Racial Justice
Gentrification: The Westside
In the historic Westside neighborhood, “gentrification” has become a hotly contested word. From long-term residents to real estate developers, a neighborhood meeting shows there’s the pull between old and new, and a question of the right way to evolve a neighborhood. This video is part of a larger project from Kansas City PBS and Flatland…
Can You Improve an Area Without Gentrifying It?
By Anne Kniggendorf As a traffic engineer, Jay Aber worries that some of the improvements he designs have the exact opposite effect of what he had hoped. “We try to improve the street for the people who live there,” Aber said. “Then, the people who live there end up getting pushed out in favor of…
An Exchange of a Lifetime
By Debbie Coleman-Topi Amid the riots unleashed following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a spark of hope quietly ignited in the center of the country. That flicker was right here, in Kansas City, where Catholic leaders launched an experiment that confronted race head-on by bringing black and white students literally face to…
Wide Racial Gap Exists Between Teachers and Students in Jackson County Schools
By Lauren Langdon, Humera Lodhi and Tess Vrbil Janely Griffith Gonzalez realized the disconnect when she chaperoned field trips at Meadow Lane Elementary School in Lee’s Summit. Her 8-year-old daughter was in a class of mostly minority students, but the school had very few minority teachers. On one trip, a student started yelling on the…
This Halloween: What Does It Mean To Call Something ‘Spooky’?
Scared, fine. Frightened, sure. But spooked? This week, we dive into the racial history behind one of Halloween’s most fraught descriptors.