What's wild is once you actually start paying attention, you find out what we mean by "systemic".
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What's wild is once you actually start paying attention, you find out what we mean by "systemic". There's a story like this in every major city. Once somebody figured out this particular strategy of getting infrastructure built in a way that white constituents would accept, it spread all over.
We talk about how white supremacy requires a visible and identifiable underclass. Part of it is so that there is always a designated sacrifice so you can get what you want.
https://urbanists.social/@getalifemike/113052876190442664 -
People like to think about racism as if it's full of malicious intent. But often it's much more banal. Most of the time it's nothing more than "if somebody has to get hurt, let it be them. Because who's gonna complain about that am I right?"
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Even if you start to get this part, there's yet another societal hurdle ahead of it. Many Americans don't realize how many things they take for granted start to break down if America stops sacrificing people in order to make it happen.
Part of the reason places like SF are deadlocked on building housing is that they can't figure out who they can sacrifice. SF already fucked up and drove out most of the Black population. So that's not an option.
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The way you got police put into our schools is that they signaled to everybody that they were really there for the Black people. Because somebody needs the prison pipeline to stay full. Some of the goods and services that you want can only have that low price because some percentage of people are working for slave wages. Not to mention a new prison will bring "good jobs" to your area.
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Alexander Portnoy 🌊 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️replied to Marco Rogers last edited by
@polotek
I was born in The City. I grew up in Lakeview. I drove down 3rd St in Bayview about 10 years ago and had to pull over to cry.The surprising thing is that SFUSD has a lot of underused properties that its just sitting on, holding on to nothing.
I'm always shocked what has changed when I look at Google Maps. I didn't leave The City, The City left me.
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A lot of the things that Americans are complaining about today are because we are slowly making it harder for America to sacrifice people.
@mekkaokereke talks a lot about how football is changing because we decided maybe it's not okay to watch Black men destroy their bodies for our entertainment.
College basketball is changing because we decided maybe it's not okay that Black men hold up this billion dollar industry while being legally barred from making any money from it.
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I remember being so upset talking to people about prop 22 a few years ago. This was the vote in California to decide if gig workers like Uber and doordash have to be treated like employees instead of "independent contractors". I thought this should've been an easy decision. You wanna make these big tech companies pay right?
Nah. All they had to do was tell you that your rides were gonna get more expensive. And it actually became something we have had to fight tooth and nail for.
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Alexander Portnoy 🌊 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️replied to Alexander Portnoy 🌊 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ last edited by
@polotek
The bottom line for me is that I can never go home again. San Francisco - arguably - was never home for me, anyway. -
What I'm saying is that a lot of American Exceptionalism is based on sacrificing people. It is a very long tradition. And up until very recently, Black people were the default sacrifice. That was our explicit role in White American society. As soon as you understand that, a lot of American history starts to make way more sense.
And today starts to make more sense too. This is an America we're it's not so easy to designate groups for sacrifice. And we are finding it harder to get things done.
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Marco Rogersreplied to Alexander Portnoy 🌊 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ last edited by
@5klp471 I live in Bayview. We moved here about 12 years ago. We didn't understand it at the time. But as soon as they took down Candlestick park, this became a "desirable neighborhood". They've been working hard to gentrify it ever since.
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gizmomathboy, FCreplied to Marco Rogers last edited by
@polotek and whiteness has run out of newly immigrated groups to "make white" to bolster its ranks. After they've been exploited of course.
Whiteness seems to be considering Hispanic folks, but even then just as an auxiliary role and not "really white"
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@gizmomathboy it's actually pretty wild that this strategy worked at all. I've tried to talk to some Jewish people about this. They have some ethnic striations in their heritage that have absolutely been exploited by American white supremacy. But most of the time their brains shut down when I try to bring it up.
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@polotek Cheap ride to airport >>> workers' rights
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@12thRITS I remember when people on the internet started getting real comfortable talking shit about bay area salaries. I started asking people if they also wanted to pay $25 for a hamburger and they got real mad.
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@polotek I'm so old I remember people saying they support Cesar Chavez and the UFW up to a point but, "I don't want to pay three dollars for a tomato."
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@12thRITS get back in them fields. Just don't tell me about it!
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@polotek it's well documented I'm feminism, I mean, white feminism for the last forty or fifty years is three quarters "what to do when servants are no longer affordable for the white middle class".
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@polotek The Interstate Highway segregated many cities.
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@laguiri the way people shut down when you tell them that at one point Black women were *legally required* to go find a white family to work for.
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@stevewfolds and train tracks before that.