Abandoned - Part 2
Jim Crow Laws
Redlining
White Flight
Food Deserts
These are all terms and phrases I’d never heard before, until I moved to Memphis, Tennessee in December 2018. I’ve heard them infinitely more these past few weeks as the national conversation has turned from COVID to Black Lives Matter (BLM), which has also led me to procrastinate on writing this post. All of a sudden, there is more of a spotlight on what one (ie white folk) has to say about BLM – or more importantly, what one doesn’t say, and instead listens and learns, as this New York Times article writes, and many others I’ve read:
‘As a new generation steps up, activists and historians believe there’s important work to be done for white people: Listening to black voices and following rather than trying to lead, for one, and undertaking the deep introspection required to confront unconscious bias and the perks of privilege that come just from being white.’
and ‘Educate yourself before you engage.’
Who am I - a white Australian who has only lived in the US for 18 months - to write about such topics that I know so little about, and what do these issues have to do with photographs of abandoned buildings anyway? This question has been playing on my mind, and I’ve been wondering, should I still write this post? Well, I guess the answer is yes. As an observer in the US, with no political party allegiance, there are many conditions and issues that have made a clear impression on me, which may not be as apparent if I’d lived here my whole life. In this photo story, I will try to explain the deep rooted impact of the inequities listed above and the role they played in the blight of abandonment we see in Memphis and throughout the US today.
Whitewashed Florida
With ‘Shelter at Home’ restrictions slowly easing here in the US, my family and I were fortunate to be able to travel to Florida for a week’s holiday at the beach. We’d heard that the 30A Scenic Highway on the ‘Panhandle of Florida’ (the North Western part of the State in Walton County) had beautiful white sandy beaches and turquoise water of the Gulf of Mexico; and it was also one of the closer beaches to Memphis (about 488 miles, or 785 kilometres). Perfect! We booked in a last minute trip and discovered that it was all of those things and more, and it was a wonderful family holiday for us that dearly missed the ocean.
But….
With the recent death of George Floyd, and the subsequent protests around the US (and the world) while we were there, my mind was often far from white sandy beaches. What I found myself thinking about, besides how beautiful the area was, was also how white it was, in every sense of the word. It was a world away from the protests and there was minimal evidence of COVID concern. It often felt like the town in the movie ‘Pleasantsville’. We only ended up booking this holiday because our trip to Australia was cancelled due to COVID, and we weren’t sure if a beach holiday was enough of an ‘American experience’ - coming from coastal Australia, we basically grew up at the beach. But in light of recent events, it became quite educational, and very much an American experience.
In this photo story, I take you on a journey of this stunning location, and offer a little history relevant to the current times.
Nationalism and Nostalgia
Nationalism and nostalgia - two themes that have pervaded my psyche over the last couple of weeks. In today’s writing and photo story, I observe some recent US events and report who COVID-19 is affecting the most here. I ponder the influence of the media on us all. I explore my son’s American History school work. I take a trip down memory lane, and I showcase some of my photography that shouts ‘America’. It’s an observational exploration of this great and diverse country from a newcomers perspective.