The Professor's Notebook

I was fortunate enough to win a fellowship that gave me an entire year off from teaching! So I’m back, and refreshed, and ready for a new class. This will be in the wintersession (January term) at Brown University--where we will have a condensed version of my Urban Policy Challenges course.

We’ll begin by discussing what land/labor is within the context of a settler colony:

This is an important concept because it allows us to see how the activities of white Detroiters exists on a spectrum of racism. Actions such as “improvement districts,” “police/political power,” and “code words” allow market driven racism to reign supreme. Moreover, the prohibition of particular activities, such as “auto construction” force people to participate in a racist housing market. There are few ways to avoid these concerns.

Today in class, we are going to talk about White Flight. Here are some discussion points I’d like for us to go over in small groups before we convene to collectively discuss what they mean:

Ch. 1

What was “rule of the rustics” and how did it push urban elites and Black Americans into a political coalition?

What was the social structure of Atlanta when this coalition came to be and how was this reflected in public life?

How did Black Americans come to garner the vote in GA and what was the cost/price of exercising this right?

Ch. 2

Compare/contrast the three white supremacist organizations in the chapter: how do their actions differ? Does their audience differ too?

What was the impact of racial transition on the use of public facilities in Mozley Park? How was this impact negotiated?

What was the economic consequence of racial transition on housing?

Ch. 3

How was “community integrity” defined and what challenges did communities face in defining integrity?

What was the role of private organizations in creating the conditions for community integrity?

How did local residents organize collective resources to prevent integration? In what ways did these strategies work/not work?

Ch 4

What did white activists fear about “social intimacy?” How did the de-segregation of public space incite the conditions for intimacy to occur?

Who were the primary change agents in the desegregation of public space in Atlanta?

Today in class, we’re going to finish My Blue Heaven and start thinking about the similarities between the books we’ve read so far in class.

The primary question of this course: how did urban policy create the segregated metropolitan communities of the mid-20th century? In our first two books, we intently looked at how redlining and racism created resource rich suburban communities and resource deprived inner city communities. In My Blue Heaven, Nicolaides describes how the cultural of South Gate suburbanites shifted to accommodate a market based society: what do these shifts look like?

What was the role of patriotism in South Gate during this time?

What activities did adults participate in to create community?

What were the strengths and weaknesses of civic organizations (unions)?

What where the accouterments of a “middle-class” lifestyle?

How did the centrality of childhood restructure political concerns?

The “politics of independence” that had heightened the “use value” of South Gate gave way to a “racialization” of political life that centered upon consumption and exclusion. Nicolaides notes that, “the war opened the door to tenancy in South Gate” (221). How does the aforementioned shift in community praxis accommodate the permanency of a landless class of residents?

To think about civic life in South Gate, we will contrast this video on Levittown, PA, a post-war community with some similarities to South Gate, with images of the Watts uprising below. What similarly motivates the historical actors in both communities? How have they, thinking about the school integration and housing legislation, come to dissimilar conclusions on what policies are beneficial?

So, this semester is kicking my tail. But we’re reading one of my favorite books--My Blue Heaven by Becky Nicolaides. (Also: we’re working on revising our book reviews from the previous weeks--so that is time consuming).

But today things have slowed down so we will finally focus (after working on manuscript revisions) on key concerns that arise in the text.

Ch. 4: The Politics of Independence--In the first section of this chapter, we see how civic life and community consumption are intertwined. It does make one wonder: what does the politicization of consumption, particularly by local merchants, say about the economic limitations communities such as South Gate face as they moved toward incorporation? What was the financial foundation that made incorporation possible in these communities? Even further, what was the social impetus behind civic participation? And how is it different in early South Gate than in other texts we discussed like Colored Property? (130-131)

Next, there is the Matoon Act--a development strategy with deleterious impact on working-class white home-ownership. I think we should start with the conclusion of the Act: who lost? Cash-poor homeowners. They were effectively taxed out of homeownership. 

But benefited? First, bondholders were repaid in full. And speculators were able to purchased distressed homes in recently improved communities. Contractors and laborers were paid for their work. Even some of the historical actors who  suffered consequences from the Act would prosper. Politicians basically shuffled in and out of office. Merchants were able to garner better infrastructure. Bankers repossessed properties more valuable than they had originally provided mortgages. Similarly, renters gained access to a superior built environment. 

But all of these gains came at the cost of homeowners who were dispossessed of their property. How may this experience have solidified the power of homeowners in CA politics over the long term? How did it shape the political landscape of South Gate?

