Talk:1928 Austin city plan

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Did you know nomination[edit]

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:13, 5 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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  • ... that the 1928 Austin city plan recommended segregating the city's African American residents to East Austin? Source: "The "Schools" chapter concludes: "It is our recommendation that the nearest approach to the solution of the race segregation problem will be the recommendation of this district (just east of East Avenue and south of the city cemetery) as a negro district" (https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2010-02-05/953471/)

Created by Bryanrutherford0 (talk). Self-nominated at 17:05, 13 April 2021 (UTC).[reply]

  • @Bryanrutherford0: This article is new enough and long enough. The article is neutral, and I detected no copyright issues. A QPQ has been done. With regard to the hook, the plan did not recommend segregation, but tried to achieve it in other ways. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:34, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the review! The exact words of the plan are included in the source given above: it recommended the creation of a "negro district" and the relocation of the black population into it, which is precisely what is meant by the term "housing segregation". It didn't recommend bringing segregation about through the zoning code, which is what had been recently prohibited by Buchanan v. Warley, but rather through other techniques of city planning. -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 15:37, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well OK, but I still think the plan did not recommend segregation (because this was prohibited), but instead made recommendations that if put into effect would result in segregation. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:20, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • This needs a different hook. The article text suggests segregation, while the source provided explicitly says the plan wanted to get around segregation with something that would still have the same result. There can be differences in interpretation, but such a semantic point is too controversial to just pick one interpretation (which, like Cwmhiraeth, I personally think is inaccurate) to go on the main page. Kingsif (talk) 21:02, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hmm... I'm sorry, but I don't understand this feedback. Regarding Cwmhiraeth's comment, I'm not sure how it could be clearer in the sources that the 1928 Austin city plan *did* recommend the racial segregation of housing in the city. As this source says, the 1928 city plan "institutionalized racial segregation. It recommended a plan to move 'the negro population' east of East Avenue." Or, as this source says, "the 1928 City Plan was aimed at relocating and segregating blacks." There is no controversy about this fact, nor is there any need for "interpretation". As for Kingsif's feedback, I actually can't parse your sentence: what does it mean that "The article text suggests segregation"? Neither the Wikipedia article about this plan nor any of the news and journal articles cited in it "suggest" segregation, in the sense of "recommending" it (though the 1928 Austin city plan, the topic of this Wikipedia article, explicitly does). The source I linked in the hook proposal does not in any way say that "the plan wanted to get around segregation"; on the contrary, all of the sources cited in this Wikipedia article explicitly say that establishing racially segregated housing in Austin was a specific goal of the 1928 Austin city plan, as in the two representative quotes I've included earlier in this paragraph. I'm not sure what "semantic point" you feel is being made here; there's no "interpretation" for us to do when the sources say that "the 1928 City Plan was aimed at relocating and segregating blacks." Or are you just saying that anything related to race and segregation is too "controversial" to go on the Main Page? I don't understand what part of the hook you don't like. -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 02:06, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Are you being deliberately obtuse? Why would I say an article recommends segregation when we were talking about phrasing regarding the plan that's the subject? Did it need restating that we were talking about phrasing because what else would I be saying... The phrasing article text suggests that the plan says segregation, while the source explicitly says - in fact, let me take from the part of the source you have quoted above - "the solution of the race segregation problem"; they weren't allowed to segregate, and to get around the "problem" they came up with a solution that was segregation by another name. Kingsif (talk) 13:37, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm sorry, but I honestly don't understand what "The phrasing article text" means; what is a "phrasing article"? Anyway, I think I see where the confusion is, so let me again clarify: you and Cwmhiraeth both seem to be writing under the mistaken assumption that housing segregation was somehow illegal in 1928 USA, but that is not the case. There was no law against "segregation" (indeed, racial segregation was almost universal in the South at the time); there was a SCOTUS ruling prohibiting explicitly racial zoning laws from mandating housing segregation, and the "race segregation problem" the writers of the city plan refer to is the problem of how to bring about racial housing segregation (perfectly legal) by some means other that mandating it through municipal code (unconstitutional under Buchanan v. Warley). Their recommendation, as I believe this Wikipedia article spells out, was to "advise that the city concentrate all public amenities aimed at black citizens in this region, so as to draw the black population to it", since Buchanan v. Warley prevented the city from explicitly forcing black people to move to a designated ghetto. The 1928 city plan explicitly, specifically aimed to segregate the city's black residents in a designated "Negro district", and all of the cited sources specifically and explicitly confirm that this was its goal, and that it succeeded.
