Joe Henderson: For Rick Kriseman, I-175 is a racial dividing wall in St. Petersburg

Pinellas County’s COVID-19 positivity rate is beginning the drop under St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman’s target of 5%. Image via Twitter.

The exit called Interstate 175 toward downtown St. Petersburg is more than a short stretch of asphalt. It’s a demarcation line between Tropicana Field and south St. Pete, and Mayor Rick Kriseman has an idea about what to do with that road.

Knock it down.

Reduce it to rubble.

Eliminate it.

His words came in response to this tweet by former South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is Joe Biden‘s nominee for Secretary of Transportation.

“Black and brown neighborhoods have been disproportionately divided by highway projects or left isolated by the lack of adequate transit and transportation resources,” he wrote.

“In the Biden-Harris administration, we will make righting these wrongs an imperative.”

Kriseman retweeted that and added his own take.

“This is why I’d like to see 175 come down between the Trop and the neighborhoods to the south,” he wrote. “We’ve broken down some figurative barriers in this city. This is a literal one that should be flattened someday.”

South St. Pete certainly has experienced more than its share of unrest, poverty, and violence. Last month, the area had three shootings in four days. Two of them were deadly. But would knocking down that stretch of road make things any better?

Well, numerous studies about the negative effect road construction can have on neighborhoods suggests it can. The 1619 Project in the New York Times Magazine connected the dots between roadways like the Interstate highway system and racial inequality.

“As in most American cities in the decades after the Second World War, the new highways in Atlanta — local expressways at first, then Interstates — were steered along routes that bulldozed ‘blighted’ neighborhoods that housed its poorest residents, almost always racial minorities,” the Magazine reported.

“This was a common practice not just in Southern cities like Jacksonville, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Richmond, and Tampa, but in countless metropolises across the country, including Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Syracuse, and Washington.”

The roadways also served as a figurative wall separating Black neighborhoods from White ones.

Critics made that a centerpiece of their arguments earlier this year against a plan to widen Interstate 275 in Hillsborough County.

The Tampa Bay Times reported that Rick Fernandez, a member of the Tampa Heights Civic Association, spoke forcefully against the idea.

“Urban interstates are 20th Century monuments to segregationist policies. In Hillsborough County, they destroyed, relocated, and marginalized minority communities and communities of concern,” he said.

Douglas Jesseph, a professor of philosophy at the University of South Florida, called Tampa’s interstate highway system “in effect, a gigantic confederate monument. You should treat it as such.”

Those arguments were about stopping another invasive project. Speakers wanted to prevent the kind of division Kriseman talked about.

The problem in St. Pete, though, is that the roadway has been there for many years. Why, you may ask, would the city even consider demolishing it?

The answer is clear: It’s about the future.

Tropicana Field is near the end of its useful life as the home for Major League Baseball. When the Tampa Bay Rays move out of that structure, it likely will be demolished. An upscale retail and entertainment center, or some other project, will likely take its place.

When that happens, eliminating that figurative dividing wall would go miles toward sending a needed message that the city belongs to everyone. That’s an idea worth pursuing.