Reckoning and Repair in America’s Cities

Liz Ogbu

Originally published February 15, 2022 on usnews.com

We have always been set aside like a(n) island. A no man’s island.”

That’s how Derrald, a longtime resident and activist living in San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point, describes his neighborhood. His historically working-class Black community, which has hosted much of the city’s industrial base—from a power station to a sewage treatment plant—has experienced decades of isolation and disinvestment. Residents of Bayview-Hunters Point had a pre-pandemic median household income of just over $65,000, in a city where the median home price is about $1.5 million.

The history of racism and exclusion is etched into the maps of our cities—determining which neighborhoods get power plants and which get parks, and creating no man’s lands in places like Bayview-Hunters Point. But today, some communities are working to repair those deepseated wounds. Block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, they are assessing the impact of the past while undertaking much-needed reckoning and repair.

I find myself thinking of reckoning and repair as we partake in the annual ritual of Black History Month. For days, we will hear tributes to the creative brilliance of Maya Angelou and the innovative genius of Madam C.J. Walker. Meanwhile, concepts like critical race theory are being used as political boogeymen and debates rage over teaching children about slavery.

The bitter irony of this juxtaposition is that we’re asked to selectively remember this country’s past, to choose only the good bits and discard the rest. Forgetting that which is uncomfortable can feel enticing in these times, when so much about who we are and how we live feels broken. But as activist and writer Charlene Carruthers has said, incomplete stories lead to incomplete solutions. When we don’t share the entirety of who we are and where we have been, we will never fully heal. And the truth is, there are a lot of communities around the country that pay the cost of that incompleteness.

Neighborhoods like Derrald’s are the often-overlooked monuments to our unresolved racial reckoning. In many cases, these are low-income communities of color with less access to resources like good transportation, schools, housing and financial capital. Imagine what it might feel like to think of your neighborhood—the place you call home—as physically, socially and financially cut off from resources key to your well-being and quality of life. Now imagine that separation is due to the color of your skin, the wealth of your parents, the place of your birth, or any identity that might make you and your neighbors “different.” There are some that would like to see Derrald’s story as a product of individual—rather than societal—failure. But his story is an example of a system that is working exactly as designed.

Space has often been used in this country as a system of control and exclusion. The American landscape is physically shaped by historical injustices dating back to its earliest days as a country, when land was stolen from and used to warehouse Indigenous people and plantations were platforms for the enslavement and dehumanization of Black people. In the 1950s, 60s and 70s, space (and the policies shaping it) became a tool to physically enforce racist ideology in the face of legal decisions and laws intended to protect civil rights. Central to this was “urban renewal,” a large-scale process in which neighborhoods were cleared of people and buildings for the purpose of allegedly beneficial development. Frequently justified as “slum clearance,” urban renewal often conveniently targeted communities of color, particularly vibrant Black communities.

Those displaced had few places to go: Nearly 90% of the low-income housing destroyed by urban renewal reportedly was not replaced. Inadequate compensation was often a problem. Those who sought to buy a home elsewhere had to deal with redlining, in which predominantly Black neighborhoods were marked as high-risk, making it almost impossible to get a federally backed mortgage for homes in those areas. And renters of color faced widespread discrimination.

More recently, we have seen cycles of displacement and place-based harm tied to the 2008 mortgage crisis, the current climate emergency, the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing gentrification—all of which have disproportionately impacted communities of color and the poor.

Space has been intimately connected to racialized harm, so it must be part of the conversation on how we heal. For as long as we continue to be selectively harmed and separated by race, the promissory note of justice and equality that Martin Luther King Jr. so eloquently described will remain unfulfilled.

Some communities are working to fulfill that promise by leaning into the question, “What could repair look like?” Often driven by community members who have experienced harm, these efforts are assessing the impact of the past while undertaking reckoning and repair at a collective and place-based level. For example, in Charlottesville, Virginia, I’ve been working with the residents of Friendship Court—an affordable housing complex that’s home to 150 families—and their nonprofit partner, Piedmont Housing Alliance, to create a vision for a new model of housing.

While Charlottesville gained notoriety during the 2017 white supremacist incursion, the wounds of racial harm began long before. Decades earlier, urban renewal destroyed Vinegar Hill, the city’s most vibrant Black neighborhood. This led to the displacement of many people and stories, and created concentrated zones of racial poverty like Friendship Court. Located on sunken land and fenced on three sides, Friendship Court evokes feelings of isolation. For residents, social and economic isolation mirrors the physical: Charlottesville has some of the worst income mobility and educational gaps in the country. As one resident told me, “If you’re born poor in Charlottesville, you die poor in Charlottesville.”

