any way."
What makes you think so? How do you imagine President Biden would describe the responsibilities of that job?
Here in Austin, TX, when I arrived in 2000 the interstate I-35 bisected the city into a western White section and eastern Hispanic and Black section. We were openly advised by our realtor not to look at homes east of the interstate. Eventually we decided not to live in Austin proper, and ended up north of Austin in the suburb town of Round Rock, and east of the interstate in a lovely new development that was still partly cow pasture when our home was built.
Since at least 2010 the Hispanic and Black neighborhoods of east Austin have been gentrified with new home construction, for the simple reason that immigrants to Austin - of all races - need to live somewhere, and living close to downtown in a former ethnic enclave is better than commuting in Austin traffic. Having personally profited from 6 houses I built east of I-35, tearing down 1960s homes to do so, I can say that the integration of east Austin has been an economic success for all involved. The previous homeowners got paid for their land, the new home builders got paid for their new homes, the new home buyers brought higher taxes to the city and enjoy their urban lifestyles.
Now if we could only figure out how to integrate immigrants into the homeless camps here, displacing the drug addicts with tech employees, we'd have some real progress.
Moses didn't make it in politics, largely because it was FDR's era and Democrats were riding high, but also because he couldn't admit to being Jewish or to not being Jewish. That's my recollection anyway. I guess he got his posthumous revenge when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.
tim in vermont said...The best that can be drawn from the totality of the evidence presented is that [blah blah blah]
I figured people would respond like this "everybody cries racism all the time today!"
The book in question was written in 1974. Everybody didn't cry racism all the time in 1974, and there's an eyewitness to the event. Whereas people saying "not racism" have only speculation. Did you deal with that in your second blah? Or your third blah? Oh, right, you dealt with it in none of them.
Been years since I read it, but as I recall, Mr Moses didn't give a fuck about anything or anyone who got in his way.
Based solely on the facts at hand in this post, there seems to be extremely glaring issues in the analysis. Off the top of my head:
1. It is entirely possible it was first done for cost reasons AND THEN the racial impact was found and determined by the designer to be desirable in accordance with his racist views.
2. It could have simply been designed that way for an aesthetic or something lost to the annals of time.
3. It is entirely possible to walk to the other side and pick up a bus, especially for beachgoers already planning to do some walking (as most young beachgoers do).
4. Are there any legitimate design reasons at the time - beyond cost - that would have encouraged lower bridges? Storm/lateral load concerns? Material shortages? Etc. - I see no mention of this.
....
This is effectively an analysis not into an issue, but into a true/false claim. Instead of trying to understand the issue - why were the bridges built low - the analysis was focused on whether they were low because of racism.
....
One of my favorite fiction books had a short passage about how military scouts should not be told specifically what they are searching for because that bias can negatively impact what they report or seek to find. I've found that to be true in so many aspects of life - better results are found not when you are told what to find, but to look at an issue in an open-ended fashion and see what facts emerge.
Don't raise the bridge, lower the river.
Or the roadway.
"Everybody didn't cry racism all the time in 1974"
I guess you had to be there.
CRT allows this to not be racist, rather a deterministic result of social, educational, economic and historical inequality resulting in below average success of blacks. People ignore the inequality and judge the group based on the assumption that Blacks don't work hard enough or have the discipline to achieve like Whites and Asians.
So you people are not racist, just ignorant. Therefore, you are not hateful for having hateful views. However, the problem with CRT is you people hate being labeled ignorant more than racist, so you protest and death threat against this theory.
When I was in South Africa in 2000, the guys I hunted with pointed to the apparent free market aparthied that existed since forever in the USA in defense of their old system. Maybe it wasn't always a driver in road and bridge construction, that doesn't mean that infrastructure helping American aparthied was never planned and executed.
There's a reason Black Kids suffer from more cases of asthma. Another foundation of the level playing field fantasy.
"We are owed a scrupulous adherence to the truth. America is as bad as it is, but no worse."
Yes, exactly. Your plea for accuracy and sobriety resonates very strongly with me. It captures so much of what has been wrong with American liberals since, oh, a certain junior Senator from Illinois became POTUS.
If liberals can plausibly use a "fact" (no matter how disputed or controversial) to smear American society and our history, they will not hesitate do so. And if they can gin up racial grievances to attack their ideological opponents, all the better.
The way they congratulate themselves for being the party of science and truth ... it's just very irksome.
