On Monday Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, speaking at a White House press conference mentioned how systemic racism is actually built in to some of the nation’s transport infrastructure saying “I’m still surprised that some people were surprised when I pointed to the fact that if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a white and a black neighborhood or if an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach – or it would have been – in New York, was designed too low for it to pass by, that that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices. I don’t think we have anything to lose by confronting that simple reality” and naturally the anti-anti-racists out there went apeshit.
The roads are racist.
We must get rid of roads. https://t.co/nde3mJHn37
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) November 8, 2021
WARNING: This is not a skit. https://t.co/iI93oWZaZN
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) November 8, 2021
Woke: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said today that his agency will use around $1 billion from President Joe Biden’s public works legislation to remedy racial inequities in U.S. highway design
— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) November 8, 2021
How does this logic make any sense?
NEWSFLASH: It doesn'thttps://t.co/hqlW7JEd3E
— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) November 8, 2021
This isn’t an urban legend. This is documented history. Robert Moses, the architect of New York City and Long Island’s public road and park infrastructure really did intentionally design the highways leading from the city to Long Island’s beaches with bridge overpasses too low for public buses to clear underneath them and without any rail spurs leading from the area’s extensive passenger train network. As much as these assholes don’t want it to be true because it does not comport with their “systemic racism is a lie” fairy tale they tell themselves, it’s right here:
Page 318 of Robert A Caro’s seminal classic biography of Moses, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and The Fall of New York. Cornyn, Cruz, and the rest of them should act fast if they want to get a maddeningly dense, 1,344 page-long Pulitzer Prize winner banned from elementary schools, otherwise some kids are going to learn that some parts of history are, in fact, inherently racist.