People say the Democrats have a messaging problem. This is not true. The challenge is structural: Democrats communicate in policy, Republicans in morality. One side debates line items and the other claims moral ownership over freedom. Truth demands context, study, and patience—all difficult in a culture that rewards resentment.
This division is not new. This leads to the country’s oldest economy – an economy built on slavery. In 1857, Hinton Rowan Helper warned that slavery was bankrupting the South and impoverishing poor whites. His point was economic, not moral. The obsession with racial hierarchy was destroying innovation and industry.
W. E. B. Du Bois later called this “the psychological wage of whiteness”, the belief that racial status was more valuable than shared prosperity. Both men described the same pathology – convincing people to vote against their future.
That legacy still shapes our landscape today. Highways were bulldozed through black neighborhoods; Commuter rail bypassed working-class suburbs; Broadband and clean-energy corridors stalled where poverty was highest. Racism wasn’t just social policy – it was infrastructure policy. The result: Areas that were once prosperous now lag behind the country in education, wages and mobility.
Modern economics confirms history’s predictions. A 2020 study by Citigroup estimated that racial inequality resulted in a $16 trillion loss in GDP between 2000 and 2020, and closing those gaps could add another $5 trillion over five years. As John Hope Bryant reminds us, racism is not only immoral; It is economically devastating. The Rev. Jesse Jackson has said for decades that “Racism can distort religion, it can distort the economy, it can distort democracy.” It also distorts the roads, rails and public works meant to bind us together.
We write as businessmen – one a lawyer and governance strategist, the other an infrastructure executive turned public advocate. From different vantage points, we have seen how the legacy of racial hierarchy still limits the way America finances, designs, and values its public systems. Transit and infrastructure are more than logistics; They are the lifeline of opportunity. And when those lifelines weaken, democracy also collapses.
On Friday morning, Illinois lawmakers passed the most transformative transit legislation in 50 years — a $1.5 billion package that not only prevents cuts and layoffs but rewrites the moral calculus of mobility. At its core are ideas born of equality.
- The human-equity funding formula delivers dollars to the people and places most dependent on transit.
- Modernized farebox recovery rules align with peer cities and reduce pressure on low-income riders.
- It uses road-fund dollars for transit, eliminating the false choice between highways and people.
- Transit-oriented development tools let agencies generate revenue through community investment, as global systems from Hong Kong to Paris have done.
- And a new regional body – the Northern Illinois Transit Authority – will coordinate service, accountability and safety across the region.
Together, these changes indicate a shift from punishment to partnership. Instead of measuring success by miles of asphalt, Illinois chose to measure by human connections. Instead of treating transit as a subsidy, the state recognized it as a public good that impacts the workforce, the economy, and the environment.
This was no bipartisan miracle. Republicans opposed the bill. It was the achievement of a coalition inside the broader Democratic tent — the governor’s office, Cook County Chairman Toni Preckwinkle (D), legislative champions like Sen. Ram Villivalam (D) and Rep. Eva-Dina Delgado (D), labor leaders and lawyers who refused to accept the decline as destiny. What united them was the belief that infrastructure should serve the people, not power.
The Illinois example highlights a national truth. Racism is not just a moral failure; This is an engineering flaw. This is a pipeline-to-nowhere failure. And like any structural flaw, it can be redesigned. When equity becomes the operating principle – not an afterthought – every dollar spent multiplies the opportunity rather than divides it.
The federal government is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure through bipartisan infrastructure legislation and the Inflation Reduction Act. Those dollars can either replicate yesterday’s inequities or create tomorrow’s fairness. The difference is in the metrics: Who gets the contracts? Where do the new lines run? Which communities get the jobs, cleaner air and shorter commutes?
Illinois offers a blueprint. It started with confronting inequality honestly, building trust between local and state actors, and daring to measure success in humanitarian terms. This is what rebuilding democracy looks like in infrastructure language.
The true test of a nation is not what it builds – but who it leads. America’s future will be measured not in lane miles but in lives connected. Illinois just reminded us how to start
Louis C. Raymond II is a Chicago-based attorney, political strategist, and law professor. Dennis W. Barreto is the former chief equity and engagement officer for the Chicago Transit Authority and public infrastructure advocate.
