Hey Rebecca,

I really agreed with a lot of what was said in your post. I loved the assertion that Moses was “ruthlessly practical” because I feel it describes his methodology in every aspect of his career. He was unstoppable in the face of naysayers, because he saw the fastest and most logical (not necessarily the most moral) way out of an economic or infrastructure related dilemma and pushed his plans through until they were allowed by default.

I thought you did a great job of further connecting the argument that was posed in the reading about the affect of the New Deal funds on Moses’ construction plans to racist nature of the funds themselves. It was clear that the New Deal money was intended for white people, because those were the people whose vote Roosevelt felt was at stake (and most likely the people who Roosevelt thought mattered more).

The place where I do mildly disagree with your argument is that I do not think Moses’ decisions were entirely without malicious intent. Although it was a different time, he did make the express decisions to cater his quality of life improvements to white neighborhoods and white people. From my readings, it seems that most improvements he made to the city only positively affected white middle class and upper class people, and these swimming pools were no exception. While they perhaps reached a wider income demographic, the intense discrimination and segregation against black people insured that they would not obtain the same benefits as white people did from the city’s allocation of tax money and New Deal funds. Furthermore, as everyone else got to enjoy the brand new highways with which Moses had reshaped NYC, many black people were discriminated against at car dealerships and were refused service or given an exorbitant price that middle class people could not afford.

Simply put, I agreed with nearly all of the assertions made in this blog post. The place where I disagree is that I do not think Moses was lazy. I think that the racist nature of his building projects was simply something that did not matter to him, because he did not care about black people. When he talked about rebuilding the metropolis and providing beautiful park space for the community, he meant his community. Black people did not even cross his mind.

Thanks for the great read!