President Joe Biden’s proposed $2.5 trillion infrastructure bill includes funds to actually destroy infrastructure, according to reports.
The White House cited the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans and Interstate 81 in Syracuse, New York, as two problematic highways going through black neighborhoods they would support destroying.
Biden’s mention of the Claiborne Expressway thrilled New Orleans activist Amy Stelly who has worked to destroy the highway.
“I’m floored,” she said to the Washington Post. “I’m thrilled to hear President Biden would call out the Claiborne Expressway as a racist highway.”
The White House fact sheet plans $20 billion to “reconnect neighborhoods” suffering from current infrastructure and make sure all new projects “advance racial equity and environmental justice.”
The concept of the injustice of racist infrastructure continues spreading throughout the Biden administration as they work towards racial equity across government.
“Black and brown neighborhoods have been disproportionately divided by highway projects or left isolated by the lack of adequate transit and transportation resources,” Biden’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg wrote on social media in December, promising to focus energy on “righting these wrongs.”
In March, Buttigieg’s department sent a letter asking Texas to pause an interstate expansion in Houston while they investigated racial justice complaints.
During his Senate confirmation hearings in January, Buttigeg promised to fight racial injustice in infrastructure.
“I also recognize that at their worst, misguided policies and missed opportunities in transportation can reinforce racial and economic inequality by dividing or isolating neighborhoods and undermining government’s basic role of empowering Americans to thrive,” Buttigieg said in his opening statement.