Howard: "So you people are not racist, just ignorant. Therefore, you are not hateful for having hateful views. However, the problem with CRT is you people hate being labeled ignorant more than racist, so you protest and death threat against this theory."
I was wondering what your fall back position would be when your stupid lies were exposed.
You didn't disappoint.
You want to do something to resolve historical racism/systemic racism? Have your children give their jobs to a qualified minority member.
tim in vermont @ 8:49 AM
“I recently went on a drive to Niagara Falls and there is a Lake Ontario Parkway there, in New York State, obviously, which is very beautiful, but so little used that grass grows between the slabs of concrete in places. They might have done better to leave the countryside un-despoiled, but highways must be built, I guess. If they had skipped that one, I don't know that anybody would have complained, however.”
Yes, the Lake Ontario State Parkway. The western 12.5 miles are a primary research area for my ornithology work. The four overpasses in Orleans County are “standard height” overpasses. The further east you travel towards Rochester, several of the overpasses are lower in height and use Medina sandstone and other materials. The plan at one time was to run the Parkway west to Niagara Falls. There used to be quite a bit more traffic when Kodak was a major employer in Rochester, but those days are long gone. Every winter the west 2.1 miles of the Parkway are closed for the winter. There has been some discussion to close down either the Eastbound or Westbound lanes and convert the remainder to a 2-lane road, but costs are a consideration.
Howard said...
There's a reason Black Kids suffer from more cases of asthma. Another foundation of the level playing field fantasy.
And at every level the systems that are holding Black People back are run and developed by progressive democrats. Democrats do racist stuff. We know. That is what the party was founded for.
Howard uses this structural racism to attack his political opponents and get more power to do more racists stuff. Like CRT. The public school education is the first thing that would be noticed by anyone serious about stopping racism.
But Howard isn't trying to stop racism. He needs racism and division to use as a weapon to support his the policies that are very unpopular.
Nobody wants Governments and Corporations to ally to force people to take "vaccines" that don't work.
Nobody wants white kids to be taught they are racist second class citizens that are the source of all suffering for black people. Not even most black people.
Small numbers of people want stagflation, open borders, constant rioting and looting. But not enough to win elections.
So Howard clings desperately to the notion that his self assumed moral superiority makes his policies OK.
Howard is a dishonest piece of shit.
"there's an eyewitness to the event. "
There is an eyewitness to the fact that he was a racist, but there is no evidence that it had anything to do with the parkways. The guy who invented the transistor was a racist, does that mean your computer is racist?
"Everybody didn't cry racism all the time in 1974"
Somebody missed the Black Power movement.
"People ignore the inequality and judge the group based on the assumption that Blacks don't work hard enough or have the discipline to achieve like Whites and Asians."
I don't think you would get much argument from the right that our education system is inherently racist, to the core. You seem to be saying that black children are not educable so we should just give up, which is a hugely racist point of view, right in line with those of the writer of "The Bell Curve," the inventor of the transistor, who made your same argument. It's the racism of low expectations. It seems kindler and gentler, but its effects are catastrophic to the black community. We live in a technological society, and without an education, a kid is doomed to compete with the illegal immigrants for dead end jobs, so let's just pretend that none of that is true, because that way we get to call people we don't like "racists."
Who is the real "white supremacist" here? The guy who believes that blacks can't be educated to white and Asian standards, and that it is cruel to try? Or the people trying to give black children choices outside of the hopelessly systematically racist pubic schools?
The Cross Bronx Expressway has long been cited as racist, though many of the residents and business owners (including my wife's grandfather) displaced by its construction were Jewish.
Now it's "environmental racism," as in this piece.
I do wonder whether there's any evidence that higher rates of asthma for blacks has anything to do with proximity to an expressway.
My mother and her brother and sister definitely took the bus to Jones Beach since their family didn't own a car. However they usually took the subway to Coney Island or Far Rockaway which were closer and had more entertainment options. There is a LIRR station at Long Beach which is also closer to the city and has lovely beaches. The bridges on the Southern Parkway are exceptionally lovely and at the same level as the roads leading to them which were in existence before the Parkway.
I remember questioning the racism assertion when I read the Moses biography many years ago. I never finished the book.
Howard, do you understand that the way you make your points makes the average person want to oppose you?
As a boy growing up in the time of Moses, I knew that some express roads, called "Parkways" were built exclusively for automobiles. No busses and NO TRUCKS.
