Thread: Race Relations
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Old 04-06-2007, 12:08 PM   #18
Clodfobble
UNDER CONDITIONAL MITIGATION
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 20,012
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hime
for instance, the escalators in subway stations in urban black neighborhoods are almost always out of service, whereas in the cushier white areas they work just fine.
As a side note (and I have no idea if this is the way it works in DC, it probably doesn't), there was a bit of a local uproar about this type of thing awhile back, over the notion that the streets in poor neighborhoods were in disrepair while in the nice neighborhoods they were always recently repaved. The city explained that it wasn't a deliberate thing at all, it was because the process for getting roads fixed involved someone petitioning for them to be considered for fixing. In the nice neighborhoods people had the time/resources/motivation to complain to the city when there was a pothole, while in the poor neighborhoods no one ever spoke up. So it would wait and wait until a city employee happened to drive in the area and took it upon themselves to put the street on the list without request from the residents. They even tried a brief public awareness campaign about it at one point, along the lines of "Does your street suck? We want to know!" but it failed miserably.
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