Take me home, racist roads
Tucked into US President Joe Biden's expansive infrastructure bill is a plan to knock down "racist" roads - but its success is an open question.
Tara McKelvey, BBC News
Thus opens Tara McKelvey's report on Biden's unlikely plan to use roads to fight racism. Note the quotes that she uses around the word racist
. Could it be that she's using someone else's description, but it's one that she herself is sceptical about? If so, good for her, she might just be a critical thinker, and therefore a cut above the average BBC News mouth-breather.
During a period from the '50s through to the '70s, many US highways were driven through poor neighbourhoods, dividing and polluting communities. These, predominantly non-white, neighbourhoods were chosen because the land and homes were cheaper to buy out.
"There is racism physically built into some of our highways," Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary, has said.
Tara McKelvey, BBC News
The "asthma epidemic" in the Bronx was a consequence of the expressway, which is "both literally and metaphorically a structure of racism", [South Bronx congressman Ritchie Torres] argued.
Tara McKelvey, BBC News
Oh dear. Politicians aren't very good at thinking and choosing words, are they? Something is racist if it targets, categorises, or denigrates a people based on their race. The routing of the roads was not based on race per se, but on fiscal considerations; that is, the cheapest option. Whether or not there's racism behind the poorest neighbourhoods being black in the first place is a different question. It doesn't make the roads themselves, or the planners, racist though. Just cheap.
As a slur, racist
is not unlike nazi
, or fascist
. It's thoughtlessly bandied about, in a shoot-from-the-hip fashion, which devalues its true meaning as people become inured to it. To be fair to the politicians, they're not the only ones who misuse the word. Social media and social studies faculties are awash with similarly half-witted, grandstanding dumfux out for a quick 'n' easy soundbite.
Eventually, racist
will become meaningless as an epithet. To paraphrase Syndrome: when everything's racist, nothing will be.