[lbo-talk] Racial Economics of Renaming Streets for Martin LutherKing, Jr.

[Liza Featherstone]

WS, your consistent contrarianism is often entertaining, but you are way off
base here --it is very hard to see how you could read the Times article or
even just that quote from it and not conclude that in this instance at least
it was very much about race. White people saying that their property values
will fall if the street is named after a black leader??? That's straight-up
racism, not too ambiguous or subtle. In US cities, street re-naming is very
often about race because streets are very often re-named after black
leaders. Thus the new name becomes a convenient target for white people's
anxiety about how the city is "changing," which is a racial anxiety. Sure
it's confusing when street names change -- I used to live near Marcus Garvey
Blvd in Brooklyn, and lots of maps still had the old name, and of course it
was annoying -- but in this case people should deal with it because
it's...can we still use this word, I hope so...Progress. (A city full of
streets and parks named only after white people sends the clear message that
whites are the only people whose history is worthy of public note.)

Liza


> From: Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Mon, 10 May 2004 14:09:21 -0400
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Racial Economics of Renaming Streets for Martin
> LutherKing, Jr.
> 
> Yoshie:
> 
>> The City Council of Zephyrhills, Florida renamed a street to honor
>> Martin Luther King, Jr. on October 26, 2003, but it reversed the
>> decision and removed his name on April 26, 2004, caving in to white
>> protests. The Council earned a white supremacist website's praise.
>> White protestors argued that "they did not want the bother of
>> changing their addresses," and "[a] business owner told local
>> newspapers that property values would fall, saying streets named
>> after Dr. King were a guarantee of economic blight" (emphasis added,
>> Abby Goodnough, "Honor for Dr. King Splits Florida City, and Faces
>> Reversal," New York Times, May 10, 2004). This is a small episode
>> that can illustrate a larger issue of how oppressions based upon race
>> and class mutually reinforce each other. . . .
> 
> Renaming streets is a tricky business that has very little to do with
> race.  A few months ago I read a story in a local PA paper about a guy
> renaming a country road in rural PA to honor his daughter killed by a
> drunk driver.  The lane was adjacent to his property and he decided to
> name the lane after his daughter first name and erected a signs to that
> effect.  That pissed all his neighbors who used the exact same arguments
> as the folks in the above story and started a legal fight.  No personal
> animosities of any sort, racial or otherwise, were involved, the
> neighbors liked the guy and felt sorry about the death of his daughter -
> they just did not want the name of the street changed.
> 
> I come from the part of the world where street and locality names change
> with every regime change - so I personally resent the practice of
> renaming.  I think it is a sign of the lack of civility - a "grab what
> we can while we can" mentality of barbarians.  When the Soviets asserted
> their control of Poland, there was a rush of street renaming to Stalin
> or Lenin street.  After 1989, these streets were renamed again  - so my
> parent's home address at Karl Marx street became General Haller street -
> after some crypto fascist Polish general that nobody heard of.
> Personally, I liked the old address better.
> 
> In the same vein, the National Airport in DC was re-named Reagan
> National Airport.  How uncivilized.
> 
> Wojtek
> 
> 
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