Well, my hometown got some national (and international) press...
Kansas City Voters Remove Martin Luther King’s Name From Boulevard
Kansas City voters choose to remove Martin Luther King Jr.'s name from a historic street
Kansas City voters overwhelmingly approve measure to drop Martin Luther King Jr.'s name from street
Martin Luther King Jr.’s name removed from historic street by Kansas City voters
Martin Luther King's name removed from Kansas City street
Kansas City votes to remove Martin Luther King's name from historic street
Martin Luther King Jr.'s name voted off historic boulevard in Kansas City
Of course, for those who scan the headline and move on, Kansas City is apparently super racist.
So basically the city council (very recently) renamed a historic boulevard to MLK. Among the proposed reasons was to "reduce incidents of vandalism" which...um...ok? They skipped or quietly waived many required steps for this process. In the aftermath as resistance grew, it has been typical to label any objectors as wanting to "erase Dr. King's legacy." In point of fact, most of the objections (and most of the property owners along the street) are African-American. That, of course, is a major part of the objection itself. It is not "honoring Dr. King's legacy" to name a street after him in a "black part of town", many feel exactly the opposite.
Our city history (and we're sadly not alone, of course) is filled with redlining and discriminatory housing/development policy. J.C. Nichols was a major architect of that policy and he has a fountain and park named after him here. For a quaint little cow town we are still one of the most racially segregated communities in the country. About a mile west of a good stretch of Paseo (the original and now restored name of the boulevard) is Troost Ave., the historic dividing line between black and white neighborhoods. It's like our very own miniature Mason-Dixon line. It is so ubiquitously understood as such that in the last year or so (as gentrification pushes eastwards) that it became somewhat common to hear the remark "Paseo is the new Troost" which is, perhaps misguidedly, an awful way of expressing the sentiment "I think it is safe to go a bit further east because they moved the black people out of the way."
It should also be noted the Troost the street is named for was a plantation owner. Many insist that an east-west street should bear his name for this exact reason. Basically the thinking is that Dr. King is not honored by slapping his name on a street in a "black neighborhood" because his legacy was probably about more than the fact that he was a black man. Reflecting his legacy -in the context of this city's history- needs to be a little more thought out than that.
Yes, I have a strong opinion on this issue, but in addition to that, it has been interesting to see so much discussion on friends' social media feeds and the tireless work it seems to take to repeatedly try untangle the issues amidst of flood of "why would you guys do this?!" generated by drive-by headline readers. So it makes me wonder what kinds of untruths I have floating around in my head because of a lack of local perspective.
Kansas City Voters Remove Martin Luther King’s Name From Boulevard
Kansas City voters choose to remove Martin Luther King Jr.'s name from a historic street
Kansas City voters overwhelmingly approve measure to drop Martin Luther King Jr.'s name from street
Martin Luther King Jr.’s name removed from historic street by Kansas City voters
Martin Luther King's name removed from Kansas City street
Kansas City votes to remove Martin Luther King's name from historic street
Martin Luther King Jr.'s name voted off historic boulevard in Kansas City
Of course, for those who scan the headline and move on, Kansas City is apparently super racist.
So basically the city council (very recently) renamed a historic boulevard to MLK. Among the proposed reasons was to "reduce incidents of vandalism" which...um...ok? They skipped or quietly waived many required steps for this process. In the aftermath as resistance grew, it has been typical to label any objectors as wanting to "erase Dr. King's legacy." In point of fact, most of the objections (and most of the property owners along the street) are African-American. That, of course, is a major part of the objection itself. It is not "honoring Dr. King's legacy" to name a street after him in a "black part of town", many feel exactly the opposite.
Our city history (and we're sadly not alone, of course) is filled with redlining and discriminatory housing/development policy. J.C. Nichols was a major architect of that policy and he has a fountain and park named after him here. For a quaint little cow town we are still one of the most racially segregated communities in the country. About a mile west of a good stretch of Paseo (the original and now restored name of the boulevard) is Troost Ave., the historic dividing line between black and white neighborhoods. It's like our very own miniature Mason-Dixon line. It is so ubiquitously understood as such that in the last year or so (as gentrification pushes eastwards) that it became somewhat common to hear the remark "Paseo is the new Troost" which is, perhaps misguidedly, an awful way of expressing the sentiment "I think it is safe to go a bit further east because they moved the black people out of the way."
It should also be noted the Troost the street is named for was a plantation owner. Many insist that an east-west street should bear his name for this exact reason. Basically the thinking is that Dr. King is not honored by slapping his name on a street in a "black neighborhood" because his legacy was probably about more than the fact that he was a black man. Reflecting his legacy -in the context of this city's history- needs to be a little more thought out than that.
Yes, I have a strong opinion on this issue, but in addition to that, it has been interesting to see so much discussion on friends' social media feeds and the tireless work it seems to take to repeatedly try untangle the issues amidst of flood of "why would you guys do this?!" generated by drive-by headline readers. So it makes me wonder what kinds of untruths I have floating around in my head because of a lack of local perspective.
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2pIQQz0
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