In a wild clip that took off on X on May 3, Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez spoke about how some infrastructure, such as roads and bridges in the Bronx, was allegedly designed to be discriminatory, and so now has a “psychic weight” to it that oppresses people in those areas.
What Rep. AOC appears to be referencing is that some city-level infrastructure, such as the placement of highways as the interstate system was developed, were chosen along ethnic fault lines to largely separate different ethnic groups by putting a hard-to-cross barrier in their way. ” When Rep. AOC says in the clip that the communities were “designed to be disconnected,” that is almost certainly to what she is referring. Mayor Pete,” Biden’s Transportation Secretary, has referenced that same past design choice as well.
In any case, in the video, AOC said that communities were designed in a way that makes them “disconnected” and that that design choice was intentional, something that is true in some cases, but then goes on to claim that there is a “psychic weight” from such infrastructure design choices. “There is a psychic weight to living in communities that are designed to be disconnected,” she said.
Continuing, she added, “It affects your social life, my neighborhood and from in the Bronx and Parkchester, we have some of the longest commutes and all of New York City. It is a commute not just to work. It is a commute to do anything. It is a commute to connect socially. It is a commute to connect spiritually. These decisions are designed to disconnect, disempower and isolate people.”
Then she got to the “racist intent” part of the video, saying, “And when you layer that with a lot of Robert Moses is racist intent to very much do so to a very specific kind of people. Black, Brown, low income, poor, etc. You can really see how it actually builds in organizing challenges to communities who actually want to empower themselves.”
This isn’t the first time Rep. AOC has made such a claim either. Back in 2021, for example, she said, “Construction of highways can have a disproportionate impact on communities of color, from displacement and pollution, and high-speed rail actually connects these communities to greater economic and housing opportunities.”
Watch the AOC video here:
Pete Buttigieg has made a similar claim before, saying, “We can’t ignore the basic truth: that some of the planners and politicians behind those projects built them directly through the heart of vibrant populated communities.” He continued, “Sometimes as an effort to reinforce segregation. Sometimes because the people there have less power to resist.”
That comment from “Mayor Pete” came in 2022, when he announced that the Biden Administration was launching a $1 billion pilot program to rebuild infrastructure in a way that kept racial equity in mind, saying at the time that some of America’s infrastructure was built as a “direct effort to replace or eliminate Black neighborhoods.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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