September 22, 2025 • 17 mins
Most Americans would agree that our transportation infrastructure—from highways, to roads and bus and train lines—needs an upgrade. As governments plan for rebuilding and repairing, our guest takes a historic look at how much of our existing infrastructure was built to reinforce economic and racial divisions. Deborah Archer is an eminent legal scholar, the president of the ACLU, and author of DIVIDING LINES: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequality.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Get Connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health, and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven Light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Thanks for listening to Get Connected. Most all Americans would
agree that our transportation infrastructure highways, roads, buses, trains needs
an upgrade. But before we can think about rebuilding and repairing,
our guest warns that we need to reconsider how much
of existing US infrastructure was built around race. Debor Archer
is an eminent legal scholar and president of the ACLU
(00:34):
and author of Dividing Lines How Transportation infrastructure reinforces racial inequality.
Debor Archer, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I think perhaps the easiest way to get to the
heart of the matter is to get to that idea
of the right side or the wrong side of the tracks,
and most people immediately have an image of what that
might mean. It's the good side of town, the bad
side of the town, the rich side, the poor side,
the white side, or the black or brown side, and
adage that didn't get that way by accident.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
I think we often think about good and bad communities
and what those mean, and we act as if that's natural,
and forget that we have taken so many steps to
create those good and bad communities. And when we're thinking
about that, we often think about the invisible lines that
have helped facilitate those divisions. We think about the laws
(01:25):
at the local, state, and federal level that divide us.
But it really is, as you've said, these physical, literal
lines running through and around our communities, lines that may
seem innocuous or practical, or necessary or just natural, that
are part of the architecture of racial inequality. And transportation
is essential to that.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Just to kind of get to an anecdote of this,
you grew up in Hartford, and this is something you
saw in your own childhood.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I did.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
I grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, and we were surrounded
by a highway and it had all the negative externalities
of that pollution and noise. We had major roads coursing through,
making it difficult to do the things that people considered
to be childhood activities, riding your bike with the wind
(02:11):
racing through.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
At your face.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
But it also made it difficult to access economic opportunity,
to get to doctor's appointments, to get to the jobs
in the suburbs, because our community just wasn't served in
the ways that would help and support our people.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
We will talk a lot about the highway system and bussing,
but before that, what was effectively the birth of racial
segregation as far as zoning laws in the country, What
did that look like? And I'm thinking about Birmingham nineteen ten,
that era.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
Yeah, so racial zoning laws evolved in different ways of
trying to limit land use and separate land use, but
it was quickly co opted in a way that locked
in racial inequality and folks like those in Birmingham, but
communities all around the country adopted racial zoning laws.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And racial zoning.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Laws limited where black folks and white folks could live.
So they would say, you know, black communities, you can
live on the left side of the street, white communities
on the right side, and you couldn't mix.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
And in that way, it locked.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
In segregation by creating these zones. But it's also important
to know that the areas that were zoned for black
communities was always the least desirable areas. It was in
flood prone areas, it was in areas with industrial other
industrial uses, with pollution and all the things that no
one wanted to live near. Those were the communities that
(03:37):
were zoned for black and brown folks.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
This was during that era of the separate but Equal
doctrine from the late nineteenth century. So the idea was
people would be separated and things would be equal. But
as you're reminding us, it really.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Was not separate, was never equal.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, yeah, and it's funny. I was just reading coincidentally,
Maya Angelou's first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,
and she talks about growing up in segregated Arkansas in
the nineteen thirties and until she was about seven, she
didn't even know that white people were real. The segregation
were so strict it was like you were two different species.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
We have used so many tools to divide our communities
and make it difficult for us to interact in any way.
We often then in the time that you're discussing and
Maya Angelou is discussing, but also today we live separately,
we eat separately, we worship separately, we go to school separately,
we work separately, and it's hard to overstate what a
(04:34):
negative impact that has on us as a country and
a community.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Our guest is Deborah Archer. She is a legal scholar
and president of the ACLU. She is also a tenured
professor and Associate dean at New York University School of
Law and the Faculty director of the Community Equity Initiative
at NYU Law. Her book is Dividing Lines, How Transportation
Infrastructure reinforces Racial equality. You're listening to get Connected on
(04:59):
one zero six point seven light FM. I'm mina del rio.
