This video story reported and produced by Haley Zarcone.
A new study out of the University of South Florida is raising awareness about systemic racism in the Tampa Bay area.
This study came out just before the annual MLK Dream Big parade, where crowds marched in front of landmarks that represent injustice.
One of these landmarks is Tropicana Field, home stadium of the Tampa Bay Rays. Because many black residents were forced to relocate for the construction of “The Trop,” as they call it, this has widely been considered a symbol of systemic racism.
USF student and community activist Jalessa Blackshear about the impact that she hopes this study makes on the community.
“I would also like to see a Gas Plant restitution fund,” said Blackshear. “The Gas Plant was a neighborhood where the Tropicana now sits, where the Rays are. And a lot of those people were displaced right, and their descendants ya know go to the local high schools here and they don’t have a chance in hell of becoming property owners right and that’s the access to generational wealth and homeownership. The city acknowledges that they need to right their wrongs with it but hasn’t had the solution and I don’t expect it to happen in the first term of Mayor Welch, but it needs to happen.”
The research for the study was commissioned by the city as voters elected St. Petersburg’s first black mayor. The study looks at policies and practices that are made as a result of systemic racism. For example, even though black people make up only 22 percent of St. Petersburg, they made up for 74 percent of the “resisting arrest with violence” charges.
St. Pete joined cities across the United States this past summer in declaring racism a public health crisis.
