(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg once more brought up the problem of racist roads in America, suggesting that it was to blame for many traffic fatalities, Fox News reported.
Buttigieg made his latest claims in an MSNBC interview with left-wing activist Al Sharpton.
“A lot of people don’t understand, even down to road fatalities, it is not equal,” Sharpton said, suggesting a more equitable outcome in the number of deaths should be a transportation priority rather than an overall reduction.
In reply, Buttigieg said that he will continue to try to raise public awareness of the racist roads.
“It’s something that deserves more attention, which is why I’m working to bring more attention to it,” he said.
“We have a crisis when it comes to roadway fatalities in America,” he continued. “We lose about 40,000 people every year.”
He also noted that there were “racial disparities” in communities heavily populated with minorities.
“Black and brown Americans, tribal citizens and rural residents are much more likely to lose their lives whether it’s in a car or as a pedestrian being hit by a car,” he continued.
For Buttigieg, America’s street lights and crosswalks might also be distributed in preference to white neighborhoods. Because of street light inequality, he noted, the federal government must act.
“There are a lot of reasons related to discrimination and related to even the ways that roads are designed and built, who has access to a safe street design that has crosswalks and good lighting, who doesn’t have that access that can drive disparities, and we have a responsibility to act on that,” he said.
Buttigieg and the Black Caucus have both long griped over the racist roads of America.
Initially, Buttigieg commented that many highways were built “for the purpose of dividing a white and a black neighborhood.”
He has even gone so far as to give the city of Detroit a grant to dismantle Interstate 375, a 1-mile depressed freeway that was built by demolishing black neighborhoods 60 years ago.
