This time will we finally see real change? Since the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police in late May, tens of thousands of people, in cities and towns in all 50 states (and around the world), have marched in support of Black Lives Matter. According to theWashington Post in early June, 74 percent of Americans in one poll “generally backed the protestors.” The Los Angeles Timeswrote, “The most key shift is a new cultural consensus: It is no longer enough to be nonracist. People should strive to be antiracist.”
In America’s long history of inequality and injustice, the built environment is the most enduring symbol of racism. Not just the Confederate monuments that are being toppled in parks and on college campuses. Not just the quarters for enslaved people that tourists poke their heads into while strolling the leafy grounds of Southern plantations. Racism is embedded everywhere, from the quiet suburban streets of Satilla Shores, Georgia, where Ahmaud Arbery was killed while he jogged in late February, to the gated community in Sanford, Florida, where high schooler Trayvon Martin was shot dead in 2012. Racism marks the crumbling school buildings, the food deserts, and the patches of asphalt that pass for public space in predominantly Black neighborhoods. The recent golden age of American cities, which the COVID-19 pandemic may have brought to an abrupt close, bypassed many, if not most, urban African Americans (except those areas affected by gentrification, which often led to the displacement of longtime residents).
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