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Created January 6, 2020
Community? Engagements? Arts? Well, for starters this is a class taught at Transylvania University in Lexington, KY by professors Kremena Todorova and Kurt Gohde. The goal of this class is to form a relationship with the community by engaging in artistic projects with the community. The outcome of this will manifest itself in many ways, some recognizable and others not so much.
CETA 2020: Our first 2 emojis (of hundreds)
Created January 6, 2020
Individual Tasks
Collect addresses, make & write thank-you cards, design pronoun buttons--Anna Davis
Blog Manager--Paige Wessling
Recorder/archivist for This I Believe essays--Sarah Metcalfe
Social Media--Lydia Baggett & Garrett LeVan
Photographic Inventory (3 people)--Yousef Alsdudi, Sarah Bennett, & Faith Boles
Space, raw material, & tool inventory manager AND order enforcer--Emily Neat
Quality Control & Class Ethicist--Alex Toney
Software Design Team (3 people)--Shelby Barker, Emily Cecil, & Abby Pearson
Fabrication Team (3 people)--Brooklyn Greer, Will Hemingway, & Marissa Price
Finishing Team (4 people)--Nannie Baze, Emon Daneshmand, Ally Frederick, & Madison Phillips
Additional photographic documentation--Kremena and Kurt
Working with production design at Kre8Now Makerspace--Kurt and Kremena
Publicity for the class--Kremena and Kurt
Securing materials needed--Kurt and Kremena
Rothstein asserts that the segregated housing projects constructed after World War II made African Americans “more removed from mainstream society than ever, packed into high-rise ghettos where community life was impossible, where access to jobs and social services was more difficult” (31-32). If African Americans are isolated from mainstream culture and unable to obtain the resources necessary to rise in social class, then they are unable to insert themselves in white communities. Without the presence of African Americans, ideas are continually recirculated that demonize people of color and support segregation. The areas in which African Americans live thus become undesirable to whites, contributing to a feedback loop where poverty is reinforced. Often gentrification is justified on the grounds that revitalizing such neighborhoods is beneficial to the residents living there. Increased commerce increases quality of life. But if these areas are revitalized and consequently shaped into higher-income neighborhoods, doesn't that force African Americans into other low-income areas and support segregation? If so, is it even possible to bring commerce to these communities in such a way that it allows African Americans to remain in their homes, have access to resources, be included in mainstream society, and counter the labels that reinforce isolation? Or are negative racial labels so entrenched that it is impossible to spur commerce in failing communities without transforming them into all-white neighborhoods?
ReplyDeleteThis is less of a direct question to the text, but more of a larger question about the human experience that I think ties into the topical subject of this piece: What is it about being human, that makes us unwilling to approach and integrate ourselves with other people, even when it appears that the natural order of things is trying to do the opposite? Is it fear? Is it greed? What was the core feeling that set this entire system up? What can we do as humans, looking internally, to get to the source and figure out why we are so set on being so distant. And what is that kernel of being human, that if confronted, could change everything. Rather than trying to solve this issue solely through the outside, how can we eradicate the motivations that create it on the inside?
ReplyDeleteIn Chapter 2 Rothstein doesn’t suggests that segregation in public housing came even close to ending. To the contrary, he writes that, “In 1984, investigative reporters from the Dallas Morning News … found that the nation’s nearly ten million public housing tenants were almost always segregated by race and that every predominantly white-occupied project had facilities, amenities, services, and maintenance that were superior to what was found in predominantly black-occupied projects” (34). Yet, we live with a different national narrative, one that plots a trajectory of progress, desegregation, and integration. This trajectory is so ingrained in our collective self-awareness that even as we realize we still live in a white supremacist country, we continue to insist that we are better off than we were in the 1960s, that at least we are no longer segregated.
ReplyDeleteI am interested in the rhetorical situations and processes that have produced this kind of white-washing of our nation’s history. Perhaps if we can pinpoint them, we can use them to tell a history that is more honest and conducive to a different future.
I am interested in the development of early public housing initiatives like the Tennessee Valley Authority's creation of a model village in Norris, Tennessee. This village had 500 nicer homes for whites and "shoddy barracks" built at a distance away for African American workers (19).
ReplyDeleteIt seems this kind of public housing development has much more in common with the structure of "company towns" (created during the Industrial Revolution as communities formed by and around a single business--clearly a capitalist venture) than it does to the much older models of "social housing" (created specifically to offer affordable housing like Fuggerei which, created in 1523 in Bavaria, is the oldest active social housing in the world and still costs just $1.09 each year for rent).
How do the capitalist roots at the base of America's models of public housing cause segregation? Can public housing built within a capitalist structure be racially just? Is it the capitalist structure that caused the CCC to implement "a policy to never force colored companies on localities that have openly declared their opposition to them" (19)?
