A thin layer of soot covers the yellow paint of the wooden houses that line the Interstate 81, a road on the downtown Syracuse, New York, supported by rusted steel girders and dirty concrete pillars.
The highway —from where car exhaust fumes suffocate passers-by and the sound of truck tires can be heard day and night – it cuts the surrounding neighborhood in two.
A housing unit, called Pioneer Homes , it is located to the east, on a hill. To the west, meanwhile, there are more social housing together with the yellow houses, which are mainly owned by minorities and some companies.
Civil rights activists nickname this mile of the interstate the “racist highway” . According to them, roads like this divide minority neighborhoods and pollute these communities.
Many urban planners want to tear them down, and now, President Joe Biden He also has them in his sights.
Millionaire infrastructure plan
Biden opted for an expansive infrastructure plan of a trillion dollars that could become the largest investment in roads, bridges and roads in the United States in decades.
The package – which was recently approved by the Senate of this country and now awaits to be reviewed by the House of Representatives – would include repairs to old power lines and roads, as well as replacement of drinking water pipes and the expansion of broadband access.
Per or it also has another objective: to address climate change and racial inequalities.
In this way, the project includes billion dollars to “reconnect communities”, which means tearing down urban roads that cut through neighborhoods like Siracusa.
But it is an open question whether tearing down the highways where generations of Americans have lived is really a route to racial progress.
And there are many skeptics.
Racism on highways
The White House has argued that “ megahighways, ”which exist throughout the United States, have caused pain and ruined many communities.
They say that at first they forced people out of their homes when they were built, destroying businesses owned by African Americans. And then through noise and air pollution created by traffic, they have continued to affect many people.
“There is racism physically built on some of our roads”, has said Pete Buttigieg , the United States Secretary of Transportation.
Experts say there is some truth to this statement.
When the US highway system was being built between 1950 Y 1970, urban planners often designed it to cut through neighborhoods where “property values were lower, because those houses were the least expensive to buy, ”explains Mark Rose , professor of history at Florida Atlantic University and author of a book on interstate highways.
Many Sometimes this was synonymous with places where blacks and other American minorities lived.
Although activists from Syracuse to the city of Los Angeles fought against the construction of these megahighways, they were built anyway and left some communities destroyed, bombarded with noise and pollution, and divided in half.
Meanwhile, the roads allowed traffic flowed from city centers to suburbs for middle class travelers who could afford that lifestyle.
That has left a bleak legacy .
Studies have found that living near a highway in the United States is associated with an increased likelihood of heart attacks and asthma.
“As a son of the Bronx, I was often in three places,” recalled Ritchie Torres, a congressman from the South Bronx, where a well-known megahighway passes. , the Cross Bronx Expressway. “I was at home, I was at school and I was in the emergency room, because I was repeatedly hospitalized for asthma.”
The “asthma epidemic” in the Bronx was a consequence of the highway, which is “both literally and metaphorically a structure of racism,” he argued.
On the other hand, the conditions in which the neighbors live are much worse. For example, almost the 40% of residents in the neighborhood surrounding the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans, lives below the poverty line, compared to the 25% of the city in general.
And the closing of the business is evident. A highway built through the thriving black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has meant a total closure of its businesses.
At its peak , prior to the construction of the Interstate 75 in the decade of 1950, had 40 grocery stores and 35 blocks of shops and homes.
Investment and equity racial
When he was building the to Interstate 81 through Syracuse in the middle of the 20th century, more than 1. 000 residents had to leave their homes, according to a local association.
The transportation secretary visited the city in June and talked about tearing down the downtown section of the highway, where he said a boulevard would be built, diverting traffic elsewhere.
The project would cost around US $ 2 billion and could receive federal funds.
Federal investment in public works is generally channeled through state and local governments, increasing their coffers.
Members of Congress extract chunks of federal money to invest in their own states. In some cases, it can help them win reelection.
For Biden, the emphasis on racial equity was part of his campaign and helped him to win the elections. Addressing it in the infrastructure bill “fulfills many government and campaign promises,” noted Jon Reinisch , Democratic strategist from New York.
The Biden administration has worked hard to get the infrastructure project approved. “It’s a heavy job,” says Lawrence Levy of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University.
“It requires the White House to reach out to as many people as possible and convince them to see infrastructure in a way they hadn’t thought of before,” he adds.
Will the promise be fulfilled?
However, few people in Syracuse believe that the president will achieve what he promises.
“Sounds good on paper,” said trucker Alex Londono , of 39 years. “It would be better to fix the road and help local businesses,” he added.
Joquin Paskel, a businessman from 28 years who rents inflatable castles for birthday parties, agreed that the road is racist.
“It just creates division,” he said.
And while he claims that Biden’s plan could help, he said he doesn’t think it “necessarily stops racism.” Meanwhile, his girlfriend, Debowrah Yisrael, of 13 years, he wondered: “ Where will we go while they are working on it? ”
One-year-old Gainnis Brown was racing down a street near the highway on his orange and black trike, the fifth generation of his family living near the highway.
Despite its undesirable aspects, it is home, said Gainnis’s great-great-aunt, Kathy Gaston.
The woman, of 73 years, supports the president, but is more concerned with day-to-day affairs than promises
The dust, ejected from the road, covers his furniture. “I have the furniture cleaning wipes,” he said, running one of his fingers across a table.
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