Why does there remain a plethora of social ills the disproportionally affect Black people in America over 150 years after chattel enslavement has ended? “The answer: black communities have been subjected to unrelenting an ongoing historical trauma.“
That’s from The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America by Dr. Lawrence T Brown in 2021. He coined the term “black butterfly” to refer to the patterns of racial segregation in Baltimore, which mirrors patterns in other US cities.
Below I share my notes for future reference.
My notes:
- The first shots of the US Civil War were on Baltimore’s Pratt and Light Streets, between Confederate sympathizers and Union troops
- “America’s spatial racism”
- Dismantle spatial racism (a process) to establish spatial equity (the outcome)
- “To implement a robust racial equity strategy, government officials, philanthropies, corporations, and nonprofits must follow these five steps:
- Obtain a deep understanding of historical trauma inflicted on Black neighborhoods.
- Identify and stop all forms of ongoing historical trauma affecting Black neighborhoods.
- Make decision making participatory and deeply democratic for existing residents in redlined communities.
- Ensure a meaningful community ownership and wealth-generating stake in all projects, programs, developments, and interventions using collective economics.
- Make corrective and equitable budget allocations and funding choices to repair the damage caused by ongoing historical trauma on redlined neighborhoods.”
- Michelle Sotero’s Model of historical trauma
- Category 5 (author term) of hyper segregation as coined by Massey-Tannen — spreading “American apartheid “ as coined by Mindy Fullilove
- His coining of the black butterfly
- Causa Justa group definition: “We define gentrification as a profit driven racial and class reconfiguration of the urban working class in the communities of color that have suffered from a history of disinvestment and abandonment.”
- Author calls 2014-2020 as the great rebellion
- Author cites eight Category 5 hyper segregated cities: Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Flint, St. Louis, Cleveland, Birmingham, and Milwaukee
- Historical trauma framework by Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart
- Van Jones “whitelash” from 2016 selection night is defined here as “ the racist American tradition of backlash against black progress, rooted in a zero sum framework”
- Baltimore’s White L and black butterfly
- Three “whitelash” periods: after reconstruction, after civil rights nd then after Obama
- April 2014 Baltimore uprising after Freddie Gray’s death
- Baltimore freedom movement and Morgan college students defeating
- Nixon John Ehlorich’s explicitly says war on drugs was an intentional strategy to defang antiwar hippies and black communities
- Why does there remain a plethora of social ills the disproportionally affect Black people in America over 150 years after chattel enslavement has ended? “The answer: black communities have been subjected to unrelenting an ongoing historical trauma.“
- In 1913 Morgan State attempted to move locations but white Mount Washington residents fought “a negro institution” moving to their neighborhood
- On Dec. 25 1910, fighting integration, Baltimore Mayor Mahool told New York Times magazine that “ most of us concerned in it are the best friends the colored people have” but they can’t have negroes
- Successive fights against “a negro colony”
- Mitch McConnell: our only job is to make Obama a one term president
- Trump calls Elijah Cummings’s Baltimore home rat infested
- The ongoing historical traumas that the author highlights include: hyper segregation, resource removal, forced up routings, hyper policing, economic, destruction, and wealth extraction
- Noliwe Rooks: segronomics (corporates profit from segregating educational system gut author widens the usage)
- Brazen lack of government enforcement of the 1968 Fair Housing Act mandate to affirmatively further fair housing
- The Housing Authority of Baltimore city has concentrated its public housing in black neighborhoods and allowed housing choice vouchers to primarily reside in the black butterfly, thereby reinforcing segregation
- “The flipside of concentrated poverty is concentrated wealth”
- Special benefit districts: residents localize special funding to serve their narrow interests
- Exclusionary zoning codes that restrict the where multi family units can be
- Charm city Circulator and bike infrastructure like lanes in Baltimore’s “white L”
- State of Maryland: Built a north south rapid transit line but not east west through black butterfly
- Economic development like Project CORE and enterprise zone credits maintain Baltimore apartheid
- Sagamore TIF by Kevin Plank like others don’t typically really employ residents — port Covington then also got Trump opportunity zone
- TIFs and PILOTs are tax diversions and tax evasions