So jumping forward a little bit, the planning for federal
highways began in Earnest in the nineteen forties. The majority
of the highway's highway system was built in the fifties
and seventies between the fifties and seventies. Concurrently, this is
also the era of the Civil Rights Movement. So how
was segregation, racial zoning, and integration being fought socially and
(05:22):
responded to by the courts.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
So as legal segregation began to crumble during the Civil
Rights Movement, we started to see the victories in the
fifties and sixties, cities across America turned to infrastructure as
a more permanent, more visible way to enforce racial hierarchy.
And one example I focus on in the book is
the connection between the decision in Brown versus Board of Education,
(05:47):
which held that separate education for black and white kids
was unconstitutional, and the building of our interstate highway system
so Brown was decided in nineteen fifty four, and then
the Interstate Highway Act was passed in nineteen fifty six,
and following the decision in Brown communities around the country
showed that they were willing to make incredible sacrifices and
(06:10):
use every tool available to them to protect their way
of life, to really protect racial segregation. And with the
Interstate Highway Act just two years after that decision, they
used that act to really lock in and recreate in
many ways the effects of Jim Crow laws. Talking about Birmingham,
(06:31):
Alabama with their racial zoning laws. After racial zoning was
struck down, Birmingham, Alabama, led by notorious segregationist Bull Connor,
explicitly used the highways I fifty nine and I sixty
five to lock in racial segregation, built the highways in
(06:51):
places that mirrored the racial zoning laws. I talk about Indianapolis,
who used a different tool. They had redlining, and we
know that redlining indicated that there were certain communities, black
and brown communities that people were told not to invest
in We're not going to give you mortgages, we're not
going to give you loans to start businesses, and that
(07:12):
resulted in real economic devastation.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I think in New York City also, we tend to
think historically our city has a better track record, right,
But for forty years New York City public works were
commanded by Robert Moses, who was insidious in how he
went out of his way to punish black and brown communities.
And I think a lot of New Yorkers it's such
an anecdote that still like boggles the mind a bit
(07:36):
about those the low bridges on the way to the beaches.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
So Robert Moses, in many ways was the father of
so much of this because he believed in using infrastructure
not just to move people efficiently, but to shape where
people lived, who had access to public spaces in which
communities could thrive. And that meant that he was driving
expressways in parkways through low income, largely black, and neighborhoods
(08:00):
to clear them out communities that he considered to be slums,
while also protecting and preserving white, wealthier areas. But he
also believed in the durability of infrastructure, and that using
infrastructure would evade the evolution of laws. And so one
story that I tell in the book that is often
repeated is that he built the overpasses on some of
(08:23):
the parkways leading to Jones Beach too low for buses
to get through, because the buses were the mode of
transportation used by black and Puerto Rican folks in New
York City, and he wanted to make it difficult for
them to get to Jones Beach, and so if the
buses couldn't pass under the overpass, then they couldn't get
to the beach, and that that would that design policy
(08:45):
of exclusion that didn't require a single discriminatory law to function,
would outlast civil rights laws and the developments and civil
rights law.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
As a rule, aggressiveness towards buses and bus riders seems
particularly insidious even today. The story of Cynthia Wiggins in
Buffalo in nineteen ninety five is emblematic of that.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
I think, yeah, Cynthia, It's a story I learned about
during my research. A seventeen year old black woman who
worked in an upscale mall in Buffalo, and the mall
did not allow the city bus to come into the
parking lot. Other buses were allowed to come into the
parking lot, and in order to get to work every day,
then she had to race across seven lanes of traffic.
(09:30):
And one day, when she was racing across those lanes
of traffic, she was struck by a bus and killed.
And that story is repeated around the country that we
have folks who live in cities trying to get to
economic opportunity in the suburbs, needing to take the bus,
and the bus is the mode of public transportation that
(09:50):
sees the most discrimination against it because it is disproportionately
used by black and Lentino folks, and those suburban communities
doing everything that they can to keep buses out of
their communities.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
As you stayed in the book, I never would have
thought about it. Really, Bus transit receives only thirty one
percent of capital funds spent nationwide on transit, while buses
account for more than sixty percent of all trips and
trains and light rail also, are you know they're further
down on the hierarchy of transit. What is that net
result of underfunded public transit?
Speaker 4 (10:21):
Yeah, we're not investing where it's needed the most. We're
not investing in the ways that black and brown folks
disproportionately use public transit. So we're a culture that is
focused on cars, and we are building roads and highways
to make it easier for people who own and use
cars to get to where they need to go. But
black and brown folks just proportionately do not own cars
(10:43):
and are relying on other forms of public transportation. And
even when we're investing in public transportation, it is not equitable.
