Robert Reich articulated something that has been bouncing around my head since 2016

  • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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    4 months ago

    The 'burbs mostly got built by GIs returning from WWII. There wasn’t room enough in the cities for all of them. I strongly doubt that “tax money going to fund black kids schools” was even a thought for most of them, let alone a primary motivator.

    • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      Post WW2 was when racial segregation was still legal. Redlining was a long documented thing and definitely included tax money going to schools.

      • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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        4 months ago

        I’m not saying redlining didn’t happen. I’m saying that returning GIs didn’t intentionally build neighborhoods and redline them away from blacks to prevent paying taxes to black schools.

        • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          Maybe the GIs that physically built or bought their own homes, but the developers and companies that did the building and selling of homes to the GIs sure did.

          And for a large portion of them: they would have gone along with the enforced racial segregation of the time, which was the system in place designed to separate more than just tax money.

          I live in the PNW and there are developed communities, (mostly waterfront), built right after WW2 and explicitly written in their covenants bamned access to non-whites.

          So a GI who bought one of those houses may not have cared too much personally, but the system is what facilitated it. Which is why it has nothing to do with personal conviction.