What I find most interesting is how the primarily self-built community of Home Gardens navigated the catastrophe of the Matoon Act and the acquiescence to integration. Why is it community members revolted against pro-development leaders in South Gate but accepted pro-integration leadership in public schools? Nicolaides claims it is due to fears of taxation--what options did Home Gardens parents have to mitigate racial integration that couldn’t mitigate the Matoon Act?

More importantly, how are these conditions changed by the growth discussed in Ch. 5? As in, how do Federal policies support the material development of South Gate and its residents? Who are these residents and how are they different than those who arrived in the 20s? How has the built environment changed to accommodate them (especially through the construction of multi-family housing)? How does gender and class operate differently than before? And how did the tax delinquencies of the 30s help accelerate the growth of the 40s (206)?

So, today we are starting A World More Concrete. There are so many rich points I want to touch on in this text--I’ll just start below:

What is the role of “outside capital” in the formation of Miami? And how does this legacy of external capital (human and investment) guide the development of the “Magic City?” (19-21)

How does a “colonial imagination” spur development? How does Anglo capital investment reshape the environment and land use?

What is the role of municipal governance in the mediation of interracial disputes? What seems to be the primary objective of municipal governance during the mediation of these disputes? (47) How does the outcome of mediation incentivize further investment in Miami? (38-43)

What is the relationship between property ownership and white supremacy? (27/68) How do colored people maximize the value of their properties and how do white investors maximize the value of their properties? (28-30/51)

What are colored communities to do when state agencies are indifferent to white predators? (35) What are some of the different responses that spring from colored communities and how are they suppressed? (54/59)

So, the past few weeks I fell off with the updats--I plan to rectify that in the upcoming week since we just concluded Colored Property.

But first, to cover today:

We’re going to start with an overview of Colored Property: what is the thesis and what were the two primary points students decided to discuss in their review papers. I’m hoping that will give us a chance to talk about the process of writing a review paper and how to make it functional.

Then, we’re going to briefly discuss some of the themes in the ch. 7-8:

Racial sovereignty expressed through racial exclusion (334-340/364)

Diversity and Assimilation within white communities (290/311-312)

Infrastructure investment and public/private partnership (295-96/305/310)

Racism + classism (317-318/347/356-358)

The “narrative” surrounding suburbanization (329-333)

The political impact of discourse (352/360)

After break, we’re going to watch a video from a couple weeks back on the Detroit riots and read part of Scott Kurashige’s The fifty-year rebellion to explore the relationship between space, race and politics. It leads to a question we must think about next week: what is community control and why is it something seemingly accepted only for white Americans?

Also, the videos we watched the last couple of weeks:

This clip was in regard to Freund discussing the role of culture in the way whites came to understand racial segregation

This was a clip of how whites in Yonkers responded to court order dispersal of public housing. Their arguments for segregation were the same as those used in suburban Detroit--only the courts had switched sides in the matter.

OThis week in class, we’re going to begin by thinking about a post from earlier--the pyramid of white supremacy. As I said, it does not completely define the supremacy//sovereignty/dominion spectrum--but it is a start. 

It is important to put that spectrum in conversation with the final chapter of Colored Property from last week.  The organized violence of Dearborn residents makes sense when placed along that spectrum. Unlike southern cities, with their Jim Crow laws, northern whites depended on alternative legal structures to ensure dominion over the built environment. Zoning policy is key to that.

When Dearborn residents commented on seeking “law and order” they contrasted their community with the overt violence that had (and again would) break out in Detroit:

But as we can see, their communities were not nearly as attractive as they purported. As defined by Freund, the “politics of exclusion” necessitated that marginalized residents were excluded from accessing spaces secured for dominant groups. So, what were the historical agents that led to conflict between colored and Caucasian communities? Who were the historical actors who helped perpetuate the disparities that led to these conflicts?

We see who these characters are in this particular video. The power of state agents to work with private investors to enrich white communities (and exclude colored communiites) is made possible through what Freund identifies as “supposedly nonideological market considerations.” Apparently, the free-market creates racist outcomes--not government policies. But as described in Ch. 2, the origins of these free market policies (like planning and zoning) come out of a faulty racial logic of the early 20th century--they were used to “predict future market prices” (53).

For next week, along with our work in Planning Future Cities, I want students to respond to this video:

This week in class, we began by reading Ch. 9 of David M.P. Freund’s Colored Property. This chapter sums up Freund’s argument on how the racialized concerns of white suburbanites drove urban policy during the 20th century. 

Also, we independently read the Intro and first section of my co-edited collection Planning Future Cities. It looks at the value of history in helping planners better understand place and space. 

