Roads Are ‘Designed’ to Kill Minorities, Says Transportation Secretary, by Spencer Brown, Townhall.com, April 17, 2023
While ignoring a cornucopia of crises in his two-plus years as Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg has found a supposed crisis that he will address, and it sounds a lot like his previously trotted-out theory that bridges are a tool of racism.
Speaking with Al Sharpton on MSNBC, Buttigieg declared “we’ve got a crisis when it comes to roadway fatalities in America” before making his usual pivot to frame the problem as one of race.
“We lose about 40,000 people every year,” Buttigieg told Sharpton, adding roadway fatalities are “a level that’s comparable to gun violence” for emphasis. “And we see a lot of racial disparities,” Buttigieg continued.
Specifically, according to Buttigieg, “black and brown Americans, tribal citizens, and rural residents” are “much more likely to lose their lives — whether it’s in a car or a pedestrian being hit by a car.”
Buttigieg argued that the racial disparity is “related to discrimination” and “even the ways roads are designed and built” such that minorities don’t have “access to a safe street design that’s got crosswalks and good lighting.”
“We’ve got to act,” Buttigieg said, despite him not having such urgency to take action to address the broken supply chain, formula shortage, or toxic train derailments — just a few crises Buttigieg ignored or went MIA during.
What’s more, Buttigieg should have thought about where his argument would lead before making his proclamation about racist roads. Because if, as Buttigieg claimed, roads were designed to be more deadly for minorities, who is to blame for building those roads?