The Black Butterfly

Lawrence T. Brown (2021).?The black butterfly: The harmful politics of race and space in America.?Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore.

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1?The first bloodshed of America’s Civil War occurred … in Baltimore

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2?Given the persistence and permanence of American racism, clarity about what racial equity is and why it is needed to make Black neighborhoods matter is vitally important … Racial equity is required to dismantle American Apartheid

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3?In the 1930s, the federal government partnered with local governments and real estate agents to draft Residential Security Maps, which deliberately redlined and underdeveloped Black neighborhoods in more than two hundred cities

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4?This discursive redlining has devastating consequences because it undergirds and underwrites policies, practices, systems, and budgets that impact Black neighborhoods … Racial equity is needed to dismantle spatial racism (a process) and produce spatial equity (the outcome)

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5?To implement a robust racial equity strategy, government officials, philanthropies, corporations, and nonprofits must follow these five steps:

1.??????????Obtain a deep understanding of historical trauma inflicted on Black neighborhoods.

2.??????????Identify and stop all forms of ongoing historical trauma affecting Black neighborhoods.

3.??????????Make decision making participatory and deeply democratic for existing residents in redlined communities.

4.??????????Ensure a meaningful community ownership and wealth-generating stake in all projects, programs, developments, and interventions using collective economics.

5.??????????Make corrective and equitable budget allocations and funding choices to repair the damage caused by ongoing historical trauma on redlined neighborhoods.

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7?Baltimore looms large in this book because its history is intimately linked to the spread of American Apartheid in large urban areas … America’s Category 5 hypersegregated metropolitan areas and cities.?Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, Birmingham, Flint, Detroit, Cleveland, and Milwaukee … the Baltimore metropolitan area created the template for urban apartheid nationwide

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15?it is impossible to make Black Lives matter without making Black neighborhoods matter

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17?By 2042 or there-abouts, America would be “majority minority,”

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19?America is now in a moment where White Redemption in national politics is being deployed for the third time

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34?The trustees and founders of America’s Ivy League and state land-grant universities in Northern states often derived their wealth from chattel slavery practiced in Southern states

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37?a master spy, a nurse, and a field general … Harriet Tubman

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53?John Ehrlichman … by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin.?And then criminalizing both heavily

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63?No large metropolitan area can better illustrate the salience of structural violence better than Baltimore, Maryland, which gave birth to urban spatial apartheid.?Baltimore reveals the sophistication of structural violence deployed in city ordinances, real estate practices, mortgage lending, code enforcement, municipal budgets, zoning laws, urban planning, urban renewal, and urban development

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66?Baltimore City was ground zero for residential American Apartheid

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96?In the 1950s, Johns Hopkins University partnered with the city government in one of the city’s urban renewal projects to displace over 1,335 Black households

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97?21,588 Black households have been displaced by large-scale development projects between 1940 and 2010

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102?spatial war

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105?neighborhoods … urban apartheid … hypersegregated cities

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105-106?American Apartheid … Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Flint, St. Louis, Cleveland, Birmingham, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, New York, Dayton, Kansas City, Boston, Hartford, and Rochester

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106?dispossession of waterfront and farmland properties

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107?the racial wealth gap has widened

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108?the White L and the Black Butterfly … government-enforced racial segregation has constituted the platform from which structural weapons of environmental and economic destruction have been launched against Black neighborhoods

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108?Noliwe Rooks … segrenomics … “the business of profiting specifically from levels of racial and economic segregation.”

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111?The flip side of concentrated poverty is concentrated wealth

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112?Lack of affordable and diverse modes of quality transit options leave Black Baltimoreans disadvantaged in the labor force

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112?Samuel Jordan … makes the argument that when people have a commute time longer than 45 minutes, it should be considered “transit detention.” … White L neighborhoods have the highest percentage of people that can commute to work in 15 minutes or less

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112-113?In Baltimore, city leaders have permanently closed scores of recreation centers and public schools … nearly all in Black neighborhoods

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114?the closures of recreation centers, public schools, and public housing developments decrease Black resident participation and ownership, disrupt community identity, and destroy Black history

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114-115?Black teachers have declined from being 63.2% of the [Baltimore City Public School System] BCPSS workforce in 2005 to just 38.4% of the BCPSS workforce in 2014 … as the BCPSS student population remains over 80% Black

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116?Research indicates increased learning outcomes when Black children are taught by Black teachers

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116?White … teachers – harbor racist views of Black children … Black children experience disproportionate levels of corporal punishment, suspensions, expulsions, criminal justice contact, and arrests by school or city police in school systems across America compared to their White counterparts … Black teachers matter

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117?Baltimore leads the nation in rental evictions per capita

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118?Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (JHMI) engaged in massive displacement of the Middle East community near its medical campus in East Baltimore in the 2000s

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119?Baltimore City subsidizes wealthier and demographically whiter populations to live in the city

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126?many Black residents not only feel overpoliced but also underprotected

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129?Hyperpolicing and hypersegregation go hand-in-hand

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132?buying a home while Black has subjected Black homebuyers to paying a racist financial surcharge that White homebuyers do not pay

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134-135?JHMI … in 2016 … agreed to pay … 5.25% of its full tax assessment … Instead of using its tax savings to lower the cost of patient care and increase worker salaries, JHMI plowed its tax savings into funding its private police force

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136?Poverty is the result of intentional and ill-informed government, corporate, and philanthropic policies and practices

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146?corrupted politicians

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150?As a result of spatial racism, there are eight main elements proliferating community health crises and catastrophes in redlined Black neighborhoods: (1) root shock, (2) internal colonization, (3) resource apartheid, (4) toxic lead exposure, (5) housing precarity, (6) racism-based traumatic stress, (7) homicides, and (8) urban uprisings

