This Is Visionary: Biden To Use Infrastructure To Promote Civil Rights

President Biden will be announcing a $3.3 billion project that will use bipartisan infrastructure money to reconnect minority and working class communities.

The Daily is a 100% reader supported newsletter, and we could use your help. If you are finding value in our work, please consider becoming a subscriber.

Infrastructure As A Civil Rights Issue

It has happened in communities all across the country. It happens in rural and urban areas. The United States has an infrastructure crisis, and often the people most impacted are minorities and working class Americans.

When part of a community gets cut off by infrastructure and development, that area economically suffers. New businesses don’t locate there, schools are often closed or moved, the quality of life declines. Unfortunately, these events happen most often to minority and economically disadvantaged communities.

The Biden administration is doing something about it.

According to a fact sheet from the White House:

At its best, transportation infrastructure connects people to opportunity and spurs economic growth. But historically, some of our nation’s infrastructure investments and decisions have done the opposite.  The Department of Transportation estimates that at least one million people and businesses were displaced by decades of harmful urban renewal projects and legacy policy decisions in the buildout of the Federal highway system. Highways and rail lines have disproportionately torn through Black and other communities of color and low-income communities, displacing residents and businesses, stifling economic development, and cutting communities off from essentials such as groceries, jobs, transportation, and health care.

Through the Department of Transportation's first-of-its-kind Reconnecting Communities and Neighborhoods Program, funded by both the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden-Harris Administration will help rectify the damage done by past transportation projects and drive economic growth in communities in every corner of the country. This program is a key component of the Administration's commitment to advancing racial equity and support for underserved communities as defined in President Biden's executive order. This program also advances the President’s commitment to delivering a convenient, efficient, and clean transportation system, including in proximity to affordable housing.

Infrastructure Projects Have Reinforced Racial Segregation

Sec. of Transportation Pete Buttigieg told us in a call:

I think the very fact that American English has the phrase wrong side of the tracks, tells you everything you need to know about our awareness in this country of how infrastructure can divide just assures it can connect some of the planners behind highways and railways that we all live with today. built these pieces of infrastructure delivered directly to the heart of vibrant communities, sometimes to reinforce segregation, sometimes because it was the path of least resistance.