Update: All racist comments, especially ones left under fake names, will be deleted in this post. Start your own blog if you want to promote your white supremacist views. East St. Louis was always corrupt, even when it was majority white, full of industry and wealthy. Blaming African Americans for its current plight is bigotry, plain and simple. I don’t need your page views for advertising revenue, as this site does not exist to generate income.
I’ll be honest; much like my photos of Baden in January of 2018, I considered deleting most of these photos so they would never see the light of day. I’m reluctant to give everyone outside of East St. Louis, whether it’s in the Greater St. Louis region or around the world the impression that the entire city is one gigantic wasteland. It’s not, and I don’t want my friends in East St. Louis to think I’m somehow stabbing them in the back by posting these pictures. However, I also think I have a responsibility to show people just how badly this once-thriving city has been ravaged by every segment of society: the government, corporations, sleazy out-of-town real estate speculators, individual Americans–you name it. If you think somehow either the government or capitalism are not responsible, it shows more about your political biases than about your knowledge of any empirical data–or the truth.
The first two photos above and below are on a street that has been cut off by the Metro Link just off I-64 and St. Clair Avenue. They are totally trashed and abandoned.
I can’t remember where this building is, but I think it is back around where I looked at the northern of the three “tails” of East St. Louis, which is easily the most abandoned and desolate.
I remember the first time I drove through this area; it was hard to imagine that it had ever been an urban area. It is totally deserted and there are few if any houses left, and mostly forest now. And those billboards, from a long time ago.
Rockwood Pigments looks much the same, just more rusty perhaps from the other side of the railroad tracks, on a sad and abandoned street. I wonder how many millions of dollars it will cost to clean that up.
This apartment complex has been destroyed, gutted by fire. It is even more depressing to see relatively new construction from the 1960s or 70s that is already abandoned, because it shows how much more the city has declined since just relatively recently.
“Blaming African Americans for its current plight is bigotry, plain and simple.”
Well since you deleted it no one can see what was actually said, and it was in no way racist. You choose to see it that way, I don’t. I was trying to point out that it is corruption, pure and simple. It has to do with culture, not race. You call it racist because you are racist, I see no color. Just bad actors, white and black.
Learn how to have a discussion about your views instead of be offended. That is how you learn and grow as a person.
I’m sure you will delete this too, even though I have said nothing “white supremacist” – that’s what you chose to read from the facts I presented.
Thanks,
Can’tPassTheBar
If you’re blaming African Americans for the demise of East St. Louis then you are racist sir. People rarely distinguish between culture and race and if you want start with blame, blame it on white flight and abandonment of industry because you can’t maintain a community without jobs and tax revenue. Corruption is part of it, but it’s easy to blame those with the least power.