The role of architecture in America s systemic racism
Ghettos and gentrification: the latest MoMA exhibition in New York shows how urban planning promotes social division and takes a critical look at racist architecture. Sertan Sanderson reports
Entire U.S. cities were deliberately segregated for decades as part of Jim Crow legislation after the end of the Civil War. Prior to that, the concept of slave quarters reflected centuries of abuse and oppression in the New World. And even in the present, there are countless instances in city planning and architecture that still cast people of colour as second-class citizens living in the 21st century.
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April 19, 2021 • Jay Cephas on “Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America”
Installation view of “Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America,” at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Robert Gerhardt.
IN 1935, W. E. B. Du Bois published
Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880. Coming in at just under eight hundred pages, Du Bois’s “essay” served to carefully delineate the role of African Americans in the social, political, and economic restructuring of the United States following the devastation of the Civil War. In many ways, the artists, architects, and designers included in “Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in
The Mission by Benson Joseph reflects on the history of Wesleyan Methodist Church, a former refuge for runaway slaves that is now a popular Mexican restaurant.
The built environment isn’t static. Everyday, structures are created, destroyed, and repurposed. Some are preserved while others are left to slowly decay. As time passes and the world changes, new meanings can become attributed to these spaces. Their pasts and histories become vulnerable and new realities may take shape. For better or for worse, the functions spaces once had, the people they once served, and the circumstances that led to their erasure fade and become forgotten.
Mabel Wilson: Architecture s whiteness by design can change latimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from latimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.