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Divide and Conquer: Austin’s Segregated Past
from Austin Divided
by LASA Ezine
Divide and Conquer:
Austin’s Segregated Past
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By Vedanth Ramanathan
Interstate 35 has segregated Austin since 1962 (Photo by Texas Dept. of Transportation, 1962)
Austin, viewed as a cultural already taken a toll on hundreds of segregation and gentrification melting pot and one of the of people, which is why many view have slowly, but surely, permeated fastest-growing cities in this disastrous effect as a reality, through Austin. the United States, boasts a huge not a possibility. Racial inequality, Austin was a majority tech market, beautiful landscape geographic divide and the effects white town at the end of the and unaffordable Civil War in 1865, homes. Over the with many antipast century, these Black sentiments reasons have drawn still dominant in vastly different politics. In 1867 people to come the first majority live here. Behind African American this plastered cover neighborhood, photo of Austin, Wheatville, however, is a dark, was founded detrimental and and became unadvertised force incorporated into that ravages cities Austin. In the experiencing rapid following years, expansion. In Austin, Austin Downtown Skyline with the Texas Capitol in the middle. other similar this process has (Photo by Vedanth Ramanathan,2021) neighborhoods
popped up around it. However, these neighborhoods were the only place where minorities could live without racial discrimination and it would be that way for the next few decades. In the 1920s, the problem of overpopulation in Wheatville was recognized and the city made a decision that would alter the course of segregation and gentrification in Austin for many combat this, they used loopholes within the laws to create a proposal that would yield the same effects. In 1928, with the help of city planners, the 1928 master plan was produced. It stated that East Austin, consisting of Wheatville and other minority communities, would become the Negro District, the only area in the city where African Americans could access
Map of the Austin city plan in 1928 (courtesty of Eliot Tretter,2014)
decades. When the all-white Austin City Council convened to discuss this issue, they had in mind one solution; segregation. However, zoning was ruled to be illegal by the Supreme Court in 1917, which presented them a problem. To schools and public services. Eliot Tretter is an associate professor of geography at the University of Calgary. Tretter said through the creation of a city plan for segregation purposes is horrible, it is not unusual. “There’s something called the Kessler plan in Dallas,” Tretter said. “It’s a very famous plan, and Kessler was a very important figure in [city planning]. It’s interesting how much Kessler’s plans for Dallas in the early portion of the 20th century don’t have a lot of concern about race and racial dynamics, which was interesting because it was an outlier compared to Robert Witten in Atlanta [who’s] plans are explicitly racist. However, I found out later that Dallas is known for developing a plan that has strong racial elements to it which went back to the pattern.” Though these plans were usually racially discriminatory in nature, Tretter said it’s hard to place the full blame on the city planners alone, though it makes sense why people do. “You can blame the planners because, in some sense, they were racist, but it’s kind of like there was that kind of dominant social order, and no matter if you blame or don’t blame them, they’re kind of seeing the world or kind of thinking about it, in certain kinds of ways are just largely just blind to it,” Tretter said. Though the city plan was put into effect in the early 1930s, the influx of Hispanic immigrants and other minority groups seeking a new life in the U.S. increased, and the racially concentrated zones in Austin had to be expanded further South. In these areas, the act of expanding but not making the area better fueled the deficiencies that are seen there. By using strategies such as redlining, a method used to divide and separate a city by geographic isolation, the combination of poor city decisions and the city plan has left its mark
Man walks to Sam’s BBQ in East Austin, located on East 12th and Poquito Street (Photo by John Langmore)
on Austin, something that can be seen even today.
Though geographic separation plays a huge role in understanding Austin today, these policies also made a huge economic divide between white people and minorities. In a project done by the Statesman, it was found that the city plan and other segregation efforts had fueled economic injustice as well. “As the generation from the first wave of segregation gave way to the next, the aftermath of this act would also become clear… redlining denied minorities the compound interest of money that future generations could derive from.” (Zerr, Inheriting Inequality) Their exclusion from that wealth has exponentiated, through an increasingly complex mix of social dynamics such as forms of discrimination, disadvantaged schools, higher crime rates and other discriminatory acts.
Edmund T. Gordon is an associate professor of African diaspora studies and anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. Gordon said the minorities’ economic struggle begins with education. “The problem is education,” Gordon said. “If you don’t have an education system, which accurately educates Black and Brown people, then you don’t have Black people who can enter into these kinds of competitive fields, and if you don’t have a pool of people that can enter into these fields, you’re not going to get in, and therefore they are not going to have the advantages of the highest salaries in the field. So the whole society is structured in race and structured in economic inequity.” In the 1990s, the economic inequity led to the quality of infrastructure in East Austin rapidly declining and economic problems in that area exponentiating. As a result, those with the money, mostly white families, moved out. What remained was the most divided and impoverished zone in Austin’s history.
In the 2000s, with the creation of the computer and internet, companies looked to growing cities with a huge upside to be based in. For many, such as IBM and Motorola, Austin filled that role. This ushered in the century of huge growth, and consequently also marked the start of rapid gentrification, the process of poor neighborhoods being sold to wealthier citizens. “Gentrification, as a force, is not good in the sense that it leads to displacement,” Tretter said. “But the force of gentrification, there’s a force behind that. It’s not gentrification, it’s a whole set of dynamics around investment and capital flow, speculation and housing policy, etc.” Gordon said another issue that he sees every day is how the tech boom has uprooted people’s
homes and livelihood by driving up property prices, leading to eviction. “Austin has become one of the centers of the tech economy in this country, and the tech economy in this country producing the kind of economic inequality which is conducive to it reproduces racial inequality,” Gordon said. “At Bowery, I live in a community that I’ve been in for 30 years and is being gentrified. Houses that went for $80,000 when I was unemployed are now $500,000. At a price point like that, only a certain kind of person can afford to live in Austin.” Gordon described this process as a cycle that continues until everyone who can’t afford those houses is forced out of the area, replaced by a much wealthier individual; completing the process of gentrification. Both Tretter and Gordon were skeptical about how Austin can come out of such a discriminatory and untenable state. “Texas is going to have some really interesting developments there in the next couple of years,” said Tretter. “In the sense that, I just don’t see how a regional city like Austin is, in any way, sustainable for a lot of reasons.” Gordon echoed the same reasoning, but also said there’s a simple way in which people can start helping - identifying the discrepancies around them. “Look around yourself,” Gordon said. “See that there is racial disparity. Do that kind of record ordering, surrounding and notice these things. The next step is doing something. I would say that doing the kind of research and thinking is important, but the city needs to think through how it’s going to develop in the future, especially now.”
Two Cyclicts walk in front of the Paramount Theater in Downtown Austin. (Photo by Charles Fair, Courtesy of Unsplash)
