Redlined into Hell
We all knew it…we did…even before with zip code defining virus spread, we KNEW the areas that would be higher in spread and deadliness.
At any rate anyone who has spent time in Sacramento.
My daughter was born in Sacramento during my last stay in the capitol. This is my second time, which is putting me in the class of no longer a new comer.
I know which neighborhoods are which.
In fact, one of the charming aspects (?) of Sacramento is its “villages” component.
Sacramento is stratified by culture and poverty, not charming, but evident.
The redlining of the past 70 years has created a diverse city and county, along color lines.
The pandemic deadly census shows it once again…there are African American neighborhoods, there are Mexican American neighborhoods, here are Asian neighborhoods (Japanese) there are Russian neighborhoods etc etc. and all of them have higher virus counts and deaths.
There are Native American neighborhoods when the whole thing should belong to them!
This is in the most liberal county probably in the United States!
In short, we don’t practice what we preach….the result is anger and cultural tension that boils over Sacramento style.
That is mostly peaceful protest, Sacramento usually does civil disobedience well.
And this lukewarm civil disobedience is reacted to by white privilege as proof of what the “Thugs” can do.
Thousands can storm the capitol to protest wearing a mask in a right wing spasm of foolishness…but if a hundred BLM protestors march downtown, it is cause to call in the National Guard.
That is the problem!
The fact that it is the center of the Highway Patrol, California’s equivalent of a state police, doesn’t hurt efforts to protest “nice”.
But when the right wing spit in policemen’s faces, the Highway Patrol held its powder.
A BLM protestor does that, and gets maced….and arrested.
I was rooting for the right wing nuts, who are against masks, getting arrested in mass…nothing happened.
Nothing happened when right wing Christians stormed the capitol grounds, all not wearing masks, that no doubt caused virus spread, and nothing happened.
BLM blocks a small bridge and almost got run over by the police.
But everyone knows, if the sheriff’s deputies deal with you, death is a possibility…the sheriff is a card carrying fascist; city police not so much, but still there are shootings.
If you are white, no problem! If you are of color, don’t flash a cell phone in a cop’s face…..at your deadly peril!
None of this changes the FACT that the city and surrounding county is more segregated as it was in the 1970s when I last lived here. This is after Redlining was made illegal..
The neighborhoods of color are the same, save the influx of Russians in the HIghlands.
The rest is exactly if not worse than as it was in 1970. It is even more segregated school wise.
I got my teaching start in Del Paso Heights…when I told people where I worked, I coached football and wresting at Grant High, people shook their heads and said, “Be careful”.
The civil rights riots were fresh in everyone’s minds and there was some danger.
But I rode my bike from near Sac State where we had our apartment to Del Paso Heights…I didn’t give it much thought.
My peers did, warning me.
Nothing ever happened…nothing ever came close to happening…
And just as we started to fit it, we moved back to Redding to pursue my career and being closer to grandparents. My 4 1/2 years in Sacramento were a memory when we relocated again back to the capitol, and we moved right into the Clark killing crisis…demonstrations, marches for Civil Rights, some of whom I took part in.
Sacramento is one of the most diverse in the country and one of least INCLUSIVE.
In short, it is the capitol and many good paying, good retirement jobs exist to support the largest and most affluent state in the union.
Unfortunately Sacramento breaks records for affluence and for poverty at the same time.
The homeless population is a popular reason for “conversation” that varied in meanness the further east you went in the county. Did you know that homelessness is a “life style” choice…That is the sick response I get whenever homeless is brought up to an affluent white person.
The sad truth of Sacramento County is the poverty stayed and the wealth moved mostly east and north, to Placer County and El Dorado County.
When I drive out Highway 50 I see Shasta County (only a whole lot bigger) of post 1970 suburbs that have exploded in a white flight from “those neighborhoods” of Meadow view, Del Paso Heights, the same ones that existed here fifty years ago….with the marked exception of the explosion of suburbs from Fair Oaks east and beyond.
All of that area, which is mostly white, happened after the early 1970s…
New homes that creep closer and closer to a forest that burns all the time…Now the white flight is in trouble because the global warming they contribute to with incessant car commutes, has resulted in not being able to get fire insurance; or it is so expensive that some (not many) can’t afford it.
The mean income in El Dorado Hills is many times the mean income of Meadow View. The median income is like comparing Paris to Angola!
And still they move…they flee every time there is a protest. And they move right into a fire zone that just now claimed more acreage than ever.
Now, this migration has resulted in more cases of the pandemic and deaths…in poverty areas created by legal and illegal segregation.
Ever wonder why Trump, a real estate mogul, knows which buttons to push to get suburbia’s attention?
Poor neighborhood segregation has, as always, resulted in more agony and death. And Trump built his career and riches on making that segregation worse.
Suburbia’s “liberals” vote their fear, saying they hate Trump, but in the voting booth, vote conservative.
It is conserving white flight and white privilege that they quietly vote for.
The irony here, is as the number of virus cases explodes, the chances of everybody getting sick, also explodes…
Essential workers live in these segregated areas….your hair dresser, your nurse…and the poverty they live in…puts everyone at risk.
The virus does’t respect segregation lines.
The pandemic has exposed America’s Original Sin, that created the Great Depression, the Homelessness of late, and a society that is fundamentally and totally sick.
It always gets worse because we have created a caste society that punishes poverty. The fact is most poverty is inherited. The fact is it is much more difficult that it was when I was in college to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”…the myth of Horacio Alger is just that, a pathetic myth. There are lots of unemployed college graduates walking around before the pandemic hit.
And most of them are people of color.
It is the conservative credo; in spite of the FACT that white supremacy and white privilege rules; we insist on telling the world that American is making itself great again by following a President who was instrumental in the white flight to the suburbs and the segregation of New York City; in fact adding to his inherited real estate empire by further segregating New York City, New Jersey et al.
In short the problem is not the solution…but we keep making the problem worse and expect it to ge better!
Prop 13 has, as usual, another threat with a new proposition, that good liberals will again predictably vote down, because Prop 13, as one of its many evil propensities, helps to further segregate our housing and drive housing costs through the roof.
And who benefits? Think about it!
White privilege will never give up segregation of housing and schools.never…
People don’t realize that an integrated school is just that, integrated…it won’t change who is rich or poor, it will not do anything other than building the multicultural mind set that a urban, diverse and inclusive culture needs to survive. And white parents are scared to death of it. And black parents are so disillusioned that they are saying the hell with integrated schools and remarkably sending their children to segregated charter academies.
But the pandemic knows…it seeks out the poor, the segregated and infects them…and these infection rates follow segregated housing maps!
The fact is our segregated society is pulling all of us down, making all of us sick…and destroying our country…
It just never ends…the injustice and utter refusal of white people to give up a little; refusing to be citizens with equity merely a empty slogan!
They just won’t do it. And America will never be what it wasn’t in the first place….GREAT….In fact, the United States is in decline and it is all of our faults!
All of us….