US Biden administration announces first major step to fight America's racist roads

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Biden administration announces first major step to fight America's racist roads​

The Biden administration is capping off the president’s recent trip to Michigan, focused largely on worker rights and transportation innovation, by handing out its first federal grant to dismantle a highway built to perpetuate racial discrimination.

The move is part of the Biden administration’s broader effort to remake America’s infrastructure to be more equitable, including addressing racist roads that were designed to facilitate white flight and deprive Black communities of housing and commercial opportunities.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg confirmed to The Associated Press on Thursday that $104.6 million in federal funds coming from last year’s bipartisan infrastructure bill will go toward a plan to dismantle Interstate 375, a highway built to bisect Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood and its epicenter of Black business, Paradise Valley.

The funds are being allocated to Detroit as part of a $1.5 billion grant program called Infrastructure for Rebuilding America, or INFRA, for states to move critical projects forward.

“This stretch of I-375 cuts like a gash through the neighborhood, one of many examples I have seen in communities across the country where a piece of infrastructure has become a barrier,” Buttigieg told the AP about the Detroit highway.

“With these funds, we’re now partnering with the state and the community to transform it into a road that will connect rather than divide,” he added.

According to the AP:

Detroit’s project would create a slower-speed boulevard that aims to improve safety by removing a steep curve and adding LED lighting, while removing 15 old bridges and two stormwater runoff pump stations and building out wider sidewalks, protected bike lanes and pedestrian crossings.

In his role as head of the Transportation Department, Buttigieg has spoken directly of America’s racist infrastructure, and he’s placed a particular emphasis on road construction. And after Republicans threw public tantrums over his acknowledgment of racism built into American infrastructure, Buttigieg was taken aback.

“I’m still surprised that some people are surprised,” he said in a news conference last November, adding, “I don’t think we have anything to lose by confronting that reality.”
A Bloomberg report on neighborhoods destroyed by racist highway construction noted the impact I-375 had on once-bustling Black Bottom, noting that “few traces of the neighborhood remain aside from historical markers.”

A feature on the neighborhood published in Grist noted that “the destruction of the epicenters of Detroit’s Black life started with the condemnation of housing through the National Housing Act of 1949,” which trapped Black people in cramped, low-quality housing. And Grist said the problem continued “when the city received even more funds through the National Highway Act in 1956.”

Thursday’s announcement included millions of dollars more for separate projects in Arizona, Colorado, New York and states across the country. The significant amount needed to resurrect Black Bottom and its surrounding areas shows how devastating America’s racist infrastructure has been. And it’s a sign a lot more money will be needed to correct the problem nationwide.

 

[Hollywood Hitler]

They keep saying White people need more Diversity, but it seems as though Diversity needs White people.

 

[Cybertonia]

What is the point of this? Detroit is probably the largest city in the USA that is completely redundant: it serves absolutely no modern purpose at all. We don't need to barge in coke anymore for steel furnaces and pressing plants that had their lunch eaten by Japan and Korea 40 years ago. Then what is Detroit besides that? What's the point? Who's gonna seriously say to themselves "Hey you know where I want to set my business up? A smaller and more corrupt version of Chicago that somehow has even shittier weather! Oh and thank god they got rid of that racist freeway so now it's even harder to get here!"

 

[The Nothingness]

How long until they decide to destroy any national parks of Civil War battle where the Confederates won and dig up the graves of Confederate soldiers?

 

[Dan Abrams]

When I saw "racist roads" I thought it was going to be noted black supremacist site The Root, but nope, it's MSNBC.

 

[SCSI]

And of course this article paints this solely as a race thing, and ignores the analogous and even more egregious case of Poletown Neighborhood Council v. Detroit. Coincidentally, it was Coleman Young, quoted upthread by @quaawaa , who rammed through the destruction of one of the last working class, predominantly European immigrant neighborhoods of the type he waxed poetic about. For bonus irony, its population also included a chunk of black residents who had been previously displaced from Black Bottom.

In 1980 General Motors (GM) and the Coleman Young administration struck a deal for the new plant that would supply much-needed jobs and tax revenue for the city. Poletown, the name resurrected from the early 19th century when its residents were chiefly Polish, is bounded by the Grand Trunk Railroad line on the west, Hamtramck on the north, Conant/Mt. Elliott Streets on the east and I-94 on the south. In 1980 not only Polish but also African Americans, many removed from the nearby Black Bottom neighborhood by freeway construction, and immigrants from a dozen other countries lived there. It was the only site considered for the new facility.

The 465 acres needed for the factory contained 1,500 homes, 144 businesses and 16 churches. While some residents were happy to receive the average $13,000 buyout, plus moving expenses, for their homes and move to the suburbs, others who had lived their entire lives in Poletown chose to fight. A Poletown Neighborhood Council was established for that purpose.

