Most of us drive on roads and over bridges, regardless of whether we’re right, left or somewhere in between. We ride on subways and trains. We fly on airplanes. We purchase products manufactured elsewhere that magically turn up at our local store or at our door. Most of us, regardless of our race, gender, religion or ethnicity, need functional infrastructure for our world to happen, and a huge piece of that infrastructure involves transportation.
So what does our Secretary of Transportation have to say about it?
Transportation @SecretaryPete: " If an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach, […] in New York was designed too low for it to pass by, that that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices." pic.twitter.com/0XWkDZehYM
— The Hill (@thehill) November 8, 2021
Putting aside the ancillary details, as Puerto Ricans were not an issue in the 1920s, he’s not wrong even if he’s not entirely right. Robert Moses, who designed New York’s parkways among other things, was a pretty open racist, and parkways were designed to be roads for passenger cars and not commercial vehicles, including buses. Whether this was to deliberately keep black people away from Jones Beach and force them to go to Jacob Riis Park instead, or whether this was an acceptable consequence of a bigger notion of creating a system of park-like highways for those who owned private cars is a fine issue for debate.
But now that Congress has enacted a massive infrastructure bill, what’s one thing got to do with another?
Conservatives had a conniption Monday over Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s acknowledgment that racism has historically played a role in the layout of America’s cities.
Buttigieg was asked during a news conference how the administration plans to counteract racist urban planning that has included highways that cut through Black and brown communities, poorly maintained roads and streets with no sidewalks.
“I’m still surprised that some people are surprised,” Buttigieg said Monday about objections to comments he made in April calling out racist infrastructure policies. “I don’t think we have anything to lose by confronting that reality.”
And indeed, right wing conservatives had a conniption. Who cares? Buttigieg wasn’t entirely right about Robert Moses, but neither was he wrong. Tucker Carlson ridiculed Buttigieg about it on Fox? Who cares? The only time I learn what Carlson says is when he’s being attacked for his performance because I don’t watch Carlson because I’m not into song and dance shows for the hard of thinking.
The question raised isn’t whether crazies on the right want to deny that Moses’ parkways served, even if they were not explicitly built, to keep black people away from white folks’ beaches. They did. We’ve known that for decades, even if Moses’ primary purpose was to create a more park-like experience.
The question that matters now is what does this mean now that there is $1.2 trillion of infrastructure money to be spent? This is the question that some of us who don’t care what Tucker Carlson, Ron Desantis or Darth Cheeto have to say about it. We have no interest in arguing about what was happening in Robert Moses’ head in the 1920s when he decided to make underpasses too low to accommodate buses and trucks so that only automobiles could travel on parkways.
Is the Secretary of Transportation saying that this money, allocated by a bipartisan vote of Congress to address long-needed maintenance and repairs of roads and bridges, rails and ports, all the hard infrastructure that allows us to go from here to there without it eventually crashing down on us, will be use to undo the “racist roads” of history rather than the bridges falling down?
Sure, there are some tangential things to be done, the creation of electric charging stations for vehicles that we’re told are going to become the norm if and when they figure out the many bugs that plague the concept and persuade people to spend a great deal more money on vehicles that will be disposable after ten years.
Sure, there will be funds to create a public wifi system for those who can’t afford it, even if they’re watching videos on their iPhones at this very moment, which may mean something to most of us or not.
But does Pete Buttigieg’s raising the racist Robert Moses mean that the money Congress just allocated to infrastructure will be used to raise the overpasses on parkways so the buses that couldn’t drive to Jones Beach in the 1920s will now be able to bring the black and Puerto Rican folks out to the white folks’ beach in summer?
The Cross Bronx Expressway divides uptown Manhattan and the Bronx, separating neighborhoods that are home to black and Hispanic people, so that people to the right of Queens can get to New Jersey. Are we going to move the highway to Westchester, where the expensive single-family homes are and tear out what’s left of the garbage and pot-hole ridden highway?
What is the point that Buttigieg makes when he brings up the decisions made a century ago, when there was no concern for how these choices affected minorities? Conservatives may want to fight one battle with Buttigieg, but those of us who aren’t at all conservative (unless you’re on the left fringe, in which case everyone but them is conservative) want to know what it is you’re trying to say, Pete. Are you going to use this money to fix the decrepit bridges or are you going to use this money to raise overpasses in a fine state of repair because they are racist legacies? Are you going to fix the Cross Bronx or move it elsewhere?
Republicans do this thing where they try to get you to second-guess things you feel and observe. The belief is that if they scoff enough at something — racism or a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, for example — they’ll shame you out of believing it happened. But unfortunately for them, they can’t mock the truth away.
Republicans are an easy target when they make knee-jerk arguments denying whatever it is the Democrats have to say, but forget the GOP and tell us, Pete, what your purpose is, what your point is, when you speak of our infrastructure and Robert Moses’ racism? Moses, like Generalissimo Francisco Franco, is still dead, and his parkway bridges are still too low for commercial traffic. But our bridges are falling down, Pete. Which one of these gets fixed?
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I’m fairly certain that black people go anywhere they want to these days.
To take up less time and space your tweet Mr.Greenfield yesterday regarding politicians shit and vomit; yep.
I’m fairly certain that you’re not black.
No “Highway to Hell”? Howl, Dave… how could you miss that one?
Scott, I’d hoped you’d address the question of why we drive on parkways and park in driveways…
Also, w/ a pc on people going to the beach and a guy named Moses I think you could have worked in some sort of “parting the waters” joke. Or maybe departing for the water…
If you’re going to try a critique, at least make it minimally worthwhile. Or you could try making a point and working that title and that person into it, but I know that would be asking too much. I think you could have tried harder and I’d hope you’ll address this in the future. In more esoteric terms, more Mikado, less Orwell. I’m no bouncer or anything like that, yet, so take these as helpful suggestions from one who learned the hard way.
