Buttigieg responds to criticism of racist road comment: “The point is not to make America feel guilty”

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg responded to criticism over his recent comments on racist bridges and highways on Sunday, saying “the point is not to make America feel guilty” but to right what he believes are injustices in the country’s infrastructure.

During an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show,” Buttigieg was asked to respond to critics who disbelieve his argument that some bridges and highways were built with racist intentions.

WASHINGTON POST FACT-CHECK ADMITS IT WAS WRONG FOR “KNEE JERKED” DEFENSE OF BUTTIGIEG’S RACIST COMMENTS ON BUTTIGIEG BRIDGE

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at the daily White House briefing on November 8, 2021 (Win McNamee / Getty Images)

“What we are doing is reconnecting people who may have been disconnected or divided by discriminatory decisions in the past,” replied the secretary. “It helps everyone. I don’t know why anyone would be against reconnecting people who have been divided by discriminatory decisions in the past.

“And again, the point is not to make America feel guilty,” he continued. “The goal is to make America better, fairer, and more efficient at getting people to where they need to go. The goal of transportation is to connect, so if transportation has ever been used to divide, we have a responsibility. , a moral responsibility but also a very practical one, to fix it. “

Buttigieg raised his eyebrows earlier this month after speaking about the bipartisan infrastructure bill tackling racism on highways during a White House press briefing.

Pete Buttigieg speaks at the United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland on November 10, 2021 (Ian Forsyth / Getty Images)

“I’m always surprised that some people were surprised when I pointed out that if a freeway was built for the purpose of dividing a white neighborhood and a black neighborhood, or if an underpass was built in such a way that a bus carrying mostly blacks and puerto rican children at a beach, or who would have been in new york, were designed too low for it to pass, this obviously reflects the racism that went into those design choices, ”he said. Buttigieg said on November 8.

Social media conservatives immediately doubted the story, prompting Washington Post resident fact-checker Glenn Kessler to stand up for Buttigieg, citing a narrow passage from Pulitzer Prize-winning Robert Caro’s book, “The Power Broker, ”a biography of the New York city planner. Robert Moïse.

A Department of Transportation official confirmed to Kessler that Buttigieg was indeed referring to Caro’s book.

Pete Buttigieg looks at a Tesla Model S during an electric vehicle event outside the Department of Transportation on October 20, 2021 in Washington, DC (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

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Kessler later admitted that his “knee was shaking” and that experts increasingly doubted the story of the racist bridge in Caro’s book.

“Obviously, this cannot be easily resolved,” Kessler wrote. Caro quotes one of Moïse’s main collaborators as saying that the height of the bridges was made for racist reasons, but more and more this story has been questioned as not credible. Buttigieg should adapt his remarks to reflect this. is historically flawless – and we should be more careful to check out the latest opinions of historians. Even a Pulitzer Prize-winning book isn’t always the last word on a subject.

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