If you'll read the rest of the page where you (Kingsif) drew your quotation, page 57 of the plan says, "... in regard to the race segregation problem. This problem cannot be solved legally under any zoning law known to us at present..." (emphasis added). There was nothing illegal about citizens living in racially segregated patterns of housing; the "problem" the city plan writers were approaching was how to bring about racially segregated housing without using the zoning code. The hook I proposed above is beyond dispute factually correct, as explicitly confirmed in all the relevant sources included in the article (I quoted two clear examples above). If you have some other problem with the proposed hook, then let's discuss it; but, there's no serious argument to be made that the 1928 Austin city plan wasn't in favor of housing segregation. -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 14:39, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Your explanation is exactly what I already understood. They wanted to segregate, couldn't do it X way, came up with solutions that forced segregation. That is the concern Cwmhiraeth brought up, also; I pointed out that it can be interpreted both ways. And yes, I think you're being obtuse if you refuse to acknowledge that it may not strictly meet definitions of segregation as the hook and article imply. And so the point is, though you can argue your side and we can argue ours, the mere fact it's debatable means we shouldn't be picking a side to put on the MP. Because that would be user debate deciding how racist this plan was, rather than just presenting the source facts for people to read. Kingsif (talk) 14:47, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What two ways are the "both ways" you refer to? What other "interpretation" are you advancing? I wish you would just say what you don't like about the hook. Again, here's what the "source facts" say: the 1928 city plan "institutionalized racial segregation. It recommended a plan to move 'the negro population' east of East Avenue" (source, emphasis added). "The 1928 City Plan was aimed at relocating and segregating blacks. ... The plan to relocate Austin’s black population to an area across East Avenue ... was the City Council’s way to accomplish segregation without running afoul of the Constitution" (source, emphasis added). "The 1928 master plan legally segregated African American citizens into their own community east of East Avenue" (source, emphasis added). "Austin’s first zoning code ... enshrined legal segregation by race and ethnicity" (source, emphasis added). Is the word "recommend" the word you don't like? Are you saying that you would only support a hook that uses the exact words used in the sources? I'm not aware that WP or DYK have required verbatim quotation from sources in the past, but we could certainly change the hook to say that "the 1928 Austin city plan aimed to segregate the city's African American residents in East Austin", so that it would then use precisely the words that one of the sources uses. Would that help? The proposed hook doesn't say that the 1928 Austin city plan "was racist", so it leaves the reader perfectly free to "decide how racist this plan was"; the proposed hook says only that the plan aimed to establish segregation, which all of the sources also explicitly say. -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 15:18, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't want to get into all the back-and-forth discussion above, but I would recommend looking at Civil Rights Act of 1968. Prior to that, and even for decades afterwards, cities and communities in Texas and other parts of the USA practiced segregation of communities. If there was an insidious way of segregating out non-whites, towns, cities and counties did it. You might just be arguing over semantics here. I'm not going to read all the text and sources above. I don't have a problem with the original hook. — Maile (talk) 20:50, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • From what I understand of the above, it sounds like a wording tweak may help to resolve the issue. In that vein I also have a minor question as to whether "segregate...in East Austin" is correct, I would have thought "segregate in Austin" or perhaps "segregate to East Austin" would make more sense, as the current wording implies to me that only East Austin was segregated. CMD (talk) 03:20, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"Segregate to East Austin" sounds fine to me; changed. Thanks for the input! -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 16:33, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • New enough when nominated, long enough; I see no neutrality problems. I wonder if the description of the plan could cite more secondary sources rather than relying mostly on the plan itself, but that is only a possible direction for improvement, not an obstacle to this DYK. Hook is short enough and interesting to a broad audience. Nom has received much grief about semantics; without writing an extended essay on the topic, nom and the sources have addressed those concerns. Regardless, this approval is long overdue. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 22:49, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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