urbanSTL

ttricamo wrote:

stlcardsblues1989 wrote:You'll find uneducated and bigoted people anywhere, even in the city.

.

Look no further than the response right after your post. Unreal

I was being facetious.

It doesn't come over well on the internet, apparently.

roger wyoming II dropping truth bomb after truth bomb in this thread

stlcardsblues1989 wrote:Being a rural Missourian, I don't get the feeling from people around here that they want to harm St. Louis in any way. Our politicians I don't know about.

A lot of people around here are afraid of visiting St. Louis, especially certain places after dark (understandable). But a lot of it is fear and dislike of cities in general.

I know a few years ago rural schools sued Missouri because they were spending so much more on kids in St. Louis schools. But that's mostly been forgotten by now.

A lot of the dislike that may exist between urban and rural goes back to politics. Rural Missourians tend to be conservative, whereas urbanites tend to be liberal. I usually fall somewhere in between. It doesn't help that rural Missourians see urbanites negatively and urbanites see rural people negatively. You'll find uneducated and bigoted people anywhere, even in the city.

I don't think rural folk are necessarily anti-St. Louis in the abstract. But I think they have too much capacity to govern St. Louis from a place of ignorance via the state (see: the municipal income tax vote, transit priorities). I also think there's widespread racism and distrust of perceived "welfare queens" and "urban thugs" that effectively translates to political movements that harm St. Louis.

onecity wrote:The city needs a torrent of black flight into west county, south county, and st charles co to achieve the balance we need to have a sane conversation at the regional level.

Yup

roger wyoming II wrote:

gary kreie wrote:I think folks in the rest of the country who read his piece, and maybe even the author, would be surprised to learn that:

gary, these are far from anything impressive. Take the Dred and Harriett Scott case... while it is true that the Circuit Court (on a second try) held in favor of the Scotts, it was only because of a faithful application of the law regarding the rights of slaves who were brought into free states and not by strong anti-slavery sentiment by locals. We were a slave state and city, after all. (But god bless the freedom-loving German riff raff who immigrated here in enough numbers to save the Union.)

But your point number 4 is the one I think really gets to a lot of our dysfunction.... it is no badge of honor that we have a lot of majority black municipalities. That is a result of our having too many small municipalities in our fractured region plus strong racial segregation. And most black people aren't seeking to live in majority black towns; they want to live in desegregated areas with lots of opportunity but too often find that unavailable to them.

The author kept citing Dred Scott as a source for extreme racism in St. Louis. St. Louis is a border town -- North and South, East and West. But at the local District Court eventually did the right thing. He might have mention that, rather than leave the false impression that the entire metro area is racist.

With regard to point number 4, the ACLU recently demanded that the Ferguson Florissant School district split into geographic segments to elect board members, rather than hold at-large voting, in order to give black candidates a better chance to get elected. In earlier posts, I've cautioned against the rush now to do the opposite -- merging towns in a way that effectively wipes out all African American majorities. Many metro areas, including Dallas and Boston, have no majority African American towns. I support merging towns together for efficiency reasons, but let's be sensitive to doing it in a way that maintains our ability to elect and develop African American leadership at local levels. I don't know where you get your data for saying most blacks are not seeking to live in majority black towns. And I don't believe your comment that desegregated areas are not available to them. If you are trying to say the areas are not available because of economics, that is an entirely different subject that has nothing to do with availability. The author of this piece grew up in Chesterfield. If you know of places where African Americans are not allowed to purchase homes today, Eric Holder needs to hear who is stopping them. That is Illegal.

I grew up on a small farm in Oklahoma. Everyone has a story to justify where they are today. We only saw places like Chesterfield through a 19" black and white porthole. He titles the piece Goodbye St Louis ..., which to me says the reader should generalize the story to the whole metro area. The whole place is just bad.

I came across this one in the NYT, touting STL's crime problem....

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/us/st ... .html?_r=0

Pbs show tonight called science matters did a feature on forest park southeast neighborhood mission. Group of people painting rooftops white to keep temperatures cooler and reduce electricity bills. Very cool to see on a national show.

Last Tuesday evening "Genealogy Roadshow" on PBS aired. It was shot at Union Station. I didn't watch the whole thing but saw a number of great shots of Union Station, etc. Looks like you can see this episode in it's entirety here: http://www.pbs.org/genealogy-roadshow/home/

Article from STL-Today from last August's filming: http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/t ... 71cad.html

^ That article is a joke. You see how well Illinois' gun laws have worked in ESL and Chicago. Besides, stricter enforcement of gun laws in the City would fall disproportionately on young black men. Some would call that racist.

I think the author is trying to solve a legitimate problem (Missouri's hostility to urban interests), but constructed a specious argument that falls apart pretty quickly on further examination.

^ and even with that proposal it would not be a counterweight to Chicago anyway so it and the metro east would still be an afterthought in Illinois politics. What I do wonder is if the article is awkwardly pointing at making metro areas separate from states (particularly when a metro area is in more than one state)

imperialmog wrote:^ and even with that proposal it would not be a counterweight to Chicago anyway so it and the metro east would still be an afterthought in Illinois politics. What I do wonder is if the article is awkwardly pointing at making metro areas separate from states (particularly when a metro area is in more than one state)

I think that would be a much better idea, but then you'd have the problem of not all parts of said metro area wanting to secede. I'm pretty sure if there were a proposal to create a metro state for St. Louis that St. Charles County would most certainly want to remain outside of it, and that would weaken its strength. And then there's the additional problem of defining which metro areas could secede. Would there be a population threshold? A GMP threshold? Again, seems like a good idea but falls apart pretty easily.

^^ Showing KC and its rate highlights that the premise of the article is flawed. Basically is there something locally going on that is causing the trend to change.

Ferguson got a mention in the performance of Glory on the Oscars.

Charles Jaco in the STL American:

http://www.stlamerican.com/news/columni ... 87e7c.html

Not the most nuanced piece, but a refreshing call to action. My fear is that most in the metro—particularly outside of the city limits—would go with "walk away".

We should all be thankful for Charles Jaco. Otherwise, we might be saying Senator Akin quite a bit.