Poletown was settled in the 1870s when the first waves of Polish and Kashubian immigrants came to Detroit, and served as the heart of Detroit's Polish community for many years. The nucleus of the community was the St. Albertus Roman Catholic Church, which opened in 1871 and closed in 1990. Poletown experienced its greatest period of growth during the 1920s and 1930s as thousands of Polish immigrants came to Detroit in search of jobs in auto plants, like the nearby Packard Plant, and the Chrysler Plant to the east on Jefferson Ave, and the slaughterhouses that were in the area. Poletown was not only home to Poles, but also to Italians and African Americans. During the 1950s and 1960s, freeway construction and urban renewal projects altered the neighborhood.

In 1981, a portion of the neighborhood was demolished to make way for the construction of the General Motors Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly plant. General Motors and the cities of Detroit and Hamtramck relied on eminent domain to relocate the 4,200 people who lived in the area, along with their 1,300 homes, 140 businesses, six churches and one hospital.[1] The plant was built at the boundary of Hamtramck and Detroit as a BOC factory (Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac) and became known as the "Poletown Plant".

Coleman Young, Mayor of Detroit, used eminent domain to seize the portion of Poletown. Critics stated that Young could have chosen other areas for the plant and yet he chose one of the final remaining working class White areas of Detroit. Young had criticized the destruction of the Black Bottom through eminent domain.[2]

Some of the displaced residents sued the cities and General Motors, but the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that economic development was a legitimate use of eminent domain. Another Poletown group, the Citizens District Council, supported the efforts to build the new plant. Gary Campbell, a Poletown resident and bar owner, accused those opposing the new plant of presenting opinions of a small minority as if they represented the entire neighborhood. The controversy led to national news attention and the involvement of Ralph Nader and the Gray Panthers. Protests centered on Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church. The regional Catholic Archdiocese supported the relocations and had already agreed to sell the two Catholic churches that were in the area. However, Joseph Karasiewicz, the priest at one of the parishes, defied his archbishop and fought to keep his building from being sold. The Archdiocese stood firm in its support of the sale. A 29-day sit-in at the Immaculate Conception Church came to an end on July 14, 1981, when police forcibly evicted 20 people from the church. Twelve people were arrested, only three of the twelve arrested were from Poletown.[3]

Poletown Neighborhood Council v. Detroit became a landmark case for "public use" eminent domain matters. Twenty-three years later, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed the precedent that it had set in the earlier case. In their 2004 decision, County of Wayne v. Hathcock a property owner near Detroit's Metropolitan Airport successfully fought against the development of a new suburban office/industrial park.[4] The case was argued by Michigan eminent domain attorney Alan T. Ackerman. In a later 2005 United States Supreme Court decision, the case of Kelo v. City of New London ruled that the use of eminent domain to promote economic development is constitutional, but the opinion in Kelo cites the Hathcock decision as an example of how states may choose to impose their own restrictions on the taking of property.

 

[The Last Stand]

The black roads are racist against my vintage whitewall tires. Can't a woman drive up the boulevard in peace?

 

[Basic Bleach]

Can't have whitey flying, they provide the money for dem programs. I'm surprised there's enough Detroit left to even worry about this. Are the Arab refugees they've been dumping there not revitalizing the area?

 

[Tasty Tatty]

I thought this was going to be metaphorical roads, but I guess I was too optimistic.

Not surprised, though. Because it's a scam: add any SJWish prefix to any word and you can get paid to fix a problem that isn't really there until it's pointed out to exist.

 

[Tacitus Kilgore]

I thought niggers didn't want honkeys around. I mean I can understand not wanting the yuppies and hipster faggots around. No one likes them. All I heard niggers whine about is how whites are racist evil and they cause gentrification. The niggers made it clear they don't like what all the white yuppies did to New York in the 90's. They liked New York the way it was in the 70's and 80's. They liked all the drugs crime whores walking the streets and porn shops. So now they are saying they want whites around. I have a feeling the niggers are just whining because they whites left and now, they have no one to victimize anymore. Life just isn't fun if you can't beat rob rape and kill whiteys. You can't rob their businesses.

Yes, when whites leave, they take all the white people stuff with them. They also take their tax money. I don't think a highway is what caused all the nigger's problems in Detroit. The niggers cause their own problems. They are the problem. American cities have always been heavily in support of democrats. Something else changed. It has nothing to do with political parties. Until people are ready to openly talk about the nigger problem nothing will ever change. I would actually prefer it if they would just shut the fuck up about it.

What's worse, the atom bomb or the nigger bomb. Just look at Detroit.

Removing a highway isn't going to solve the nigger's problems and it sure as hell won't solve the nigger problem. Most whites have already left the cities anyway. Baltimore is 65% black. I see these Boomers or Boomer tier types saying get out of the cities. Guess what dumbass? The whites already have. The only whites left in the cities are those that can't afford to leave, they are so screwed up they can't leave or the types that choose to live in the city. Like a yuppie or hipster faggot type. Those people are leftist shitbags anyway and I just laugh when I hear about niggers beating and killing them. They fucking deserve it. How are your nigger pets now?

White flight started in the mid 70's or early 80's. The niggers are screwed. The whites left and they aren't coming back. Removing a highway isn't going to stop or fix shit.