zksmk

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But accepting that the descendants of slaves are still poorer than the descendants of their masters and considering it to be anything else than a huge problem

I implied no such thing, thankfully. I just think it's really hard if not impossible to focus policies on those descendants of slaves and the descendants of the slave-owners without catching other people in the cross-fire if the policies are done on racial basis. Why not just make policies that help all poor people, regardless of race, especially in societies where the line between descendants of slaves and the descendants of the slave-owners has become highly blurred? It would take longer to equalize the wealth that way, but there'd be less drama along the way.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

One source observes that "[w]hite workers have 74% higher income on average compared to Black and Brown people", so just because the culture might be less racist than the US, the systematic issues are still very much there.

Those systematic issues aren't racist issues tho. It makes sense the descendants of literal slaves brought from tribes from Africa and the descendants of native tribes in the Americas who didn't even invent the wheel, not even the Aztecs, Mayans or Incas, would have ended up poorer today than the descendants of people from developed civilisations that built huge trans-oceanic vessels. Only literal Star Trek-ian communism could have changed that, even real life communism doesn't and didn't suddenly make janitors rich and college educated managers poor. Look at any Eurasian country with no history of migrations or colonies and the poor people there today are the descendents of poor people from a couple hundred years ago, and the rich people today are the descendents of rich people from a couple hundred years ago.

The real issue is the lack of social mobility. Some countries have more of it, some less. The way to achieve it is through stuff like real and strong safety nets and welfare and good universal free education and policies such as a progressive inheritance tax, not through racial measures.

Racial measures exist and have a purpose in divided societies where the racial groups are divided and don't see eye to eye and don't understand each other's issues and therefore each group needs proper democratic representation which also means some amount of economic strength.

In a society where people aren't actually racist, or racially divided, those kind of measures would only breed resentment because some poor people would be overlooked because they aren't of the "right" colour, in this case not dark enough. So these anti-racism measures would just create more racial drama.

You can't use a one-size fits all solution to two different countries with a different cultural situation. And considering neither of these two countries is at an extreme of a possible position, the real solutions are more nuanced gradient policies, skewing one way in one country, and the other way in the other.

 

Thoughts?

 

In 1957, Valencia experienced a devastating flood that forever changed the city’s relationship with the Turia River. Nearly 3/4 of the city was inundated by floodwater and over 60 people lost their lives. The following year, the city embraced a plan to divert the river around its western outskirts to the Mediterranean Sea.

A park wasn’t the city leadership’s first idea—in an effort to alleviate traffic congestion, they envisioned an elaborate highway system through the heart of the City. But by 1970 the citizens pushed back and protested the highway proposal under the motto “The bed of Turia is ours and we want green!” By the end of the decade, the City approved legislation to turn the riverbed into a park and commissioned Ricard Bofill to create a master plan in 1982. The plan created a framework for the riverbed and divided it into 18 zones. Currently, all but one of the zones has been developed.

The resulting design establishes a monumental 5 mile green swath within a dense and diverse urban fabric, including the historic center of the city, and has an average span of 600 feet, from bank to bank. The park comprises over 450 acres and is characterized by bike paths, event spaces, active recreation fields, fountains, and many notable structures.

A bit more history and a lot of pics of the park in the former riverbed.

Fun fact: now the traffic bridges don't go above the river, they go above the park.

Openstreetmap, for those interested in a detailed view.

Do you know of any other weird parks like this?

 

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