Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is under fire after claiming that New York City’s roads and bridges were deliberately designed to be racist. She particularly called out renowned urban planner Robert Moses, accusing him of engineering the city’s infrastructure to “disconnect, disempower, and isolate people” – with a focus on communities like her own in the Bronx.
“There is a psychic weight to living in communities that are designed to be disconnected. It affects your social life,” Ocasio-Cortez stated. “My neighborhood that I’m from in the Bronx, in Parkchester, we have some of the longest commutes in 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. And when you layer that with a lot of Robert Moses’s racist intent… to a very specific kind of people, Black, Brown, low-income, poor, et cetera… You can really see how it actually builds in organizing challenges to communities who actually want to empower themselves.”
WATCH:
AOC claims roads in NYC are racist. Beyond parodypic.twitter.com/rGN70E4php
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 3, 2024
The Congresswoman’s remarks quickly became the target of widespread ridicule, with many dismissing them as an attempt to insert identity politics into urban planning. People found her assertions that roads and bridges were intentionally constructed to promote systemic racism ludicrous, with some noting the historical context behind New York City’s infrastructure.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg drew similar flak last year for comments suggesting that minorities are more likely to die in car accidents due to discrimination. “We’ve got a crisis when it comes to roadway fatalities in America. We lose about forty thousand people every year. It’s a level that’s comparable to gun violence, and we see a lot of racial disparities,” Buttigieg claimed.
REACTIONS:
Omg she's insufferable. pic.twitter.com/n1O7b9Q1n2
— Killuminati_A.I. (@aiApotheosis) May 3, 2024
Typical Communist way of thinking. Naming everything racist justifies the destruction of everything including the infrastructure. Communism is all about destruction.
— Xi Van Fleet (@XVanFleet) May 3, 2024
https://twitter.com/Twitermytweet/status/1786444871630229928
Wait, what’s that?……… pic.twitter.com/YROTPJtyw9
— Marie Isabella (@MarieIsabellaB) May 3, 2024
This👇👇🤣🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/CiQxEvztLa
— drmini14 🦅🇺🇸 (@drmini141) May 3, 2024
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