Racism and San Diego’s Freeways
I asked my friend Anna Daniels, who lived through the days when Interstate 15 gashed City Heights, for some thoughts as I was preparing to write this article...
“The history of San Diego’s freeway system is about displaced people and destabilized communities as much as it is about justifying and ignoring those effects in the service of vast interconnecting ribbons of concrete.
Our freeways require the devaluation of some people, their homes, their businesses, their community, their physical wellbeing and their natural resources in comparison to those living and working in other communities.
In 1965 Interstate 5 cut through Greater Logan Heights. It was a community in which African Americans, Italians, Germans, Irish, Japanese, Filipinos and Latinos lived next to each other, with many precluded from other “White” San Diego neighborhoods by Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions (CCs&Rs).
Logan Heights was divided yet again with the construction of the Coronado Bridge, creating Barrio Logan.
The same freeway cut through Little Italy, a working class community which served as the northern point of residence for Italians and Latinos. (The Portuguese were considered ethnic Europeans not restricted to CC&Rs)
I 94 divided the working class communities of Golden Hill and Sherman Heights.
In the 1990s Interstate 15 construction demolished eight City Heights blocks, dividing that community.
Travelers on these freeways never have to see the ruptured land, the schools situated next to off and on ramps or experience the noise and sheer ugliness of it all.
Structural racism built these freeways and they continue to keep San Diego segregated. That same structural racism has given CalTrans and SANDAG the public legitimacy to sacrifice the well-being of thousands of human beings, and to fight any community attempts to deny, delay or mitigate freeway projects.”
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Now, to the bigger picture...
The small minds of the far right are freaking out over Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s acknowledgement of the role racism played in building the nation’s highways.
“Black and brown neighborhoods have been disproportionately divided by highway projects or left isolated by the lack of adequate transit and transportation resources. In the Biden-Harris administration, we will make righting these wrongs an imperative,” Buttigieg tweeted on Dec. 20.
Florida’s Rep. Matt Gaetz took time out from foaming at the mouth about how he’s innocent to respond, tweeting “Mayor Pete well aware that he didn’t get black votes in the 2020 primary........so now highways are racist???” Gaetz tweeted. He added on Sunday an answer to his question: “Highways are not racist.”,
https://twitter.com/yaf/status/1380672884457213954?s=20
The problem here is that these righties are drinking their own kool-aid, namely asserting that their whitewashed version of history is some kind of truth. (They’re already trying to do the same thing with the January 6, 2021 sedition at the Capitol building…)
By telling themselves that racism amounts to acts by individuals as opposed to a systemic societal condition, the socioeconomic impacts of the mid twentieth century buildout of a national highway system are exempted from critical examination.
While the Interstate Highway Act provided (90%) federal funding for a massive infrastructure project, state governments typically had or acquired (through eminent domain) the land, and big city governments had a say in what routes were taken through their turf.
Urban highways in this era were built through and around Black communities, destroying them, sometimes creating physical barriers to integration or to physically entrench racial inequality.
The fact that federal highway funds initially could not be used for the costs of relocating people or businesses served to provide an economic justification for choosing properties considered “distressed.” (A property located in a minority neighborhood was always worth less than one in a white neighborhood, even if they were in the same condition.)
The system was being built just as courts around the country were striking down traditional tools of racial segregation. The possibility of integration in housing was on the horizon, something abhorrent to many city planners.
In the 1930s, the government effectively made it impossible to underwrite mortgages in neighborhoods with ANY minorities. Those neighborhoods went without investment for decades, becoming "blight". Then these "blighted" neighborhoods were condemned and razed for freeways.
Highways were built right on the formal boundary lines used during racial zoning/red lining. Sometimes they were used to create a barrier between communities.
More than a million Americans were displaced during the first two decades of the federal interstate system and the routes chosen have continued to degrade the health and environments of the neighborhoods they bisect. In addition to the displacement, generational wealth was lost.
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As I’m writing this, the nation is mourning yet another young Black man killed murdered by police in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. A traffic stop for an "illegal" car freshener, a warrant for an unpaid fine, and the head of the local police union not knowing the difference between a taser and a gun ended Daunte Wright's life.
While much has been made of the location’s proximity to the trial of the policeman accused of murdering George Floyd, there’s another part to this story.
Via the Sierra Club:
This suburb north of Minneapolis has been impacted by several expansions of Interstate 94 over the years in attempts to reduce traffic congestion. The irony is that highway expansions actually increase traffic and congestion (a phenomenon called “induced demand”). Now, there’s a proposal to expand the highway even further, which the Minnesota Department of Transportation estimates would double traffic in Brooklyn Center from 60,000 vehicles per day to 120,000 vehicles per day. The plan would divert traffic from more affluent communities to low-income communities and communities of color.
