quercus montana

chestnut oak
The reportage blaming lack of tree canopy on redlining 60 years ago is delusive. Anyone with a trowel can achieve 80% canopy in half that time. Planting trees is cheap and easy. The main requirement for establishing trees is belief in the future.

Author: WmX

I stumbled off the track to success in 1968, started chasing shadows that summer. Since then, In addition to farm-laborer and newspaper photographer my occupational incarnations include dishwasher, janitor, retail photo clerk, plumber, HVAC repairman, auto mechanic, CAT scan technologist, computer worker and politico (whatever it takes to buy a camera.) I am on the road to understanding black and white photography.

2 thoughts on “quercus montana”

  1. I’ve not read the reporting about tree canopy and red-lining, but in your caption seems to lie part of the rationale—“belief in the future.” Which in my understanding, is one of the results of poverty– the lack of that very belief, hence an increase in crime, drug abuse, etc. As MLK said, these behaviors are caused by poverty and oppression, not from some defect in Black Americans.

  2. And connecting poverty to red-lining—

    HOUSING
    “Seventy-four percent of neighborhoods that were redlined in the 1930s remain low-income to this day, and 64% remain majority-minority. Meanwhile, policies from the New Deal to the G.I. Bill to the Federal Housing Administration of the 1950s and 1960s directly invested in white homeownership while purposely excluding Black Americans.”
    Mitchell, Bruce, Ph. D., and Juan Franco. “HOLC “redlining” Maps: The Persistent Structure of Segregation and Economic Inequality.” National Community Reinvestment Coalition. March 20, 2018.
    Perry, Andre M., Jonathan Rothwell, and David Harshbarger. “The Devaluation of Assets in Black Neighborhoods.” Brookings. November 27, 2018.
    “…the gap between Black and White homeownership in Virginia is now larger than it was in 1960: Only 48% of Black Virginians own homes, compared to 73% of non-Hispanic White Virginians.”
    U.S. Census Bureau, 2018 ACS 5-year average.

    And wealth for most Americans is directly connected to the rise in the value of these homes purchased 50 or more years ago—

    WEALTH
    “Black families’ median and mean wealth is less than 15 percent that of White families.”
    Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 9/28/2020

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