Tucker Carlson is, of course, on @Fox News, making a whole thing out of Pete Buttigieg saying that infrastructure can be racist. The Majority Report crew has been taking a look into Robert Moses, the man who was basically the infrastructure god of New York City. He was also a huge racist, and his biography explains some of the measures he took to make it difficult for people from different areas and neighborhoods to access places like parks and beaches. Tucker goes the obvious route and pretends that what Buttigieg said must be taken literally — that roads and bridges themselves are racist. It’s an obvious and sad move.
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Sam Seder: Let’s move on to a clip of Tucker Carlson. Since we are sort of New York adjacent here. We played the clip earlier of Pete Buttigieg using as an example of how infrastructure, literally infrastructure, can be racist. If you spend 30 seconds thinking about it, you could probably come up with an example on your own. If you have been in your community, in your community I mean. Just like wonder: Where’s the town dump? Ask yourself: Where’s the town dump? Where’s the big electrical thing with all the…
Nomiki Konst: Where do you see the smoke stacks?
SS: Yeah, where the smoke starts. I mean, all of that. Just think about it, and say like, "Hey, why is it there as opposed to over in that nice neighborhood?" Most people know this, some people are a little bit ignorant about the history. Here’s a guy who’s absolutely not ignorant about this history. He is a charlatan who is willing to use racism and bigotry to make money and to espouse fake history. I give you Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson: Roads are made of sand and gravel and asphalt. Ask any road builder. Roads cannot be racist any more than toasters or sectional couches can be racist. They are inanimate objects. They’re not alive. That seems obvious, but apparently Pete Buttigieg didn’t know it. Maybe he did know it but he was afraid to say it. In any case, here’s how he responded:
Pete Buttigieg: I’m still surprised that some people were surprised when I pointed to the fact that if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a white and a Black neighborhood, or if an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach, it would have been in New York, was designed too low for it to pass. That obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices.
TC: Here we have news according to the Department of Transportation, the secretary, overpasses in New York were designed to keep buses of Black and Puerto Rican kids from getting to the beach, and here’s the amazing part: those very same overpasses somehow allow buses full of white kids to get through. That sounds like magic! How does it work? Well it’s possible the overpasses that Buttigieg referred to are actually drawbridges manned by vigilant bigots with binoculars. Here comes the Puerto Rican bus; lower the overpass. You may laugh, but in a systemically racist country, it’s entirely possible.