When highways are racist

OPINION:

President Biden’s Department of Transportation has shut down a highway project that was planned by Houston, saying the road construction was a classic case of racial injustice.

At the same time, feds demanded construction contractors tied to the job get rid of all their black-ink pens, saying any color but green sent a message of racial injustice.

One of those scenarios is true; the other, parody. Can you guess?

“DOT halts Texas highway project in test of Biden’s promises on race,” Politico wrote. “The department’s use of civil rights laws has buoyed activists on the ground and surprised even seasoned regulators in Washington.”

Pete Buttigieg, the new Transportation secretary, has found a cause, it seems. And it’s called Wiping Out Racist Roadways. ‘Cause nothing says Black lives don’t matter like a newly blacktopped road that doesn’t wind and weave through the right neighborhoods.

The backstory is this: Local activists complained the Interstate 45 widening project, which had been in works for years, would unduly burden a particular minority-dominated community and displace the Hispanic and Black residents, along with some schools and places of worship and businesses. 

OK. So some people don’t want the road. Valid viewpoints. Well and good.

But why’s it gotta go racist?

“I think this project is the poster child for [Biden’s] policies,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, in reference to the White House’s vow to put social justice at the front and center of any and all policy decisions. 

Social justice and environmental justice.

The two, after all, in the minds of the far left, are intertwined.

On this Houston project, the DOT pulled out the Civil Rights Act and slapped down the race card to halt the groundbreaking. 

If Buttigieg wins on this — if he manages to make the case that this project should stay stopped based on some sort of racial equity cause — well then, expect the floodgates for more racist roadway cases to open wide.

States won’t be able to fill a pothole without first checking with Al Sharpton.

Localities won’t be allowed to perform normal after-winter patching without first getting the Kamala Harris special social justice seal of approval.

“No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance,” Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act states.

And that includes you there, Interstate 45. And you, too, Interstate 95. And you and you and you — you Interstate 90 and Interstate 10 and Interstate 40.

Ridiculous.

But this is the reality of the new Biden administration: Everything becomes put to the lens of racism.

Roads aren’t just roads.

Road-building projects aren’t just road-building projects.

They’re Black versus White, Hispanic versus Asian, discriminatory versus tolerant — and as always, it’s the heavy-handed federal government that has to step in and impose a fairness for all. Or at least, a fairness for the loudest activist in the room.

That’s called equity, socialist style. Creating division and using division to promote government power. And where it leads is to societal destruction because those who can do  — those who can build, those who can create, those who can produce — will soon enough learn there’s no sense to building or creating or producing if the end result is to be labeled a racist, if the final reward is condemnation. But that’s socialism. The elevation of the least capable and simultaneous destruction of the most talented. The top-down dismantling of the best humanity has to offer; the slow but sure killing of the spirit that fuels all that’s good, all that’s worthy, all that’s admirable and honest. Yay Team Biden. Yay Team Buttigieg.

Now about those pens.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.