Some trivia (with no racial content), to enable high-capacity vehicles drivable on Parkways some genius (geniuses?) invented the stretch limousine, a very long vehicle (but of car height) able to carry a dozen or so passengers to and from NYC airports on those "cars only" Parkways.
More trivia, a driver of a commercial delivery van risked a heavy fine if he/she was caught driving on those "No Commercial Traffic" Parkways.
Having grown up in the NYC area during the reign of Moses, I know that some of the express roads around NYC were called Parkways and were forbidden to trucks and busses.
Trivia: to get around this "Cars Only" rule for access roads to NYC's airports, some genius invented the "Stretch Limousine", capable of carrying a dozen or more passengers in a vehicle of a mere "legal" height.
Howard said:
"People ignore the inequality and judge the group based on the assumption that Blacks don't work hard enough or have the discipline to achieve like Whites and Asians." (bold added)
No, Howard, that would be racist you. The rest of us judge individuals rather than groups.
so did these alleged shananigans have the desired effect of discouraging tanning sessions by the complexionally endowed?
"Explain the huge Geary Blvd. built to run through the black Fillmore District of San Francisco."
Land was cheap because it was a relatively poor neighborhood and the previous Japanese residents were no longer there. Lots of homes were going to be torn down across the city for freeways.
Geary isn't that much different than Van Ness. Is Van Ness the size it is for racist reasons? Or what about Lombard through the Marina, which is as white as Gavin Newsom. The freeway was also going to go down Broadway through an Italian neighborhood.
"So you people are not racist, just ignorant."
By its very definition, racism is ignorance you ignorant, racist fuck.
I find a couple of problems with Mayor Pete’s statement. First of all, it was very possible and easy for kids from the Bronx to take a bus to Jones Beach. I did it all the time. Secondly, when the Cross Bronx Expressway was built, that area of the Bronx was already a shit hole and the Cross Bronx Expressway did not cause its deterioration. The housing projects were more at fault. I don’t know if Moses was responsible for those particular projects in the Bronx. The merchants who were affected were mainly white and Jewish.
The Merritt Parkway in CT has bridges that are all too low for trucks or buses and it is closed to commercial traffic. The Merritt is a beautifully parkway and I do not think that Robert Moses had anything to do with its design. Never thought of the Merritt Parkway as a racist road. Although, come to think of it, there was a toll at the state line between New York and Greenwich…which was removed when all tolls in CT were removed. Many parkways leading out of NYC are for passenger cars. But there are turnpikes and thruways for buses, trucks, etc. to use.
Paul From Minneapolis said...
Howard, do you understand that the way you make your points makes the average person want to oppose you?
Keep up the good work Howard.
The Republican Party is total shit acting as controlled opposition. Every major institution has been corrupted by oligarch money. Media, bureaucracy, education, corporations, the courts.
One of the few things the Average American has going for them is assholes like Howard who aren't as smart as they think they are talking too much about things they know nothing about.
The open dishonesty of these leftists is just the cherry on top.
'I don't know anything about this story except that I already believe Mayor Pete isn't qualified to be Secretary of Transportation and this post confirms my bias.'
A couple of days ago Scott Adams was saying that Pete had all of the qualifications to be Sec. of Transportation.
He is confusing credentials with accomplishments.
'Explain the huge Geary Blvd. built to run through the black Fillmore District of San Francisco.'
Used to be black. Now it's Japantown and it's much safer.
Besides, there is a logical need for an East-West expressway (which is basically what Geary is) through the city. Was there a better place to put it?
Been wanting to read the Caro/Moses book for some time but, last I checked, it's not available as an ebook. A bit ironic because, until four or five years ago, I disdained ebooks. Since then, however, I haven't been doing much of anything but ebooks.
Maybe a different thing, but I was also totally a holdout on paying with cash. Since the shutdown, however, I have only paid in cash about four times, once because the barber shop insisted. Not sure I'm happy about it, but I surrendered.
--gpm
There were certainly racial issues back then but, in my youth, we could walk down to the corner and take the 74th Street CTA bus to Rainbow Beach on Lake Michigan on the South Side of Chicago. I want to say the fare was 12 cents, but maybe 17. Struggling a bit about the age details, but we used to do this quite a bit on our own when we were quite young. The main problem was the damn dead alewives piled up and stinking up the beach all over the place.
--gpm
Blacks keep me out of their neighborhoods by mugging me.
Low bridges seems like a more civilized method.
Buttigieg is the evidence we're governed by the worst and the dullest.
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