Sundown Towns
Investigates segregation practices in the northern sections of twentieth-century America revealing how racial exclusion and oppression persisted into the contemporary era, in an account that challenges modern beliefs about race and racism.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
36mentions
6people
2016–2026years
72% recommend28% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > certain populations seem to enjoy using anecdotal tragedy to promote their own quasi-apocalyptic worldview re: some American cities
For those interested in the topic, I recommend Loewen's "Sundown Towns". My copy's on loan, but I think it's in Ch 11, "The Effects of Sundown Towns on Whites" that he talks about the culture among descendants of white-flight suburbanites, their low-to-no-experience views on the horrors of the city, where Those People run rampant. Many are terrified of even going to cities. To people who actually live in the cities, their view is almost unrecognizable.
As an example from something in my feed reader today [1], take Theo Wold, a former Deputy Assistant to the President for Policy (under Trump) and current Idaho Solicitor General. He quote-tweeted a photo of a white woman hugging two Black men. They were the Tennessee Three, the state legislators who were under threat of expulsion for protest.
His comment: "Every Red State will have to wrestle with the fetid, urban Leftist vote sinks. That begins with asking the question: why does the GOP continue to push the annexation/development of rural land that only grows the size and power of Leftist strongholds?"
Fetid stronghold sinks! Sounds pretty bad. In our favor, at least we have taco trucks on every corner.
It reminds me of nothing so much as this bit from Chairman Mao: "It is very necessary for the educated youth to go to the countryside to be reeducated by the poor and lower-middle peasants. Cadres and other people in the cities should be persuaded to send their sons and daughters who have completed junior or senior middle school, college or university, to the countryside. Let us mobilize."
[1] https://balloon-juice.com/2023/04/13/late-night-open-thread-...
- It is political choices, but it's not primarily on a city level, or a year-to-year level. The problems in San Francisco are generations in the making and often national in cause. You might read Loewen's "Sundown Towns" for a good look at a key factor to understanding American cities.
The "mentality" here is one appropriate for the person and the circumstance. As you say, his neighbors weren't aliens, they were people. Compassion and understanding were worthwhile efforts. And they remain so.
- Your theory is that, for example, turning people into property based on race was not racist? If so, I don't think there's much point in a discussion here.
For those more reasonable who want to know about what anti-racism is opposed to, I'd suggest reading Loewen's Sundown Towns, Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning, and Mills's The Racial Contract as beginner-friendly looks at the system of racism, its historical and intellectual roots, and how it all played out historically.
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- I believe you were told that. But I believe that's pretty ahistorical. See, for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_suffrage_in_the_United_S...
https://www.history.com/news/slavery-new-england-rhode-islan...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-black-people-a...
And that's just the basic legal stuff, like not being property. When you look at actual attitudes, Northerners were quite racist. You could read, for example, Foner's "The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery". It covers quite well how even Lincoln was quite racist in a way typical of the time.
You might also read Loewen's "Sundown Towns" which shows these attitudes not just persisting, but leading to ethnic cleansing across the US during the Nadir (circa 1870-1920). That includes New England: https://thenewpress.com/books/sundown-towns
There were of course excellent abolitionists and activists from New England, and there were pockets of goodness. But you can't paint New England as a magic exception.
- You seem to have this notion that empathy is a 0-to-100 dial, with each person getting a fixed setting that is used on all people they encounter.
This model is incorrect. Many slaveholders were perfectly nice people to family members, for example. And of course to other rich white men. Empathy is reserved to specific groups, and lacking/discouraged/repressed for the rest. This is a learned, societally mediated behavior. You can read Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning" if you'd like to see how that works in detail. Mills's "The Racial Contract" is a good philosophical examination, and Loewen's "Sundown Towns" looks at related aspects via data and history.
So we see early on in the pandemic that a lot of white conservatives were perfectly fine with the disease spreading in major cities where people were concentrated. Some were gleeful. Now it's mainly a red state phenomenon and people are still resisting basic public health measures. I think that's still rooted in contempt for the lessers. E.g. https://twitter.com/jacobtwop/status/1436383225451094019
Or you might also read Serwer on "the cruelty is the point".
But all of this is pretty far afield from my actual point, which is that there are two concepts of freedom in American discourse. One admits of nuance and balance; the other is "I do what I want and fuck you". Different people may use one or the other at a particular moment. But the concepts are rhetorically very distinct.
