Kessler backed Buttigieg’s comments, which referred to low-clearance bridges on Long Island’s Southern State Parkway, claiming the nefarious designs were “detailed at length in Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book on Robert Moses, ‘The Power Broker.’” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said he was “still surprised that some people were surprised” about roadway design choices that reflect racism. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg used a disputed claim about New York City “master builder” Robert Moses to argue that racism is built into America’s highways and bridges, Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler admitted Wednesday, two days after defending Buttigieg’s statement.ĭuring the White House press briefing Monday, Buttigieg was asked by The Grio reporter April Ryan “how you will deconstruct the racism that was built into the roadways.”īuttigieg responded that he was “still surprised that 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.”