Dr. Fullilove’s argument is that the segregation of
America’s cities leads to poor health. She starts with Brown versus Topeka BOE
and how it ended legal segregation, but not de facto segregation. She then
recounts her child in Baby-Boom era Orange, New Jersey, which was segregated
thanks to gerrymandering. Her parents fought, and won, for changes in the
policies, but at what cost? She got to go to the nearby white school, but that
meant two drawbacks; she was giving up everything she was familiar with, and
she was now the poor kid. As an adult, she met Michel Cantal at an AIDS
conference, and he related to her how a city’s success relies on the strength
of the planning. For example, wasteland can be turned into parks and
playground, and they in turn can be designed to keep drug dealers and addicts
out. Roads and sidewalks can be improved, and that benefits everyone, both rich
and poor.
Dr. Fullilove, in
a later chapter, writes of how some urban communities, like Harlem, are a
puzzle. Attractions like The Cloisters and Fort Tryon Park are in the
guidebooks, and tourists regularly go to see them. But these same guidebooks
advise tourists to avoid the area in between. This problem is not uncommon in
other cities; tourists in Vancouver are advised to avoid the Downtown East
Side, and Jerusalem’s Arab Quarter should not be seen without a tour guide. But
telling the tourists to avoid certain areas doesn’t help to integrate them.
Perhaps this is a common problem in all cities, when you have great monuments
and resources, but unsafe spaces in between?
In the chapter Unslum All Neighborhoods, she describes
how the coffee cart and food truck operators did as much to clean up the ‘hood
as that police ever did. However, she disliked the Columbia Medical Center that
opened across Broadway, because the architecture looked defensive and it
blighted the area. Her argument for their contribution makes sense, because
often these neighborhoods have no place to eat except fast food chains and
franchises. She does not, however, give any credit to the New York City
Homesteader program of the 1980’s, which turned derelict buildings into
functioning homes.
There have been
other books about the issue of health in the urban environment, like Stuck in Place, for instance, which
explores how the poor are often relegated to confined areas. Another similar
book would be Toxic Communities,
about the practice of dumping toxic waste near poor neighborhoods. The problem
isn’t just restricted to minorities; white children in Tennessee coal mining
towns suffer from lead poisoning (among other heavy metals) thanks to the
chemicals carelessly dumped into rivers. The irony, however, is that while
America has stereotyped the “poor inner city dweller” as Black and Latino,
there are white kids with similar experiences. The photographer Shelby Adams,
in his book Appalachian Legacy, recounts
an experience similar to Dr. Fulliliove’s, where his economic status suddenly
changed when he switched schools. It was the 1960’s, and thanks to the new
desegregation law, he had to be bussed to a school outside of his neighborhood.
He went from being the middle-class kid with his own lunch money, to being a
“poor trash from the hills” in his new school.
At least it gave
Adams a lifelong respect for all the people, no matter what their race,
economic status, or how they looked. Perhaps the real problem is that we’re
simply giving out too many labels, like “low income” student, when they should
all be treated the same?
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