Posted on 07/02/2022 6:17:45 AM PDT by MtnClimber
On Thursday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced that the Department of Transportation would be spending at least $1 billion to address so-called “racism” in America’s public roads.
As reported by the Daily Caller, the program will be called Reconnecting Communities, which the Transportation Department calls the “first of its kind.” The new initiative says it will focus on rebuilding communities that were “racially segregated or divided by road projects.”
Claiming, with no evidence, that the design of the interstate highway system in the 1950s was specifically meant to negatively impact African-American areas, Buttigieg said that the program will provide financial handouts over the course of five years to predominantly African-American communities across the country.
“Transportation can connect us to jobs, services and loved ones, but we’ve also seen countless cases around the country where a piece of infrastructure cuts off a neighborhood or a community because of how it was built,” Buttigieg said during his announcement speech in Birmingham, Alabama.
“We can’t ignore the basic truth: that some of the planners and politicians behind those projects built them directly through the heart of vibrant populated communities,” Buttigieg falsely claimed. “Sometimes as an effort to reinforce segregation. Sometimes because the people there have less power to resist. And sometimes as part of a direct effort to replace or eliminate Black neighborhoods.”
The announcement builds off of previous suggestions by Joe Biden, laid out in his proposals for the American Jobs Plan in 2021, to spend as much as $20 billion to “reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments and ensure new projects increase opportunity, advance racial equity and environmental justice, and promote affordable access.”
Among the cities seeking federal handouts from the new program are: Portland, Oregon; St. Paul, Minnesota; Tampa, Florida; Syracuse, New York; Houston, Texas; and New Orleans, Louisiana.
Even left-wing groups admitted that the concept of “racist” roads was a “fringe idea,” but nevertheless praised the Biden Administration for promoting such a conspiracy.
“Prior to 2021, the idea that we would deal with highway infrastructure that has divided communities was very much a fringe idea,” said Ben Crowther, a spokesman for the Freeway Fighters Network. “The Biden administration has really transformed that into mainstream thinking.”
Wilmington, Delaware!
I noticed that city was missing from the list. I guess Joe Biden’s state can’t have a racist highway. This city is a prime example of I-95 plowing right through the heart of a city dividing it in two.
I thought that they didn’t want us to have cars anymore. Unless they are elcctric then that brings up how racist electric cars are because only poor black folks can’t afford electric cars and the they also can’t afford the cost of charging them in their houses that don’t have electrical capacity to charge an electric car so that brings up why in the hell Buttplug is just handing out free money for something as ridiculous as this. /s
Many black people live in cities. Roads and highways lead to and go through cities. Black people use those roads and black businesses profit off people using those roads just as white people do.
It’s coming from devaluing any dollars we hold.
The real question is: Where (as in who) is it going to?
Wilmington, Delaware has the same problem but ( of course) is missing from the list. Joe Biden’s state couldn’t have a racist highway.
Monkeypoxxers
Gonna have to get rid of all the black top.
Us
What makes this doubly galling is having to endure the woke “anti-racist” rhetoric.
The road projects they are talking about fixing are the ‘Great Society’ urban renewal projects that were begun by the left in the 1960s and funding into the 1970s. The roads were just part of it. They went into nearly every major city in the nation, destroyed working class neighborhoods full of small single family housing, owned by hard-working individual famalies.
In their place, leftists put up high density government housing projects that became centers of poverty, crime and gang violence. In many cases, intact families did not qualify for low-income housing, so young mothers were prevented from marrying their boyfriends, resulting in generations of fatherless children.
It is actually a good idea to build walkable pathways and roads that connect neighborhoods around interstate highways, but rather than mouthing pious anti-racist rhetoric, be honest and admit:
* This is trying to undo a small amount of the damage caused by leftist federal spending programs from the 1960s and 70s.
* It’s going to take much more societal effort than building a few roads and pathways, to begin repair the damage that leftist federal programs have inflicted on the working class and black families.
Indeed. The miserable project of the I-95 Extension devastated a corridor from Boston through Roxbury (Black), Jamaica Plain (Hispanic), Hyde Park, (Italian and Irish), Roslindale (Greek, Lebanese, Syrian, Italian, and Irish) all the way through Mattapan and Milton (Jewish and Irish).
Homes were confiscated, neighborhoods demolished, and people of all ethnicities were displaced.
The project failed and left a scar of destruction that went for miles.
That was decades ago, and much has been rebuilt: Roxbury Community College, a HUGE mosque, and so on, but us old people remember.
It had NOTHING to do with race and everything to do with corruption.
Does this mean that Buffalo, NY will get a park over the 33? sorta like Dallas’ Clyde Warren Park? It’s to reunite the neighborhoods that were split up when the 33 was built... UGH
I want handouts for the pain and suffering that “Cracker boulevard” has caused me over the years. Also “CRACKER BARREL” has been super traumatic to me. Barry White confuses me because he isn’t white, as does Reggie White. Honkeytonk has been a costant source of pain too, and Casper Street has caused me endless sleepless nights because of its obvious racist overtones. /s
Just travel to South Bend, Indiana and see how well Mayor Butthead kept up the roads. You would swear he had a deal with the car repairs shops that made a fortune on front end alignments.
What effin insanity and the American people are letting this crap happen! 😫
Buttplug might have trouble with the city of coon rapids.
They like their coon rapids blvd.
Yes, that would be the same people who labor under the illusion that our republic reflects the will of the people.
We are in fact an oligarchic kleptocracy.
“ Black Tops Matter”
Post of the year!
Thanks for the link rktman.
😁 Combining comments. At least I didn’t get a response like a person from yesterday gave me. A nearly exact post and the poster said this about the one I referenced/linked: “ummm that was from last night. ;)” 🤣
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