David Marcus: Buttigieg's bigoted bridges remark was a bag of nonsense

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was roundly mocked this week when he was asked about how the Biden administration planned to "deconstruct" the racist infrastructure systems in America. 

"Mayor Pete" answered that he was surprised so few Americans know just how many racist roads and bridges there are, citing in particular low bridges that deny bus access to Jones Beach in New York.

‘THE FIVE’ REJECTS BUTTIGIEG'S ‘RACIST HIGHWAYS’ CLAIM

First, let’s start with what the secretary kind of gets right here. Since ancient times, roads, bridges, and infrastructure in general have been used to separate populations. With the advent of the railroads came the common term "wrong side of the tracks," referring to how rail lines divided people. The vast majority of the time these divisions were made along class lines. But yes, there are examples of infrastructure decisions made on the basis of dividing people by religion, race, or ethnicity.

Buttigieg’s example of Jones Beach, however, does not appear to be one of them. And this speaks to a larger problem with progressive rhetoric on race. Fact checkers for both CNN and the Washington Post leapt to the secretary’s defense. Both cited a narrow passage from Robert Caro’s ubiquitous volume ‘The Power Broker,’ a biography of New York civic planner Robert Moses.

But in a reversal Wednesday Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler tweeted, "Addendum: Experts increasingly doubt this story," revealing that his original fact check had all the intellectual rigor of a Three Stooges routine.

Buttigieg’s example of Jones Beach…speaks to a larger problem with progressive rhetoric on race.

In the Caro passage, an associate of Moses says that the master planner held disdain for "the people" and devised ways to keep them from Jones Beach. There is one reference to black busses having a harder time getting permits, but nothing in passage suggests the infrastructure choices were intended to keep the seaside resort all white.

Consider an important fact. In 1930, a year after Jones Beach opened, New York City was 95 percent white. It strains credulity to believe that Moses was making major infrastructure decisions on the basis of demeaning five percent of the population. He was trying to keep people out, but those were poor people of all kinds of backgrounds. Moses may well have been a bigot, but his designs were squarely classist.

This betrays an extremely common error made by progressives who conflate race and class in American history in ways that just don’t make sense. While the Marxist argues that capitalism and constitutional order must be destroyed to achieve class equality, the modern progressive says they must be destroyed to achieve racial equality, or as they put it, equity.

There is a reason for this switcheroo. The United States no longer has a "worker class" that can be mobilized in the ways it was in the first half of the 20th Century. The modern American proletariat, if you will, is far too politically diffuse. The hope of the far left now is that race can replace class to create an anti-capitalist and anti-government movement.

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Sadly, Buttigieg is embracing this anti-historical and divisive way of looking at our nation’s past as a justification for left wing power. Did America enact racist laws in its history? Of course. Was every single decision made or system built specifically designed to hinder black and brown people? Of course not. Robert Moses was likely far more worried about poor whites, the vast majority of New York City, going to Jones Beach than the tiny non-white population.

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And this goes way beyond infrastructure. Whether you call it critical race theory or not, the penchant now for teaching all of American history as a paranoid reaction to the threat of non-whites is part of what parents of all races are rebelling against. And good. Because it’s just not true. Secretary Buttigieg may or may not know that what he said was mostly a bag of nonsense, but either way he should educate himself.

History is all nuance, but nuance is bad for radicals. So don’t expect the Biden administration to back off its constant appeals to race. It’s a shame. But it's not likely to change anytime soon.

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