Brooklyn Center is the most racially diverse city in Minnesota, with 60 percent of the population being Black, Brown, Indigenous, or other people of color. The proposed highway expansion project concentrates pollution in an area that already leads the state in childhood asthma and emergency room visits.
Residents in this city have pushed back against the expansion, asking pointed questions about potential impacts to health, the environment, and the already decreased availability of public transit.
With every question, residents hit a wall. Yet, incredibly, the community is being pressured to endorse the project without having answers to these critical questions.
In other words, the residents of Brooklyn Center are being asked to sacrifice their health so that more cars and trucks can speed through their city, but their sacrifice won’t actually meet the state’s stated goal of reducing congestion. There are effective ways to reduce congestion, but to date the state of Minnesota has not been willing to move forward with any alternatives to highway expansion
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The good news is that many highways built during the mid twentieth century are nearing or at the stage where improvements or alternatives are necessary.
While it’s correct to argue that the scope of the Biden administration's infrastructure plan isn’t as big as it could be, its built in provisions aimed at reversing past racial disparities are a welcome sign.
It includes a $20 billion program that would "reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments," according to the White House. It also looks to target "40 percent of the benefits of climate and clean infrastructure investments to disadvantaged communities."
From the Guardian:
Embedded in his sprawling infrastructure agenda, the first part of which Biden unveiled this week, are hundreds of billions of dollars dedicated to projects and investments the administration says will advance racial equity in employment, housing, transportation, healthcare and education, while improving economic outcomes for communities of color.
“This plan is important, not only for what and how it builds but it’s also important to where we build,” Biden said at a union carpenters’ training facility outside Pittsburgh last week. “It includes everyone, regardless of your race or your zip code.”
The proposal would replace lead pipes and service lines that have disproportionately harmed Black children; reduce air pollution that has long harmed Black and Latino neighborhoods near ports and power plants; “reconnect” neighborhoods cut off by previous transportation projects; expand affordable housing options to allow more families of color to buy homes, build wealth and eliminate exclusionary zoning laws; rebuild the public housing system; and prioritize investments in “frontline” communities whose residents are predominantly people of color often first- and worst-affected by climate change and environmental disaster.
Infrastructure upgrades don’t always need to be about building new roads; sometimes tearing them down is a wise idea.
Cities and states are trading highways for boulevards and connected streets that create space for public transit, walking, and cycling. And Congress is hearing them. Senator Chuck Schumer introduced legislation that would fund $10 billion worth of rethinking transportation.
For people living in New Orleans’ Tremė neighborhood, the administration’s program means tearing down the aging Claiborne Expressway, whose presence is a testament to the historic inequities of mid-twentieth century redevelopment. A vibrant business district was destroyed that served people of color; the pollution from traffic has adversely impacted the health of residents for decades.
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To date, nobody that I’m aware of is considering tearing down any freeways in San Diego. Proposals to mitigate the noise and reconnect neighborhoods by building land bridges have generally gone nowhere, with the exception of a few blocks in City Heights; and even that was a watered down version of what should have happened.
In America’s Finest City, racial, political, and class lines were quite consciously created by realtors and local political leaders. They ran through Mission Valley (I8) and inland from the coast along what would eventually be the route of Interstate 5.
In 1949 San Diego became the first major American city to dismantle its passenger rail service, dooming it to subservience to the almighty automobile.
The efforts of San Diego’s Realty Board to repeal the 1962 Rumford Fair Housing Act, outlawing housing discrimination based on race, were supported by the American Nazi Party.
A report titled “Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America San Diego,” released last fall by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation of San Diego (LISC) and a coalition of nonprofit organizations shows what redlining looked like in San Diego in the mid-1930s.
Neighborhoods were graded (A thru D) based on factors including race. A small portion of La Jolla was given a “D” grade because it was known as the “servant’s quarters” where there was a high population of Black and Mexican residents.
The “lower grade” neighborhoods are now chopped up by interstate highways. Between 1888-1957, over two-thirds of deeds in San Diego had race restrictions prohibiting the sale of or rent of houses to black and Latino families in designated white neighborhoods.
The old “redlines” no longer exist, but its legacy lives on in many ways, two of which are the choices made while choosing highway routes and the framework for what passes for a mass transit system here.
A new generation of elected officials has come into power at both the city and county levels. However, it’s necessary to understand that a (D) next the name of an officeholder does not always equal a change in perspective, particularly when it comes to transportation and housing.
An inertia of attitudes brought on by the preponderance of single family housing means undoing past wrongs, along with planning for a more just and sustainable future. And we should look to elected officials for leadership.
A huge part of San Diego’s NIMBYism is based on not wanting “those people” in neighborhoods, dressed up with ‘concerns’ about crime, traffic, and parking. Whether or not the people advocating for the status quo realize it or not, their opposition to infill smacks of racism.
Social and environmental justice need to be baked into the future of the region. It’s not just the right thing to do, it’s the best way to go for all of us.
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Lead image: Nathan Rupert / Flickr