It is not invested in where there is the most need,
where we have most neglected, in the ways that low
income folks really need us to.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Really interesting thing you note about different street names between neighborhoods,
which is a pretty cheap and effective way to create
a sense of boundaries between communities. How does the naming
of streets even get to property values?
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Yeah, So one of the ways I talk about historically
was Atlanta, where they even wanted to spare white folks
the indignity of having to say they lived on the
same street as black folks. And so in Atlanta, as
a street move from a white neighborhood to a black neighborhood,
the street name would change and you can still see
that on maps in Atlanta, but also street names around
(11:36):
the country kind of give a signal of the nature
of the community. So I talk about the way that
Martin Luther King boulevards around the country signal that it
is a black community, and it has led to some
disinvestment because people do not want to put their businesses
on a Martin Luther King boulevard because there is a
vision of what that means. Property values are less, homes
(11:57):
are valued less, the community is just valued less. And
it's triggered by those street names. And it's a shame
because the naming of streets after civil rights heroes is
the result of decades of work of advocates who want
to recognize the important work that folks like Martin Luther
King or Malcolm X or Marcus Garvey have put into
building more equitable communities.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
But their names.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Are on streets and communities that represent the exact opposite
communities that have suffered from disinvestment and economic isolation.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You talk about how Atlanta was pretty much in a
league of its own when it came to these practices,
but to pull questions from sort of the other side
of the argument until the nineteen until the rather twenty
twenty census, Atlanta remained a black majority city. So how
were segregation techniques They're detrimental in the long run.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Yeah, even if though it's a majority black city. The
leadership wasn't right. So during the time when a lot
of this was done, there was a white mayor who
was trying to be responsive to white community and their
calls for protection, their calls and demands for protection. Atlanta
was built up in a way now that makes it
(13:07):
very difficult for anyone who lives there to get around.
It is a tremendous traffic in Atlanta, and some of
that is because of the way the highways were built.
They were built in a way not to optimize efficiency,
but to instead destroy and remove black communities and lock
in segregation. Their street grid has lots of one way
(13:27):
streets that were originally designed to make it difficult to
move from a black community to a white community, and
now it makes it difficult just to move around Atlanta.
They turned lots of through streets into cul de sacs
or dead ended them to make it difficult to get
from one neighborhood to another, and now it makes it
difficult for anyone who lives there to get around. So
(13:47):
although Atlanta is now a majority black city, it wasn't
always and the leadership was not always, and so it
was not built. It was built in a way to
lock in racial inequality and has resulted in inconvenience.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
And lack of opportunity for a lot of folks.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
You have just addressed a little bit, but I still
want to ask the question for people who are thinking,
it's just as likely that these neighborhoods would have developed organically.
There would be a white neighborhood, there would be a
black neighborhood. People are living near people who were like
them by choice.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
I think we often hear that that segregation is by choice.
Segregation is evolving. I think that that it's not true
that segregation is natural. There are so many ways that
government has intervened historically and today to facilitate that. And
until we really move beyond the idea that segregation is
(14:38):
natural and people will only want to live with the
people who are like them, and start to focus on
the many ways in which we are still encouraging, facilitating, requiring,
driving segregation, we're not going to make progress. We have
to really acknowledge the many ways that government facilitates racial segregation,
(14:58):
and we're doing it to day, not just with transportation,
but with many many other policies as well.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
As our highway system needs to be rebuilt, our subways,
all these things. These are long term projects that will
inevitably be hit by political forces from either side during
years and years of planning and debate and all these things.
It really does reinforce the permanence of some of these
decisions from fifty to sixty years ago. What do you
think or hope will be the biggest influence ultimately going forward?
