A few weeks ago, Nekima Levy-Pounds went to the Minneapolis park and recreation board, and did what she does best; made a lot of noise, claiming the Park and Rec board was…
wait for it…
wait for it…
racist.
Unfortunately – according to the City Pages – the facts don’t exactly bear out her charges of “Racism” against the park board (emphases added):
Parks and Rec breaks down its budget into North, Northeast, South, and Southwest service areas. North has 49 park properties and 59,119 residents, according to the 2010 census. Parks and Rec allocated $243 per person in north Minneapolis from 2010-14…During the same time, Southwest received $85 for each of its 120,376 people, and South received $83 for each of the 136,160 residents
Oh yeah, and the Park Board has big plans – and they don’t include the southside:
While parks all over the city will get some funding to maintain what’s already there, neighborhood parks in areas of concentrated poverty will be the only ones getting any funding for improvements — amenities like playgrounds, wading pools, fields — during the first five years.
Parks in wealthier neighborhoods won’t see a cent more than what it costs to prevent them from breaking down.
I’m not sure what the race-relations version of “all moo / no cow” is, but I’ll be looking for it.
The voters elected an all-white Parks Board. The voters are racists. Throw the elected officials out, install appropriately tinted cronies.
There aren’t enough Black employees. Parks Board employees are hired by civil service exam, subject to Affirmative Action, and represented by unions, all of which are racists. Throw out public employee labor relations laws and civil service laws, appoint appropriately tinted cronies.
Money allocated PER PERSON isn’t the correct measure, it’s money IN TOTAL. We should focus on the gross dollar amount, even if that means parks in Black neighborhoods will be thousands of times over-funded compared to all others. Throw out the budget, spend the same amount in appropriately tinted neighborhoods as the rest of the city combined.
I’ve heard of this kind of government, it’s called “tribalism” and it’s common in Africa. It’s also a big reason why Africa suffers constant war and relentless poverty. Don’t want it in my city but perhaps it’s considered normal in North Minneapolis.
It strikes me that Ms. Pounds-Levy is protesting how the parks are, or are not, providing adequate playgrounds, soccer fields, and basketball courts, but not so much whether the police are, or are not, adequately apprehending criminals in their community.
Now don’t get me wrong, I understand the importance of playgrounds and the like, but if I’m living in North, I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Something like 40% of the city’s murders occur in less than a sixth of the population.
If parks in white neighborhoods receive NO increase in spending, while their counterparts in the poorer neighborhoods get everything on their wish list, isn’t that….wait for it…
racist?
Just askin.”
The one thing I can say in defense of a lot more money spent in “North” is that historically, “South” may have been funded in proportion to property taxes paid. So there may be some historic inequity, and I would call on the activists to understand that with limited funding, that inequity can’t be remedied overnight.
And even conceding that, are we truly to believe that playgrounds, basketball courts, and the like are nonexistent in North? And if they are, is it from a lack of support, or people trashing them in acts of vandalism?
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They could spend x2 on parks up north and they still wouldn’t be as nice as parks in white neighborhoods, unless whites started dealing dope, shooting each other and throwing their trash on the ground in them.
Swiftee; which is to say that perhaps the big thing holding parks back in North is not parks funding, but police funding. I am guessing that Ms. Pounds-Levy would not approve, however.