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156?A slum is any area which is exploited by the community at large … In a slum, people do not receive comparable care and services for the amount of rent paid on a dwelling.?They are forced to purchase property at inflated real estate value.?They pay taxes, but their children do not receive an equitable share of those taxes in educational, recreational and civic services

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161?lead poisoning

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164?racism-based traumatic stress

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174?Only by reversing the cycle of Black neighborhood destruction can cities catalyze the regrowth of communal bonds needed to increase connections and foster cooperative work

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175?by 2008, most of the residents had been forcibly displaced by … Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions

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179?Black neighborhood destruction

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180?to boost Black health and affirm Black Lives, America must make Black neighborhoods matter … policies, practices, and systems

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181?accountable leadership … democratic participation

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182?self-determination

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182?Building democratic community power and strengthening the capacity of marginalized communities to work collectively and collaboratively must be a central aim and focus of racial equity work … Attention must be paid not only to outcomes but also to processes to produce the desired outcomes … Who stands to benefit??

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183?Equity means doing more for those who have less due to ongoing historical trauma

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184?An intentional focus on development without displacement can produce a win-win scenario for everyone involved

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186?the state and city both perpetuate education apartheid in Baltimore City

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196?racial equity in community economic development must involve a process of de-privatization and reclaiming public dollars for the public good

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198?Corporate developers exploit local, state, and federal economic development policies to enrich themselves under the guise of helping redlined Black neighborhoods

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199?A racial equity strategy requires collective economics and community wealth-building approaches that will lift up the financial fortunes for entire communities

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199-200?here are four approaches to catalyze community economic development in the Black Butterfly.

1.??????????Center racial equity in community economic development … The three racial equity criteria are geographic (threshold criteria), permanent affordability (threshold criteria), and building financial equity (points-based criteria) …

2.??????????Community Reinvestment Act lending/granting …

3.??????????Black-owned resource cooperatives … Cleveland Model …

4.??????????Community investment trusts … southeast Portland, Oregon

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202-209?To become a great city, Baltimore must center racial equity in housing and in the fight to end homelessness.?Here are three strategies that should be employed.

1.??????????Keep people in their homes …

2.??????????Reinvigorate public housing …

3.??????????Build autonomous transitional housing communities and implement Housing First … Tiny houses … Davin Hong … LaQuida Chancey runs Smalltimore Homes …

4.??????????Account for the racial income gap in housing …

5.??????????Stay Where You Are Housing Voucher

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212-215?With more stable yearly funding, [Baltimore City Health Department] BCHD can better focus on the five following strategies:

1.??????????Declare racism a public health emergency …

2.??????????Declare a state of emergency on toxic lead exposure …

3.??????????Boost health in the Black Butterfly …

4.??????????Conduct health impact assessments of new public policy and large tax spending proposals …

5.??????????Practice public health from the grassroots

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215?Today, Baltimore is devoid of racial equity in public transit

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216?both Black youth and Black adults alike suffer from transit detention in Baltimore City

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217?electric road train with virtual tracks … protected bike lanes

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218?Baltimore City desperately needs racial equity in public works

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220?tax diversions and tax evasions … corporate corruption

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222?[2016] Mayor … allowed 15 private universities and hospitals to avoid paying … Baltimore City now only received 5.15% of their full tax assessment

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222?Lower-income Black Baltimoreans often pay a higher property tax rate than their higher-income White counterparts … racially regressive property tax rates

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224?Racial equity is not a vision of a fantasy or a utopia

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226?radical measures and far-reaching government policies and practices will be needed to dismantle Baltimore Apartheid and by extension, American Apartheid

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227?will require that Baltimore residents develop a politics of public service and means of accountability that stops corrosive corruption

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233?in FY2018 … Baltimore City … spent more of its own dollars on policing … than it spent … on public schools, health, housing, parks, employment development, permanent housing for the homeless, civil rights, and arts and culture collectively … Baltimore City maintains an apartheid budget

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236?Timothy Akers … idea – blending the police and health departments

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237?moving toward a peacebuilding strategy … The City of Camden, New Jersey, disbanded their entire police force in 2013.?Since then, crime and violence have dropped to new lows as the new police department focused on being guardians instead of warriors

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240?Entities that helped erect the walls of Baltimore Apartheid have a special obligation to tear them down … revoking the tax-privileged status that many White L entities and homeowners enjoy and ending the tax-punished status of many entities and homeowners in the Black Butterfly

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249?universal basic income

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250?Who then is doing the planning? … Black planning and development are not a new phenomenon in America … After winning and securing emancipation, formerly enslaved Black people made tremendous strides in the 50 years post-enslavement

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251?Mindy Fullilove … book Urban Alchemy … journal Planning Theory and Practice … BlackSpace Manifesto … Afrofuturism … Ingrid LaFleur

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256?Sarah Malotane … book Disrupting Denial

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259?Across the nation, 21 large metropolitan areas remain hyper-segregated

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260?The whitelash of the 2010 Tea Party and the 2016 election of Trump … the question becomes whether America will ever be a nation with liberty and justice for all … Derrick Bell … Democrats in large urban areas have repeatedly harmed Black neighborhoods

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261?Before rushing straight to solutions, Americans must spend the time and effort to reflect and study the nation’s history … education and commemoration

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264?Stokely Carmichael

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265?use the Ella Baker model of organizing to build community power in redlined Black neighborhoods and hypersegregated cities

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266?organizers should consider forming local political action committees that can link together and form a Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) or #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) superPAC … the push for racial equity and social justice is a marathon, not a sprint … make … Black Lives and Black neighborhoods truly matter