I don’t buy the America-big explanation. For that matter, so is Russia. The original colonies weren’t that big, just the Western states with hardly anybody in them. And this culture is on display even in geographically-constrained areas, like Manhattan, Los Angeles, Hawaii, and the like.
The classics of racism and toxic individualism provide better explanations.
I see it this way: Yes, a lot of our local rural and suburban infrastructure is spread-out and car-centric, but that was a result of our choices and policies. (Which does indeed include a big helping of cloaked racial segregation.) It’s not the case that we were forced by geography to do this to ourselves.
“America is just so spread out” can be read as “We just didn’t plan this too well.”
The US Supreme Court ruled racial discrimination in zoning to be un-Constitutional in 1917, and barred racially-restrictive covenants in 1948, so local governments and planners had to use various proxies for race to keep Black people out of new neighborhoods post-WWII. Since Black people tended to be economically disadvantaged, wealth was a very useful proxy. They made housing expensive using zoning and building codes to ensure that it was low-density, and required the purchase of a car to access. I keep pushing the book The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein, because he laid out in it exactly how deliberate this was.
Later, the physical isolation of an automobile provided a measure of protection for Black families to exist in public spaces, and publications like the Green Book allowed them some of the same freedoms as white people, through the use of their cars. So, in at least two ways, racism pushed people into cars.
buying a f 150 vs a honda civic is the issue. not the existence of suburbs.
and please, i live in a city that needs no cars, and people here are still racist as fuck. often the non-car owners are the most virulent racist because they are the most self righteous and get angry at the immigrants who need a car to drive to clean their $5 million dollar home… and the irony is tops with those folks.
I don’t buy the America-big explanation. For that matter, so is Russia. The original colonies weren’t that big, just the Western states with hardly anybody in them. And this culture is on display even in geographically-constrained areas, like Manhattan, Los Angeles, Hawaii, and the like.
The classics of racism and toxic individualism provide better explanations.
I see it this way: Yes, a lot of our local rural and suburban infrastructure is spread-out and car-centric, but that was a result of our choices and policies. (Which does indeed include a big helping of cloaked racial segregation.) It’s not the case that we were forced by geography to do this to ourselves.
“America is just so spread out” can be read as “We just didn’t plan this too well.”
I second toxic individualism.
It remains me of Rome just before collapse.
wtf does racism have to do with car buying?
the russian auto industry is tiny compared to the major automotive market players.
The US Supreme Court ruled racial discrimination in zoning to be un-Constitutional in 1917, and barred racially-restrictive covenants in 1948, so local governments and planners had to use various proxies for race to keep Black people out of new neighborhoods post-WWII. Since Black people tended to be economically disadvantaged, wealth was a very useful proxy. They made housing expensive using zoning and building codes to ensure that it was low-density, and required the purchase of a car to access. I keep pushing the book The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein, because he laid out in it exactly how deliberate this was.
Later, the physical isolation of an automobile provided a measure of protection for Black families to exist in public spaces, and publications like the Green Book allowed them some of the same freedoms as white people, through the use of their cars. So, in at least two ways, racism pushed people into cars.
you’re talking about housing, not cars.
buying a f 150 vs a honda civic is the issue. not the existence of suburbs.
and please, i live in a city that needs no cars, and people here are still racist as fuck. often the non-car owners are the most virulent racist because they are the most self righteous and get angry at the immigrants who need a car to drive to clean their $5 million dollar home… and the irony is tops with those folks.