In her book Caste, Isabel Wilkerson describes this structure as a matrix or – artificial intelligence – a pre-programmed code that’s always at work in the background advantaging White people and steering resources away from Blacks. She describes this invisible mainframe as “a puppet master unseen by those whose subconscious it directs, its instructions an intravenous drip to the mind, caste in the guise of normalcy, injustice looking just, atrocities looking unavoidable to keep the machinery humming, the matrix…a facsimile for life itself.
Tag Archives: south side
Making the Ghetto Part 1 – Ghetto Code: Racial Zoning and Spatial Isolation in American Cities
In far too many cases, zoning is being used to protect the narrow self-interest of a particular community without regard to the health, safety, and welfare of the community and the nation as a whole. 1971 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights excerpt (Keeanga-Yahmahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry UnderminedContinue reading “Making the Ghetto Part 1 – Ghetto Code: Racial Zoning and Spatial Isolation in American Cities”
Peacemaking: Stories from the front lines of violence intervention in Chicago
The following are stories I compiled of three young Black men in a violence intervention program called Peacemakers. I spent the summer of 2014 working with them at St. Sabina Church on Chicago’s South Side. Some of these young men were former gang members who turned their lives around to become positive role models and disrupt the trauma that they were once a part of.
American Planning Association “People Behind the Plans” Podcast 11/14/2019
Originally published by the American Planning Association 11/14/2019 Certain concepts in the planning sphere can be hard to make tangible for residents, but property taxes is not one of them. Kelwin Harris knows this reality well. As the director of outreach and engagement for the Office of the Cook County Assessor — which is responsibleContinue reading “American Planning Association “People Behind the Plans” Podcast 11/14/2019″
My “South Side”: Reflections on Natalie Moore’s memoir and the nearby neighborhood I grew up in.
I recently read Natalie Moore’s The South Side and found some striking similarities in our upbringing and experiences. I grew up in Chicago in between St. Leo High School and St. Sabina in Auburn-Gresham: a virtually all-black neighborhood on the South side of Chicago – about three miles west of where Natalie Moore lived in Chatham. We actuallyContinue reading “My “South Side”: Reflections on Natalie Moore’s memoir and the nearby neighborhood I grew up in.”
Kelwin's Big Ideas 