Comment on Too bad we can't have good public transportation
Snowclone@lemmy.world 3 days ago
yeah, anti public transit has several motivations, the most American is racism. if we have robust public transit, they can’t be “whites only” and you can’t force the not-whites to sit in the back. so right there. Then you have white land owning hegemony. Why do the busses only go downtown and not to the shopping center half way to the suburbs? because they don’t want the filthy poors mucking up their white fort, if you let busses go up to the suburbs then THEY can get there and do all the things they get blamed for!! Lastly, profit motive. mass transit means people can choose to have a car or not. the powers that be are making a lot of money off cars and mass transit will upset the apple cart.
i think it’s not only racism though. surely, there’s also a lot of kicking-downwards on the poor. the poor shouldn’t get a nice life, so they’re motivated to work harder and be successful, so since public transport helps everyone, including the poors, we don’t want that.
(not my words, just a common sentiment i’ve heard)
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 3 days ago
You know, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. And your comment reminds me of it. The aesthetics of evil. Racist segregation is an obvious evil. So if you tell black people to stand at the back of the bus because they’re not allowed to mix with the whites, that’s rather obvious and a horrific picture to have. But, if you handicap them, make sure they can only live in the cheapest communities and then limit the mobility of them. Same result. But because you didn’t see it, and the enforced segregation is rather subtle… Well, looks better, doesn’t it? So people are more likely to accept it. And if you say things like “The city has marked this black community unfit for investment.” then it sounds already like a conspiracy theory. Making you the weirdo for speaking out. Horrid, but an elegant and efficient system for censorship, isn’t it?
And to be absolutely clear: I reject racial segregation and censorship, obviously.