"Most Americans have an image of public housing: groups of high-rise towers with few amenities like playgrounds or parks, packed next to one another in central city neighborhoods, plagued by crime and drugs, and filled with black (or Hispanic) mothers and their children"(17). The first part of the article describes what people think of public housing. The rest of the article explains how public housing started for civilians that led to supporting segregation. Then as white people tended not to need public housing, public housing got a bad reputation. How does public housing play a role in society today? What is the reputation and is it still supporting inequality?
ReplyDeleteWhen the PWA was established and was starting to create housing for civilians and create jobs in this process. This seem, as most political ides, good in theory but in reality is not how this happened. My main confusion is rooted in why if there was no law states or no larger governing power telling the PWA to segregate their buildings? I want to understand if they did this comfort those who felt they were not living up to the american dream, by assigning people of color a lower status?
ReplyDelete"But with the segregated projects, African Americans became more removed from mainstream society than ever," If it was the government's intent to remove people of color from our community why would they not just be banned from our country. I think that the shaken and fearful white Americans needed someone to blame.
What is interesting is that, although this started almost 70 years ago, public housing for lower income and people of color is still the "go to" for the people of the community. As mentioned, "landlord discrimination left African American migrant workers facing a greater housing shortage than whites." I personally believe that it is still a issue now with people of color trying to rent from landlords because they have a preconceived notion on how people of color live. So has anything really changed over the course of 70 years besides HUD trying to create equality/equity for lower income families or people of color?
ReplyDeleteThis chapter explains that public housing was initially designed for new factory workers who were unable to find housing elsewhere but needed to be in close proximity to their workplaces. The factories would not have been able to continue production and the economy would have suffered if these workers where unable find such housing. Essentially, public housing projects were a large contributing factor in the industrialization and economic growth of the United States as a nation. We live in a capitalist world where money has been and always will be king, yet racism prevented public housing projects for non-white workers from being more closely located to factories. Had they been closer, the workers would not have had to commute as far and would have been as tired from the commute, resulting in more time and energy that would have contributed in higher production levels. What is it about our society that causes us to enforce racial biases even when we logically know that doing so will cost us money?
ReplyDeleteWhen reading/discussing about enslavement/segregation/jim crow and the experiences/laws that set such lasting separation in privilege(monetary, housing, justice system, etc) between whites and poc throughout the history of america, why do white people, in my experience, think and act as though it is all so far and that the effects aren't present in (enter whatever date here). How do we, on a more widespread level, get to people that it's all still alive and real?
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived in New York, I lived in a low income neighborhood. It was a largely Hispanic neighborhood, that at the time was on the cusp of being gentrified. Right down the street from us was a group of section 8 housing. These houses largely housed veterans, with a few families in the mix. Nearly all of them were people of color. When the gentrification started happening around us, there was huge backlash from both sides. We started seeing stickers and signs in our building that said "gentrification is colonization". There was talk from our local representative of moving these housing structures, in order to "improve the neighborhood" and "increase property values". In the context of the reading, Rothstein writes, "Gerald Ford’s solicitor general, Robert Bork, expressed the government's opposition to placing public housing in white areas: ‘There will be an enormous practical impact on innocent communities who have to bear the burden of the housing, who will have to house a plaintiff class from Chicago, which they wronged in no way.’ Thus the federal government described non discriminatory housing policy as punishment visited on the innocent” (35). To me, Bork’s description of how public housing is an imposition to white people, and the attempt to remove public housing in East Bushwick to make it a “better place to live” are rhetorics cut from the same racist cloth. My question is: How does our government continue to disguise racist rhetoric and policies as progress? And how does gentrification disguise itself as desegregation? Given our current situation, do you think it’s possible that de facto segregation will end in our lifetime?
ReplyDeleteI’m a pretty, white, middle class girl from the suburbs--- and I’m fully aware that I’m dripping in privilege. But something that stands out to me on occasion is a lack of awareness that race isn’t the only contributing factor in some incredibly racially charged events and issues. This isn’t to say that it isn’t a factor, or that it isn’t likely the most influential factor at play in any given event or political issue- just that nothing is completely isolated from multiple influencing factors.
ReplyDeleteWith this slightly adjusted perspective in mind, this writing points out some very interesting facts outside of discrimination against just race that make one wonder what on earth the government was thinking- or rather NOT thinking about when they went about coming up with these plans.
For starters, that public housing, even once subsidized, wasn’t intended for those without a decent income, or other people in less than ideal circumstances really stands out- especially when this writing documents the destruction of housing, much of which housed the poor or otherwise “undesirable”, to build not just housing that they then couldn’t take advantage of, but a lower total of housing units.
If you don’t want them there, where do you expect them to go?
Was decreasing homelessness REALLY what they were after? Or was it more rich politicians playing with people’s lives to suit their personal ideals and petty desires- the way politicians always seem to do.