The Wing Luke Museum was a tenant at a Public Development Authority property in Seattle s Chinatown for 20 years, giving the city’s Asian and Pacific Islander community the time and space to build up the institution until it could raise the funds to acquire and build out its current property in the International District, which it opened in 2008. The new Cultural Space Agency hopes to do the same for cultural spaces owned and managed by people of color. (Photo by Tracy Hunter / CC BY 2.0)
The lack of investment in many Black, indigenous and other communities of color is easy to measure, easy to see manifested in the built environment. Homes and commercial corridors boarded up, falling apart or bulldozed into empty lots. But those are just the most visible manifestations of disenfranchisement the stripping of power, whether its voting rights or capital and investment decisions.