I swear this keeps coming up and hitting me in the face like a store bought banana creme pie, all because I have a label. So today I learned that GreenLink built a playground on its property as an unsolicited concession to the predominantly Black and Hispanic New Washington Heights neighborhood for taking away the public land that was part of the master plan for pedestrians space and low income housing. The playground is cheap and low quality. And it was built up against the road with no buffers, putting children in harm's way from traffic if the cheap-assed equipment doesn't first take out some wee'uns. GreenLink called it the New Washington Heights Playground - and when the neighborhood objected to the use of the name or the implication that the playground was a collaborative effort, GreenLink told neighborhood residents to pound sand. 😮
I keep "seeing" the 'white spatial imaginary" all over now that you have given me a name for it. The power of labels and names cannot be overstated. I've seen this in parks and the Confederate Museum, but I was talking this morning about Greenville's White Horse Road Corridor and how it is deadly for pedestrians because of many design issues, including the lack of lighting. Now maybe this is a car v. pedestrian conflict - but given the community around White Horse Road (the people who walk there) and the car-based traffic that passes through without otherwise being connected to that area, this is racially-biased space that is designed (much of it being neglectful design) to be hostile to and unsafe for Black residents. This is a sociological ear worm for me. I cannot get this out of my head and I can't stop seeing how much the 'white spatial imaginaries" pollute the community.
I am going to read more on this concept of white spatial imaginary. I like the idea of unity being more genuine if, for once, people came together within the Black spatial imaginary - where white people enter as visitors, not owners. Guests, not proprietors. And it is in spaces that, for once, are not designed to affirm whiteness.
I think there's this story from 2003 or 2004 about the late District 25 County Councilor Lottie Gibson that I like to tell that may be one of how the white spatial imaginary prevails over the Black spatial imaginary in Greenville:
Basically, she made a motion to divert some hospitality tax dollars to playgrounds and recreation for her predominantly Black district which was perennially left out of parks spending. A racist Councilor from the City of Greer moved to amend her motion to direct those funds to the Confederate museum on Boyce Street in Greenville. Many people gasped at the gall and the way he had just made it clear the museum's purpose was racist. Lottie, not missing a beat, moved to amend his amendment to double the spending on the museum..."provided they use the funds to make it clear as to which side lost that war."
District 25 didn't get those parks but she swatted that Confederate museum motion, too, with her unique style.
I am going to read more on this idea of race-informed spatial imaginary but I think I have enough sense of it to suspect that another example of local hostility for Black spatial imaginary may be how the 2013 County Council Master Plan for New Washington Heights - including affordable housing and health-and-fitness related amenities, like walking trails - as envisioned by the predominantly Black residents, was torn up and scrapped in 2020 for a new GreenLink bus maintenance yard on the side of the defunct Washington High School.
Other area master plans were followed through on. When they voted to donate the land (in lieu of matching cash that the U.S. Transportation Department needed the county to spend for a large grant to build the bus maintenance yard) County Council was dismissive of the legal effect of the master plan that had been voted on, claiming the ordinance to create the plan was merely advisory in nature (again, while they dutifully carried out the master plans in predominantly white areas).
Interestingly, one of the residents screwed over most by the decision is Charity Jones, an unsung student arrested in lunch counter sit-ins but not among the group whose case went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The bulldozers and graders skimmed along her fence. Rats and snakes from the field took refuge in and under her home, which had been in her family since her father became one of the first residents of one of the first planned neighborhoods designed for Black residents - although I saw the old 1940s newspaper ads and they clearly wanted to appeal to white investors who would rent out homes to Black residents.
I saw the bus facility as a vicious machine that depleted generational wealth built up by Black residents of NWH in their homes...but your article here points out how it also crushes a fully articulated vision for being Black and utilizing space as it was imagined by Black residents in Greenville.
I swear this keeps coming up and hitting me in the face like a store bought banana creme pie, all because I have a label. So today I learned that GreenLink built a playground on its property as an unsolicited concession to the predominantly Black and Hispanic New Washington Heights neighborhood for taking away the public land that was part of the master plan for pedestrians space and low income housing. The playground is cheap and low quality. And it was built up against the road with no buffers, putting children in harm's way from traffic if the cheap-assed equipment doesn't first take out some wee'uns. GreenLink called it the New Washington Heights Playground - and when the neighborhood objected to the use of the name or the implication that the playground was a collaborative effort, GreenLink told neighborhood residents to pound sand. 😮
I keep "seeing" the 'white spatial imaginary" all over now that you have given me a name for it. The power of labels and names cannot be overstated. I've seen this in parks and the Confederate Museum, but I was talking this morning about Greenville's White Horse Road Corridor and how it is deadly for pedestrians because of many design issues, including the lack of lighting. Now maybe this is a car v. pedestrian conflict - but given the community around White Horse Road (the people who walk there) and the car-based traffic that passes through without otherwise being connected to that area, this is racially-biased space that is designed (much of it being neglectful design) to be hostile to and unsafe for Black residents. This is a sociological ear worm for me. I cannot get this out of my head and I can't stop seeing how much the 'white spatial imaginaries" pollute the community.
I am going to read more on this concept of white spatial imaginary. I like the idea of unity being more genuine if, for once, people came together within the Black spatial imaginary - where white people enter as visitors, not owners. Guests, not proprietors. And it is in spaces that, for once, are not designed to affirm whiteness.
I think there's this story from 2003 or 2004 about the late District 25 County Councilor Lottie Gibson that I like to tell that may be one of how the white spatial imaginary prevails over the Black spatial imaginary in Greenville:
Basically, she made a motion to divert some hospitality tax dollars to playgrounds and recreation for her predominantly Black district which was perennially left out of parks spending. A racist Councilor from the City of Greer moved to amend her motion to direct those funds to the Confederate museum on Boyce Street in Greenville. Many people gasped at the gall and the way he had just made it clear the museum's purpose was racist. Lottie, not missing a beat, moved to amend his amendment to double the spending on the museum..."provided they use the funds to make it clear as to which side lost that war."
District 25 didn't get those parks but she swatted that Confederate museum motion, too, with her unique style.
I am going to read more on this idea of race-informed spatial imaginary but I think I have enough sense of it to suspect that another example of local hostility for Black spatial imaginary may be how the 2013 County Council Master Plan for New Washington Heights - including affordable housing and health-and-fitness related amenities, like walking trails - as envisioned by the predominantly Black residents, was torn up and scrapped in 2020 for a new GreenLink bus maintenance yard on the side of the defunct Washington High School.
Other area master plans were followed through on. When they voted to donate the land (in lieu of matching cash that the U.S. Transportation Department needed the county to spend for a large grant to build the bus maintenance yard) County Council was dismissive of the legal effect of the master plan that had been voted on, claiming the ordinance to create the plan was merely advisory in nature (again, while they dutifully carried out the master plans in predominantly white areas).
Interestingly, one of the residents screwed over most by the decision is Charity Jones, an unsung student arrested in lunch counter sit-ins but not among the group whose case went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The bulldozers and graders skimmed along her fence. Rats and snakes from the field took refuge in and under her home, which had been in her family since her father became one of the first residents of one of the first planned neighborhoods designed for Black residents - although I saw the old 1940s newspaper ads and they clearly wanted to appeal to white investors who would rent out homes to Black residents.
I saw the bus facility as a vicious machine that depleted generational wealth built up by Black residents of NWH in their homes...but your article here points out how it also crushes a fully articulated vision for being Black and utilizing space as it was imagined by Black residents in Greenville.
Anyway, thanks for that wonderful read!