Star: "‘Some of My Best Friends Are Black’ exposes KC’s racial divide . . . Provocative look at the failure of integration points a finger at our city’s largely segregated neighborhoods."
Money line: "(The Author) damns Kansas City as one of the most racist American cities when it comes to keeping African-Americans in their place through housing discrimination.
Money line: "(The Author) damns Kansas City as one of the most racist American cities when it comes to keeping African-Americans in their place through housing discrimination.
African-Americans SHOULD be kept in their place...AWAY from humans.
ReplyDelete"Rotert watched as Blue Hills began to crumble." It crumbled after it was who that moved in and who moved out? The author is proving the point of the whites who moved out, not supporting his own thesis. Black people who can afford it and want to move to nicer neighborhoods with low crime have and will move. The people who are part of the problem will stay where they are. Sorry, but dropping out of high school, having kids when you are 15, on welfare, having a criminal record, etc. don't lead you down the path to buying a house in Hallbrook. I'm sure in the past there were efforts to keep them segregated but those days are long gone. With enough money anyone can move wherever the hell they want to. Even JC Nichols set out to segregate white people. The entire reason Johnson County and the Plaza are exist is he developed it and sold it to the rich people in KCK who still lived among their poorer immigrant employees by the stockyards. It's why the streets of KCK and the rest of the area don't match up. It was a marketing tactic used by JC Nichols.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read the book, but maybe someone who reads this blog will know the answer to this: Is the book talking about housing discrimination today or is it about the 1960s?
ReplyDeleteI could agree past practices here (and just about everywhere else) were discriminatory, but I can't agree that anyone who wants to buy a house anywhere and can afford it would be prevented from buying it--especially in today's market.
The most interesting part of the article for me was about Bob Wood, who engaged in blockbusting. I always wondered why the realtors I've dealt with would pretty much refuse to deal with him. Now I know.
The article starts out saying this southern white guy didnt have any black friends. So he goes to work for the Obama campaign. It was this short period working on the campaign he figures out America is racist. Sounds like he drank deep from the Obama koolaid on the day it was the sugar free white guilt flavor.
ReplyDeleteThe problems of KC neighborhoods have more to do with the caliber of individuals than the color of their skin. Most neighborhoods welcome good law abiding neighbors.
ReplyDeleteWatch. The next great American white flight is unfolding as we speak.
ReplyDeleteNobody ever mentions that the majority of black folks (or any other race) probably prefer to live among people like themselves.
ReplyDeleteAll the niggers in Kansas City can go live with Tanner Colby...they'll steal him blind in a second! The reason to keep them in their section is because NIGGERS FUCK UP EVERYTHING EVERWHERE!!!!
ReplyDeleteThe problem I have is that he just assumes there are groups of black people just sitting around longing for friendships with white. I am black and I make friends with people I click with. Most are black (working to middle class). We have history, culture, etc in common.
ReplyDeleteAlso he needs to know that if black people truly integrated it is the smaller black institutions that would be absorbed and diluted. So I don't think either side really wants total integration.
If you forget for a moment, the destructive and cancerous affect NIGGERS have on a neighborhood, I suggest you look closely at the houses along the Paseo, from seventh or eighth street, all the way south, as far as it goes. This goes back to the fifties and even forties but it's corrosive result can easily been seen. NIGGERS could been correctly compared to termites; however, termites won't kill you...NIGGERS will.
ReplyDeleteEvery race has those who are lazy, criminal and who just refuse to live by any decent societal standards. It's no secret that the black race has a higher percentage of those types which has completely destroyed neighborhoods. Unfortunately what passes as black leadership continues to blame discrimination instead of focusing on the real problem. What is also happening is a larger and larger percentage of whites are also following this trend. So both whites and blacks have a vested interest in solving the problems of crime, drugs, poor parenting and the lack of work ethic in an increasing number of all races.
ReplyDelete10:13: You must have driven down a different Paseo than the one I see. Admittedly there are some homes that need a lot of work, but there are others that are well taken care of. The same is true of the area around Meyer near Research Hospital.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I hit a lot of estate sales and have seen homes in many mostly white areas (including one each just this past weekend in Brookside and Morningside) that could easily be mistaken for slum properties.
Are you kidding me. Paseo is a shithole
DeleteWell they definitely did that with the eminent domain and East Patrol station and African Americans were a fundamental part of that legislation. It's now self-inflicted racism.
ReplyDeleteBlack people don't know what they want. "What passes as leadership" comment is spot on. We continue to entrust the same losers whether we call them by one name or another, its the same group of people. Freedom Inc is Urban Summit. Black Agenda is NAACP and so forth and so-on.
