Urban studies prof mimics Buttigieg's allegation that infrastructure is racist
An urban sociology professor claimed that housing, healthcare, education, and many more facets of American life are “subject to the systemic racism permeating our society.”
He added that “whether or not we have implicit biases, we participate in racist outcomes.”
Such accusations are similar to those made by top Biden officials.
Echoing previous comments by top Biden administration officials, an urban studies professor at the University of Buffalo alleged that institutional racism exists in domains such as housing.
Waverly Duck — an urban sociologist and Distinguished Visiting Scholar with the University at Buffalo’s Center for Diversity Innovation, as well as an associate professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh — delivered an address for the University at Buffalo called “A Nation Divided — The High Cost of Tacit Racism in Everyday Life.”
The contents of his remarks suggest that Duck sees racism at work in nearly every aspect of American life.
“The idea of whiteness is fluid and has changed over time, but it points to who was allowed to be a citizen, who was allowed to vote, who was allowed to own property,” Duck said.
As reported by UBNow, “Duck also noted that employment, housing, literacy, hunger, social integration and access to health care are all subject to the systemic racism permeating our society” during his speech.
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Duck believes that “whether or not we have implicit biases, we participate in racist outcomes” — an idea that upholds his recent book, Tacit Racism. And he confirmed to Campus Reform that this principle applies to housing, education, healthcare, and the other institutions he mentioned during the event. He added that his team is “exposing systemic racism in social interaction through detailed studies of language and interaction.”
“Every time we interact with another human being, we unconsciously draw on a set of expectations to guide us through the encounter,” explains the book’s description. “What many of us in the United States — especially white people — do not recognize is that centuries of institutional racism have inescapably molded those expectations.”
“This leads us to act with implicit biases that can shape everything from how we greet our neighbors to whether we take a second look at a resume,” it adds. “This is tacit racism, and it is one of the most pernicious threats to our nation.”
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg made national headlines after levying similar accusations — namely, that the national infrastructure system is racist.
“There is racism physically built into some of our highways, and that’s why the jobs plan has specifically committed to reconnect some of the communities that were divided by these dollars,” he said in an interview with theGrio about Biden’s omnibus infrastructure bill.
Campus Reform reached out to Duck for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.
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