White Flight from the Bronx – 1950 to 1980:
> The borough saw an explosive increase in crime, drug traffic, and arson during its demographic transformation.
🧵1/9 (h/t @Steve_Sailer )
The advent of NYC public transportation transformed the borough from farmland to a “streetcar suburb.” The population exploded with ethnic immigrants – Mainly Jews, but also Irish and Italians. Even during hard economic times The Bronx had been a safe place for families. 2/9
As late as 1950, The Bronx was still about 90 percent White, and the residents were enjoying life in their tranquil neighborhood. But The Bronx residents saw a rapid increase in crime and drugs as demographic change transformed life in the borough. 3/9
Rising crime in The Bronx was not just a matter of perception - As the demographics changed, crime did indeed skyrocket.
> Assaults, for example, increased at a frightening rate.
> Burglaries, meanwhile, increased from 1765 in 1960 to an incredible 29,2765 by 1969. 4/9
By the 1970s, the South Bronx was ravaged by gang warfare and arson. A nurse at a South Bronx hospital recalled gunshot victims in the ER, and a rehab center where rival gang members were still trying to attack each other from their wheel chairs. 5/9
The extent of the collapse of the South Bronx was shocking – gangs seemed to have taken control of the streets, and apartment buildings began to burn throughout the area. Vast sections of the borough were literally being burnt to the ground by arsonists. 6/9
The apocalyptic vibes were captured with the iconic “The Bronx is Burning” sequence during the 1977 World Series. 7/9
Violence and disorder spread to other formerly-safe neighborhoods. Residents remembered mothers being mugged, a sister being harassed until she had to escape to private school. They suffered robberies, break-ins, stolen bikes, stolen tires. Nearly half a million Whites fled. 8/9
Tougher law enforcement and mass-incarceration (as well as other factors), eventually helped to dramatically reduce crime in the 1990s. But it was far too late for the residents who had fled their once-safe and tranquil neighborhood in the 1970s. 9/9 city-journal.org/article/how-ne…
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Historian William Henry Chamberlin discussing the post-WWII ethnic cleansing of ethnic-German civilians from Eastern Europe: “some fourteen million in all … driven from their homes … where their ancestors had lived for centuries …”
Short 🧵
"... perhaps as many as three million may have perished either as a result of outright massacre or from cold, hunger, and disease."
The horrific experience of an East Prussian woman was typical: Expelled from her home, and then robbed of food and clothing; traveling in train cars “littered with corpses.”
Years before the disaster of Forced Busing demolished Boston’s public school system, there were already warning signs of what was to come. The neighborhoods of Mattapan and Hyde Park got a preview of what “racial balance” integration would look like. It did not look promising. 🧵
In the mid-1960s Lewenberg Middle School in Boston's Mattapan neighborhood looked like an incredible success story. In addition to a stellar academic reputation, the school had also been one of the few in Boston to achieve some level of racial balance.
Attempting to appease civil rights complaints, Boston began allowing "open enrollment" transfers into Lewenberg in 1965, offering Black families a chance to attend the elite school. But as the racial balance tipped, alarmed parents saw standards declining, almost immediately.
Part II - Black-Jewish conflict in Boston as neighborhoods transitioned in the late 1960s. In April of 1968 Black radicals threatened to burn down the once-stately Mishkan Tefila temple complex unless it was turned over to the “Black community” free of charge.🧵
By the 1950s, most wealthy Jews had abandoned Boston for the suburbs, and the temple had been purchased by a Lubavitcher sect, who lacked funds to maintain it. They soon found themselves under siege in a neighborhood that was now overwhelmingly Black and increasingly hostile.
Some Jewish leaders hatched a plan to transfer the deteriorating temple complex to a Black community group led by Elma Lewis - hoping this might improve the increasingly strained relations between Boston’s Blacks and Jews.
In 1967, Federal Agencies and a group of mostly Jewish businessmen attempted to rehabilitate the deteriorating housing in Boston’s overwhelmingly Black neighborhood of Roxbury. The attempt ended in anger and disappointment, highlighting the precarious nature of the “alliance.” 🧵
Over the decades, Roxbury had experienced waves of ethnic transition - from Yankee protestant, to mainly Irish Catholic, to Eastern European Jewish. But the transition from Jewish to Black would be the most turbulent. Crime skyrocketed; there were riots in 1967 and 1968.
Ambitious Great Society programs were designed to improve housing. But despite the torrent of federal funds and idealistic rhetoric, only a tiny percentage of slum housing had been reclaimed.
In a 1999 essay, Tom Wolfe described how an academic mafia set out to destroy the brilliant evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson. This included hysterical attacks from his Harvard colleagues Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin - demonizing Wilson as a "Nazi in embryo." 🧵
Wilson’s crime in the eyes of his leftist colleagues was rejecting the idea of the “Blank Slate” – Theorizing that human traits and behaviors have evolved, genetic roots - That “nature” may play a more dominant role than “nurture.”
Wilson's enemies set out to "cancel" him. Gould and Lewontin teamed-up with the “Science for the People” to attack Wilson's theories. Protesters picketed his class at Harvard. At one conference a protester dumped a carafe of ice water over Wilson's head.
Thread on the "Lobby," by Professors Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Walt of Harvard.
> At the creation in 1948 – “explicit acts of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres, and r___”
>”Harm them without mercy, women and children included.”
1957, 1967, and 2003:
> Hundreds of prisoners murdered.
> More ethnic cleansing - Expulsions of hundreds of thousands; destruction of thousands of homes.
An occupation of now over five decades – “the longest official military occupation in modern history.”
> An estimated “23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years …”
> 106 recorded cases of “child gunshot deaths.”