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So NYC just put out it’s first report on racial equity. The whole thing is a mess, but this historical howler captures most of it. In a chronology of how New York is built upon “settler-colonization” you have this:
“1963: Cross Bronx Expressway completed, creating a major highway that cut through the heart of the Bronx and displacing 40,000 residents (largely Black and immigrant communities) and businesses.”
Uh … in 1960, Puerto Ricans made up a majority in only one of the census tracts that the Cross-Bronx passed through (between Clay and Crotona Park on the south side of the construction site. Meanwhile, the Bronx was only 22% foreign-born and the vast majority of those were from Europe.
It gets even better: in 1960, for the first time since the 19th century, native-born whites with two native-born white parents made up not only a majority of Bronx county but 68 percent of Bronx county. (nytimes.com/1962/07/22/…
The sentence is breathtaking in its ignorance. Love or hate the Cross Bronx, it was second and third generation white people what were displaced.
But the whole report is like that. Even though it was supposedly toned down, it just reads like a bad undergraduate was told to go on for 300 pages. No wonder the Adams administration didn’t want to release it.
At least it’s still “preliminary.”