It reminded me of an episode I had heard on the 99% invisible podcast called “Plat of Zion” that covered the way in which the planned development of Salt Lake City reflected the religious utopia designed by Joseph Smith.

It is interesting to think upon the ways that planning enshrines identity. The Mormon temple is at the center of the grid so daily life for residents is literally structured around the Church. Additionally, the grid uses very wide blocks that offered initial settlers opportunities for large landownership but currently makes the urban landscape unsafe for pedestrians. 

I was reminded of Broadacre City in the way that the highly structured grid offered opportunities for autonomous property-ownership. Unlike Wright, who saw technology as a way to reduce the distance of sprawl, Smith seemed undeterred by the distance which large plats would place between residents in his city. But in the place of technology, there was the Church to both create a common culture and serve as the locus of metropolitan life. There are similarities in design policy but differences in social practice between these thinkers. 

In some ways, there seem to be connections between the patriarchal hierarchy of LDS (and tbh... American) society and the large lots designed within the SLC grid. It almost seems like a chicken or egg question--does patriarchal property-ownership reify political conservatism among LDS or does political conservatism lead to patriarchal property-ownership? But there is still a difference between the vision of Smith and the political leanings of his followers. The Utopian city provided the material requirements for society; political justifications follow.

And I can’t stop doing this

Professor Pratcher’s multimedia format for our HST 109 course was something really different than I had done before. While it provided for a break from the usually classroom format and a way for students to express themselves while going through the content of the course. It did also make it pretty challenging to create a flowing narrative for the whole semester. We were able to focus on certain themes of United States History prior to reconstruction, but I still found that it was hard to find a flowing narrative for the course.  

Instead, most We’re going to conclude our class with the final ten minutes of Mississippi’s War so that we can cover a couple of important amendments:

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, but it did not define freedom. 

The 14th Amendment guaranteed citizenship, but it did not ensure legal equity.

The 15th Amendment prevented race from being used to restrict voting, but it did not provide a ballot for all.

Most black Americans (and an increasing number of white southerners) became sharecroppers after the Civil War:

The South remains economically behind the North--more than 150 years after the end of the Civil War.

So, how did state regulation of slavery and citizenship guide the social, political, and economic development of the United States from the signing of the Constitution until the end of the Civil War? Some key things to think about:

Westward Expansion

Northwest Ordinance

Louisiana Purchase

Indian Removal

Mexican American War

Bleeding Kansas

Economic Panic

Bank of the United States

American System

Nullification

Repudiation

Social Change

Abolitionism

Jacksonian Democracy

Reform Movements

Moreover, how does our understanding of the colonial pursuit of land and labor help explain how the federal government came to regulate citizenship and slavery?

We’re going to start where we left off with the video on Tuesday:

Things were bad all across the country during the Civil War--in Richmond there were Bread Riots:

And in New York City there were draft riots:

Things were so bad that both the Union and Confederacy would attempt to enlist black troops by the end of the war. However, virtually all black volunteers served in the Union army, and they helped provide the balance of manpower which overwhelmed the confederacy and ended the war in 1865:

This week, we’re going to discuss the Civil War using a documentary published by Mississippi Public Broadcasting.

We’re going to pick up today where we left off on Tuesday--with the Dred Scott Case.

How does this interpretation of the case contrast with the view which follows?

Most importantly, how do these interpretations contrast with a perspective of the case which centers on Dred Scott as opposed to the Supreme Court? Whom does this narrative privilege? Does the additional perspective help explain the crisis?

In 1858, as Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas began a series of debates across Illinois, the Dred Scott case (and slavery in general) were the primary points on their docket. Lincoln lost this election, but his oration helped define positions of the nascent Republican Party.

When Abraham Lincoln won the hotly contested election of 1860, the stage was set for secession:

The pressure to secede forced the hand of southern politicians. How exactly would they respond to appeals for secession? 

The Manifest Destiny, the Mexican-American War, and the Compromise of 1850 did little to ameliorate tensions between northern and southern politicians. These sectional conflicts would be accelerated by the decision to move forward with westward expansion:

Today, we’ll contrast the views of different videos on similar topics--starting with the Kansas-Nebraska Act:

This documentary, made by the Johnson County (KS) library, reflects the Kansas-Nebraska Act from the perspective of local Missourians.

This video, on the other hand, provides the dominant perspective typically recited in American History. Whom does this perspective favor?

Another great example of the difference in perspective can be shown in the differing interpretations on John Brown. How do these videos contrast?

Next, there is the case of Dred Scott. Here, we see how history often as much about what information is excluded as it is what information is explained:

How does the perspective of this video differ with the following? What information is included/excluded?