ReplyDeleteI say build a fence south of the river to the Grandview city limits, Oak St on the west side to the Independence and Raytown city limits. Make it electrified. Then call in the US Military to drop food and the such once a month. Sounds like an easy fix to me!
ReplyDeleteTHIS ISN'T NEWS. KC redlining has been going on for decades. Johnson County wouldn't even exist were it not for the phenomenon going on across the country called 'white flight'.
ReplyDeleteFor decades, whites have wanted to get away from black trashy neighbors but especially disruptive black children in schools. It's okay when there are only a FEW of them...they behave.
But once they reach critical mass, the neighborhood (or the school) TURNS....and turns to shit. It's really too bad that happens.
I thought it was at first just about POVERTY...then about HIP HOP CULTURE. But now, I think it's just about VALUES and PRIDE.
I'm old enough to see 1930s neighborhoods do well for 50 years...and be well kept, picked up, almost manicured.
Till the blacks took over. The grass dried up and blew away...the houses quit being painted and junk littered the properties. And the cops ended up being there every few days.
Reminds me of Beirut...once one of the world's most beautiful cities. And suddently things changed and it turned into a mideastern ghetto. The same things happened to many KC neighborhoods on both sides of Troost.
It's not BLACKS, per se. Not skin color. Its the black urban culture of people who just don't give a shit, I guess.
Blacks in the suburbs don't let their properties run down. They keep up with their white neighbors. Mow the grass. Kill the weeds. Park in the driveway or garage. Kids well dressed and well behaved at the bus stop.
And those without attitudes are welcomed by white kids at their homes and birthday parties. Its not that they act "white". It's that they act "American". Not like gangmembers or NWA's.
Why has this happened in America? I didn't notice this in the sixties when I was in the black neighborhoods as a high school kid. IT's like after 1965's Watts riots, they got pissed off and dumbed down!
Well there 12:32, perhaps you should find a library, with history books that have pictures. There, you'll see the beauty that USED to be Paseo Boulevard. Then, as you followed the NIGGER exodus south, the decay, crime, neglect, animal like behavior and monkey shines, do their work.
ReplyDeleteWell said, 2:24.
ReplyDeleteThese are Lyndon Johnson's grandchildren all sired by the Great Society.
ReplyDelete2:24 is correct...why do long established neighborhoods all of a sudden become blighted...people who don't give a shit about the house or neighborhood. It's the same problem with the HUD program, if you give someone something for being a fuck-up, more than likely they will not take care of it. If you provide someone a low interest loan towards real ownership, just maybe they'll take a little pride in the property.
ReplyDeleteWhite people make me laugh. The blatant and troubling ignorance that both this post and the resulting comments espouse is shocking and explains a great deal as to why Kansas City remains incredibly segregated. First of all, white people aren't the litmus test for humanity--I doubt that a group of people that not only condoned but profited from the mass extermination of native peoples in the U.S.; a group that can beat, rape, spit on, set dogs on, and commit a host of other unimagineable horrors against blacks and other persons of color all for the sake of a little bit of power or economic "stability"; or a group that is so content with defecating on other cultural traditions or groups, even when these very cultural traditions serve as the very lifeblood of the United States can comfortably consider themselves behaving with love and compassion i.e. humanly. I don't think a group who has that kind of baggage can even think to consider themselves superior or should be the gauge, or model for humanity. We all have our -ish; white people are no different. We all bleed the same. We all need love, support, a good education, and to feel safe. These things aren't just reserved for white folks nor should they be. I grew up on 70th and Bellefontaine, attended Lincoln Prep, and would later attend one of the best liberal arts colleges in this country. I assure you: I'm no different or more capable from anyone else on the black side of Troost. It's a matter of opportunity. I've had many amazing opportunities, opportunities that traditionally would only be reserved for middle class whites. If opportunity was equitably distributed, you wouldn't have crime on the "black side of Troost," or whatever ignorant steretypes or associations you all have spouted in response to this post. If we want to talk about teenage pregnancy, let's talk about Sarah Palin's daughter--yup knocked up and wasn't even out of highschool! White folks do it, too, please don't be deluded! Furthermore, the United States, through its policy, institutions, and social conditioning of its people has worked to perpetuate and reserve white privilege...well, for white people. I can understand that it may be difficult to think critically about white folks as "racial beings" but seriously, white folks have just as much racial baggage as blacks, latinos, asians, middle easterns, etc. I urge you all to think deeply about how history has come to influence status quo Kansas City, whiteness, and the privileges (or lack thereof) conferred to certain groups based simply on the color of their skin, instead of being defensive and dismissive of these incredibly important issues.
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