DIVIDING LINES

A review of the racial consequences of passenger transportation policy in the United States.

Archer, a law professor at New York University and the president of the American Civil Liberties Union, illustrates the oft-told story of the government’s complicity in racial discrimination and segregation with a focus on highway construction, street planning, and mass transit. “In the history of the United States,” she asserts, “transportation infrastructure is, and always has been, a political act.” Bluntly put, it is “white supremacy by another means.” With racial inequality endemic to America, it is no surprise that interstate highways in cities divide Black from white communities, streets are arranged to prevent Black people from driving into white neighborhoods, punitive policing disproportionately targets Black motorists and pedestrians, bus transit is highly racialized, sidewalks are fewer and poorly maintained in Black neighborhoods, and regional rail lines mainly serve white commuters. Archer deploys numerous examples from cities such as Birmingham and Indianapolis to describe the racial consequences of transportation policy while highlighting court decisions that have either reinforced racism or left it unchanged. Of particular concern are Supreme Court rulings that require a finding of intent, rather than overwhelming statistical evidence, to demonstrate racial injustice. Only a single chapter, however, is devoted to a serious legal analysis. Archer calls for a reparative approach that compensates for prior disadvantages and proposes mandatory Racial Equity Impact Assessments for all policy initiatives. Little is said about how this would work. Nevertheless, Archer deftly documents the detrimental effects of transportation policy on Black mobility and does so while acknowledging governmental policies (such as mortgage redlining) that have also contributed to Black inequality. Given her legal activism, one wishes that she had more critically attended to transportation politics and, by doing so, elaborated a path toward a just transportation policy agenda.

According to Archer, Black America is still at the back of the bus.