Hal made me sad as he’s right, I didn’t even think of a “Moses parting the waters” joke as I was writing this post. On the other hand, you’re right too, as I can’t think of one now either.
Buttigieg Needs to worry more about environmental permits than racism.
Given the changes in laws and regulations concerning the environment, a lot of infrastructure projects won’t go anywhere.
Bats living under bridges, newts in the culvert, historic buildings in the way, NIMBs, current road prisms inadequate for projected usage, and so forth, he’s going to be lucky to get 1/100th of the projected projects underway, let alone done.
Spotted salamanders is an issue, but not the issue raised in this post.
This also exposes how the true racist roads are the ones that access and promote vehicular traffic in areas with high minority populations. These racist roads have caused racist, environmental injustice, by exposing the minority populations in these areas to undue volumes of vehicle emissions and greenhouse gasses. Clearly, these roads must go, and their destruction must be at the very top of the infrastructure agenda.
How much gets built remains to be seen, but the money will be spent. Well-connected cronies in NYC and elsewhere are browsing yacht catalogs.
Exactly. Also it is odd how many county commissioners and congress-critters out here seem to know when to purchase tracts of useless desert land that become necessary for interchange construction on freeway extensions a few years later, followed by zoning changes to commercial uses.
Well, I have often advised people, “Don’t be poor,” and serving a term or two in Congress is an excellent strategy for not being poor.
Calm down now! Insider trading is perfectly legal for these more equal animals. And, if they do happen to cross a line, they will gracefully retire accompanied by a chorus of praise from their fellow MOE’s.
“Mr. Powell offered statements of support for both of the retiring officials in the news releases announcing their exit.”
If a highway built between a white and black neighborhood is “obviously” racist, Buttigieg should be asked where it could be built without it being racist. In the white neighborhood, where the black neighborhood doesn’t have access? Through the black neighborhood, where it becomes a narrative of displacement? Through both, where it still goes through the black neighborhood and still becomes a narrative of displacement (see history, good luck to anyone defending it)?
The logical answer, especially since he said the highway was built “for the purpose of dividing” and not for the purpose of vehicle traffic, is that building highways is racist wherever you put them and if you drive on them you are complicit. This is probably not too much of an exaggeration of how some people view society.
This stuff is such a great relief valve for social justice pressures that might otherwise fuel authentic progress. I can see why politicians find it rhetorically useful.
The basic notion- which I think is correct- is that when the decisions were being made, a lot more thought and pressure and lobbying and everything else was given to protecting places where a lot of white people lived than to protecting places where a lot of Black people lived. And you can see this in places, where the Interstate literally plows right through Black neighborhoods or separates them from the nicer parts of town, while leaving wealthier white parts of town unscathed. And if you are looking for an example of systemic racism, that is one.
But nonetheless, I take Scott’s point, which is at this point we aren’t going to reverse any of those decisions. The facts are on the ground, and we have to take the built environment the way it is and make the best of it.
The basic notion is true, but grossly oversimplified and not just in a trivial way. Neighborhoods with a lot of (commonly but not always working class) white people fought highways and lost, and it was narrativized as the timeless NIMBY struggle against progress if it is remembered at all. That part is essentially trivial, and we don’t want to oversimplify it in the other direction by saying it was all exactly the same.
But the race reductionism of selectively blaming racist road policy for any disparate impact doesn’t fix anything (as noted) and it once again obscures upstream causes, which can in turn affect how existing disparities are addressed (or not) today. This is apart from the “every which way is racist” dilemma baked into Buttigieg’s example of *not* tearing up the neighborhood as racist. To say that the policies were explicitly racist and even contrived for the purpose of creating these outcomes actually pushes a position that it was *less* systemic and more because of bad apples with too much power.
Well, when bridges fall down, nobody can cross them, meaning equity is achieved by the bridges’uselessness to all. So it just makes sense to let the bridges fall down while we spend the money to tear out racist roads.
And the streets are all kept equal
by failure
collapse
and spall
Racism is infrastructure.
Or maybe not. Apparently the Moses thing is more urban legend than fact. Even WAPO is backing off the claim. Its truly pathetic how important race and racial unrest is to these people.
The way I heard it, Moses was allowed to envision the overpass, but because he had shed blood, God would not let him build it. So he had to stay on a mountaintop or something. I forget the details.
This leaves unanswered the question of the how the Secretary of Transportation plans to transport backlogged containers out of Long Beach and repair salt corroded bridges in the Midwest. I am far more interested in concrete plans than platitudes.
Exactly. It’s like they passed a bill authorizing/allowing the government to do something the government is supposed to actually do, but it’s so rare that the guy responsible has no idea how to think in terms of actual equipment on the ground so instead simply talks about it in culture war terms. Because that’s all he knows.
You may have become a cuckold to your own math-s and sociology-s.
History-s here discounts the thought…
170 Billion ÷ 19 million “babies, lawyers, and other humans in New York equates to about 9K per head.
Your mind does have a defrost setting, no?
The Cross-Bronx may well be the ugliest highway America. Fixing is, of course, a relative word. Is functional the only barometer to be used?
I hope not, because merely being functional has some serious downsides.
Thankfully, that miserable strip of asphalt sits in a gully. So capping, with a park on top, is (relatively) inexpensive.
And (as with many infrastructure investments) there would be some financial benefits to doing so.