Except Buttigieg is right. The black communities were decimated by construction of the highway system.
All Rise!
This mornings lesson
HIGHWAY RACISM
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In his $2 trillion plan to improve America's infrastructure, President Biden is promising to address the racism ingrained in historical transportation and urban planning.
Biden's plan includes $20 billion for a program that would "reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments," according to the
White House. It also looks to target "40 percent of the benefits of climate and clean infrastructure investments to disadvantaged communities."
Planners of the interstate highway system, which began to take shape after the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, routed some highways directly, and sometimes purposefully, through Black and brown communities. In some instances, the government took homes by eminent domain.
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Many of us drive on a few miles of our interstate system each day. Whether to work, to shop, or to entertainment venues, we use the interstate highways around our cities as primary arteries for getting many miles in a short period of time.
Rarely does it occur to any of us that the development and construction of the interstate highways have done at least as much damage to Black workers, their families, and their neighborhoods as any policy that came out of the Jim Crow era. Black families are poorer and suffer worse health, worse education, higher unemployment due in no small part to highways planned and built by white people (white men).
Interstates Destroyed Thriving Black Communities
After Reconstruction, white planners often sectioned off parts of their cities for Black families. Generally, these neighborhoods were set aside for Black workers in white businesses and homes. In the 1880’s ex-Confederate Army James Parramore plotted just such a neighborhood in Orlando, FL. Jim Crow made the lives of all America’s Black citizens difficult. Yet in cities and towns across the country, Black citizens created neighborhood networks that allowed them to survive.
Parramore, a black neighborhood in Orlando, Florida, was but one example of such a neighborhood.
In 1957, I-4 slashed through Parramore. Family homes and businesses by the hundreds were destroyed. Another highway, the East-West Expressway, eliminated nearly 1000 houses, 200 businesses, and three churches. Parramore streets were bisected by both these highways, cutting the neighborhood off from downtown and from other vital communities. This pattern was repeated across the nation.
Many of us drive on a few miles of our interstate system each day. Whether to work, to shop, or to entertainment venues, we use the…
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