April Ryan Asks Pete Buttigieg How He Will ‘Deconstruct the Racism’ He Said Was ‘Built Into the Roadways’

White House reporter April Ryan asked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Monday how he will “deconstruct the racism that was built into the roadways.”

“Secretary Mayor Pete, can you give us the breakdown of Justice40 with the infrastructure package and that’s now passed and signed into law,” Ryan, White House correspondent for The Grio, asked the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., during the White House press briefing.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill, which passed the Senate in August and passed the House of Representatives on Friday, has not yet been signed into law by President Joe Biden.

“Also can you give us the construct of how you will deconstruct the racism that was built into roadways,” continued Ryan.

In April, Buttigieg told Ryan in an exclusive interview, “There is racism physically built into some of our highways…”

During Monday’s press briefing, Buttigieg noted that under Justice40, “at least 40 percent of the clean investments in this [infrastructure] bill will go to benefit the communities that are overburdened and underserved. So Part One of that is defining those investments that are eligible, and that’s a lot of it, and we’re working to map out kind of program by program, mode by mode what would qualify.”

Buttigieg also remarked, “I’m still surprise that had some people were surprised when I pointed to the fact that if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a White and a Black neighborhood or if an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach, or that would have been, in New York was designed too low for it to pass by, that that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices.”

Buttigieg was referring to the bridges built by the prominent architect Robert Moses that were low enough that they would prevent buses, from being able to go into Long Island. It has been alleged that that racist motives drove the decision by Moses to build those bridges.

He continued, “I don’t think we have anything to lose by confronting that simple reality, and I think we have everything to gain by acknowledging it and then dealing with it, which is why they are reconnecting communities that billion dollars is something we want to get to work right away putting to work.”

Watch above, via CNN.