With all this in mind, those working to redevelop Friendship Court are seeking to break the link between race, geography and life outcomes. An advisory committee made up primarily of residents has driven the vision: a zero-displacement plan for a mixed-income neighborhood with amenities like a city park and an early childhood learning center. More importantly, they are looking beyond housing to create systems and programs that share power, foster cultural belonging and well-being, and leverage the land and development to seed generational wealth. It is a slow and emotional process, but the residents of Friendship Court are accounting for and reckoning with the past and the present. They are investing hope that this project not only brings healing, but an opportunity for their families to thrive. Though sometimes overlooked, thriving is also essential to repair.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it’s not a housing complex but an entire district that is in need of repair. Many became aware of Greenwood, the iconic “Black Wall Street,” and the horrors of the Tulsa Race Massacre through the popular HBO series Watchmen and coverage of the massacre’s 100th anniversary last May.

What’s less discussed is that in the aftermath of the massacre, Greenwood residents rebuilt many of their homes and businesses. They did so with little or no assistance from the local government or insurance companies and despite active attempts to prevent the district’s rehabilitation. The community was resilient, and “Black Wall Street” as we have come to know it really came into being with the rebuilt Greenwood. But the neighborhood ultimately became a victim of urban renewal with freeway construction that was completed in the 1970s. As one writer has astutely noted, “What the city could not steal in 1921, it systemically paved over 50 years later.” And as in many other communities, racial segregation and discriminatory policies contributed to a legacy of lower quality of life and fewer opportunities for those displaced or impacted by this destruction.

Tulsa has made progress toward reckoning and repair. The 11-member Tulsa Race Riot Commission, created by lawmakers and tasked with developing a historical record of the 1921 massacre, declared in its 2001 report that reparations to the historic Greenwood community would greatly aid in addressing past harms. And in 2015, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission was established to build on the work of the previous group and develop platforms for sharing the stories of past harm and creating opportunities for physical and economic repair. After the original commission’s report, state lawmakers passed legislation that, among other things, acknowledged the “conspiracy of silence” surrounding the horrific event; the massacre is also required to be taught in schools, and recent efforts are aimed at ensuring it’s actually part of classroom learning. (Though as a sign of a reckoning that’s incomplete, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a law designed to ban the teaching of critical race theory in public schools just a few weeks before the massacre’s 100th anniversary.)

Meanwhile, Tulsa’s Black community and others continue efforts to memorialize the massacre, obtain justice and catalyze repair. Several initiatives aim to revitalize Greenwood and neighboring North Tulsa, including the city’s Kirkpatrick Heights/Greenwood Master Plan process, which has an explicit mission to incorporate ideas of repair into its work, and Greenwood Rising, a museum and center dedicated to telling the history of Greenwood. Some efforts have generated mixed reactions amid fears that investment will trigger gentrification and another cycle of displacement. This is proof, perhaps, that repair is not just about investment, but about healing the emotional wounds of the past and creating safeguards to prevent cultural erasure and economic displacement from being inevitable outcomes of “revitalization.”

In Minneapolis, Minnesota, conversations about healing and repair followed the murder of George Floyd and its aftermath. That conversation is also happening in interesting ways in the other twin city, St. Paul. There, the interstate was built right through the heart of Rondo, yet another vibrant neighborhood that was once home to a majority of the city’s Black population. Indeed, the freeway project displaced one-seventh of the city’s Black residents. By erasing the commercial center and splitting the neighborhood in two, the impact wasn’t just on those who were forced to leave. Those who remained lost access to businesses, community and cultural institutions, and social connections.

For years, a number of former and current Rondo residents have come together to advocate for repair. (I served as a consultant to the residents and the Minnesota Department of Transportation in an early stage of their conversation around repair.) In 2015, the neighborhood’s residents received a formal apology from the state commissioner of transportation, Charlie Zelle, and former St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman. Now, the group has formalized into ReConnect Rondo and is spearheading an effort to create a land bridge over the freeway. The land bridge plan is still under discussion and could be accompanied by amenities like housing, a park and businesses. It is intended to hark back to the central commercial corridor that the freeway erased, reconnecting the community and stimulating the local economy. However, as in Tulsa, some fear the project could spur gentrification and displacement—illustrating once more the complicated work of repair.

We’re at a moment when the need for repair has never felt greater. Yet in spite of raging debates on race and justice, we’re also at a moment of great opportunity. Many communities are ready to look at the foundation of hurt, and federal policy is also starting to change. The recent infrastructure bill signed into law earmarks $1 billion in grants to help reconnect neighborhoods torn apart by highways. And notably, some of Biden’s first acts as president were to sign executive orders that targeted racial equity and underserved communities. How these policies and laws will work in practice remains to be seen.

There is no simple answer to the question of how to heal the places we call home. But it is clear that we must account for the past, reckon with the arc of harm and benefit, and create a pathway to repair. Perhaps most importantly, repair requires us to hear—and honor—all of the stories held by our neighborhoods and cities.

If we don’t, it doesn’t matter how much goodwill we show up with—we are building on a foundation of broken promises and squelched dreams.

© 2022 U.S. News & World Report, L.P. Used with permission.