Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said during a Monday event that too many construction crews “don’t look like” the neighborhoods they work in.
“I would urge you especially because often this is more in your hands than mine, to really work with organized labor, to work with your contractors, to work with your community colleges on holding a workforce that reflects the community,” Buttigieg said during a panel at the National Association of Counties Conference. (RELATED: Tucker Carlson Mocks Pete Buttigieg For Calling Roads ‘Racist’)
Buttigieg came under fire following an avalanche of over 2,500 flight cancellations by Southwest Airlines in December, followed by a January computer glitch that caused the first ground stop since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Buttigieg also received criticism for not attending crucial meetings while on parental leave during the supply chain crisis in the fall of 2021.
Buttigieg appears to have remained silent in the aftermath of a Feb. 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that resulted in evacuations after toxic chemicals spilled and caught fire.
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“We have heard way too many stories from generations past of infrastructure where you got a neighborhood, often a neighborhood of color, that finally sees the project come to them but everyone in the hardhats on that project looking like, doing the good-paying jobs, don’t look like they came from anywhere near the neighborhood,” Buttigieg continued.
Buttigieg previously launched a $1 billion initiative in June to address roads he claimed were racist on the grounds that they allegedly “racially segregated or divided” black communities, after starting an effort to tear down Interstate 375 in Detroit. Buttigieg said racism was “physically built” into road projects in April 2021.
President Joe Biden signed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill into law in November 2021, which included funding for improvements to roads, bridges, ports and broadband internet access.
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