The Biden administration’s American Jobs infrastructure plan includes $20 billion for a newprogramto address the racism inherent in highway projects in the past. Transportation veterans say this is necessary, despite criticism from conservative groups.

“re is racism physically built into some of our highways,” U.S. Dept. of Transportation (USDOT) Secretary Pete Buttigieg told theGrio’s April Ryan in aninterview上周。解决基础设施中的社会正义是政府的主要目标之一，同时解决气候变化，安全和创造就业机会。尽管一些保守的批评家嘲笑了这一想法，但交通政策的退伍军人说，这个问题并不是什么新鲜事。

“idea of civil rights in transportation in the current era is not well known,” said Leslie Proll, former director of the Departmental Office of Civil Rights for USDOT under President Obama. That’s partly because it’s harder to understand than issues such as voting rights, fair housing and employment discrimination, she added.

Inadvertently illustrating that point, conservative youth group Young America’s Foundation推文“This is not parody” referring to Buttigieg’s comment. Embattled Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) was more direct,tweeting“Highways are not racist.”

普罗尔说，但是长期以来，运输在民权历史上发挥了作用。普罗尔说，后者的目的是测试隔离的国家是否在最高法院要求在州际运输路线的设施中进行平等访问。

“re's a lot of hidden areas” in the discussion about equity in transportation, said Stephanie J. Jones, who was chief opportunities officer for the USDOT under Secretary Anthony Foxx in the Obama administration. Beyond a surface appearance of equity, it’s ensuring “that structures aren't built in that create obstacles for people, and that if there are obstacles, that those can be removed.” It’s a difficult task “because often people's feel as if equity means something's being taken away from them,” said Jones, who with Proll participated in an April 9 webinar, part of JTR Strategies’ Infrastructure Series.

“这是一个非常敏感的基于“增大化现实”技术ea, and there are a lot of feelings attached to it when we talk about civil rights enforcement,” said Jones. Even within the USDOT, it took effort to diffuse uneasiness around their work. “What we tried to do was help people see that we're not beating up on you, we're not telling you you're doing it wrong, we're not telling you you're a bad person. A lot of the problems we're trying to address are ingrained into the system, and you didn't create it and you're not purposely perpetrating it, but if you don't actively disrupt it, it's going to continue and here are ways that we can do this.”

Proll回应怀疑论者，他们询问公路与种族主义有什么关系，描述了1950年代的州际公路系统的创建。它是在民权诉讼的背景下设定的，特别是美国最高法院的1954年布朗诉埃德委员会decision, which declared school segregation unconstitutional. Highway routes, which federal officials set up with local and state input, were sometimes used to split Black and white communities, providing a physical barrier to integrated schools when legal barriers could no longer be used.

“se communities are still divided. They're still closed off,” said Proll.

这也解释了，请补充说，为什么住房和教育等问题与基础设施有关。州际公路系统的创建“负担不成比例的许多黑人社区，这些社区与获得高质量住房，工作，公共交通和其他资源的机会脱节。”

The issue isn't in the distant past. In March, the Federal Highway Commission asked Texas to put a暂停关于休斯顿高速公路扩张的计划，它评估了VI标题的投诉，即该项目对大部分黑人和拉丁裔社区产生了负面影响。当前的计划将谴责1,000套房屋和350家企业。

“It's really important at this stage to kind of halt it and do the investigation, because with transportation, unlike a lot of other areas of civil rights … once that concrete is laid, it’s very hard to go back,” said Proll.

琼斯回应了普罗尔（Proll）说投诉提前出现时，“如果与社区订婚，这可能会很快做。它不应该到达这一决定接近做出的地步，然后必须再次对正在发生的事情进行这种破坏。”

“Communities have great input and are helpful to the planners,” she added.

Regarding the $20 billion set aside for a newprogramto “reconnect neighborhoods cut off” as a result of previous projects, Proll said community input will be especially effective here. “Are we going to be tearing down highways? What are we going to be putting up instead, are we going to be expanding them? You have got to have the input of the community affected. That is kind of a first principal. This can't be done by people in Washington or just at the state and local level by the officials.”

The benefits of such an approach extend both ways, said Jones. Whether “planners, private industry, whoever’s involved, it actually is to their advantage to have this kind of involvement. They get a better product, they get a much better result.”

In addition, soliciting community feedback from the start may help dissipate resistance to a project, even if a proposed road or overpass can’t be relocated. Voicing concerns can also improve projects in other ways for example, by adding easy crossing points to an overpass, adding green space, improving safety.

“Even if the result is not exactly what the community wanted,” said Jones, “if they’ve been involved with the process from the beginning, they will buy into it because they know they participated in it. They also better understand why those decisions were made.”