(15:29):
What happens to influence it going forward in a better direction.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
We're at a point of great need, and I think
even President Trump has said that we need to invest
in transportation. And so as we're at this point where
we all recognize the need to invest in transportation, transportation
infrastructure is falling, I hope dividing lines can be an
intervention that can force us to have a different conversation
(15:53):
to build back better. I think we need a shift
in national transportation policy that forces us to reimagine how
we use transportation infrastructure to serve and support all of
our communities, including communities of color. So whether you call
it community equity focused, you call it anti racist design,
you call it equitable design, or something else. Entirely, it's
(16:15):
about not looking at our current situation as a neutral baseline,
as an equitable starting point. It is about us connecting
seemingly isolated incidents and projects to common policies and laws
and approaches that keep leading to racially inequitable, discriminatory, or
oppressive outcomes. And it's about finding ways to build the
transportation infrastructure that traditionally marginalized communities need, to connect them
(16:40):
to opportunity, to do that in a way that is efficient,
to do that in a way that is fast, to
do that in a way that is equitable, and to
do it in a way that doesn't re injure these
communities that have been so often harmed in the past.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Our guest is Deborah Archer. She is president of the
ACLU and author of Dividing Lines, How Transportation Infrastructure reinforces
Racial inequality. Debora Archer, thank you for being on Get Connected.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Thank you so much for this conversation.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven Light FM. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
of the station. If you missed any part of our
show or want to share it, visit our website for
downloads and podcasts at one oh six to seven lightfm
dot com. Thanks for listening.
Welcome to Get Connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health, and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven Light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Thanks for listening to Get Connected. Most all Americans would
agree that our transportation infrastructure highways, roads, buses, trains needs
an upgrade. But before we can think about rebuilding and repairing,
our guest warns that we need to reconsider how much
of existing US infrastructure was built around race. Debor Archer
is an eminent legal scholar and president of the ACLU
(00:34):
and author of Dividing Lines How Transportation infrastructure reinforces racial inequality.
Debor Archer, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I think perhaps the easiest way to get to the
heart of the matter is to get to that idea
of the right side or the wrong side of the tracks,
and most people immediately have an image of what that
might mean. It's the good side of town, the bad
side of the town, the rich side, the poor side,
the white side, or the black or brown side, and
adage that didn't get that way by accident.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
I think we often think about good and bad communities
and what those mean, and we act as if that's natural,
and forget that we have taken so many steps to
create those good and bad communities. And when we're thinking
about that, we often think about the invisible lines that
have helped facilitate those divisions. We think about the laws
(01:25):
at the local, state, and federal level that divide us.
But it really is, as you've said, these physical, literal
lines running through and around our communities, lines that may
seem innocuous or practical, or necessary or just natural, that
are part of the architecture of racial inequality. And transportation
is essential to that.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Just to kind of get to an anecdote of this,
you grew up in Hartford, and this is something you
saw in your own childhood.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I did.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
I grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, and we were surrounded
by a highway and it had all the negative externalities
of that pollution and noise. We had major roads coursing through,
making it difficult to do the things that people considered
to be childhood activities, riding your bike with the wind
(02:11):
racing through.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
At your face.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
But it also made it difficult to access economic opportunity,
to get to doctor's appointments, to get to the jobs
in the suburbs, because our community just wasn't served in
the ways that would help and support our people.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
We will talk a lot about the highway system and bussing,
but before that, what was effectively the birth of racial
segregation as far as zoning laws in the country, What
did that look like? And I'm thinking about Birmingham nineteen ten,
that era.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
Yeah, so racial zoning laws evolved in different ways of
trying to limit land use and separate land use, but
it was quickly co opted in a way that locked
in racial inequality and folks like those in Birmingham, but
communities all around the country adopted racial zoning laws.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And racial zoning.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Laws limited where black folks and white folks could live.
So they would say, you know, black communities, you can
live on the left side of the street, white communities
on the right side, and you couldn't mix.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
And in that way, it locked.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
In segregation by creating these zones. But it's also important
to know that the areas that were zoned for black
communities was always the least desirable areas. It was in
flood prone areas, it was in areas with industrial other
industrial uses, with pollution and all the things that no
one wanted to live near. Those were the communities that
(03:37):
were zoned for black and brown folks.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
This was during that era of the separate but Equal
doctrine from the late nineteenth century. So the idea was
people would be separated and things would be equal. But
as you're reminding us, it really.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Was not separate, was never equal.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, yeah, and it's funny. I was just reading coincidentally,
Maya Angelou's first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,
and she talks about growing up in segregated Arkansas in
the nineteen thirties and until she was about seven, she
didn't even know that white people were real. The segregation
were so strict it was like you were two different species.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
We have used so many tools to divide our communities
and make it difficult for us to interact in any way.
We often then in the time that you're discussing and
Maya Angelou is discussing, but also today we live separately,
we eat separately, we worship separately, we go to school separately,
we work separately, and it's hard to overstate what a
(04:34):
negative impact that has on us as a country and
a community.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Our guest is Deborah Archer. She is a legal scholar
and president of the ACLU. She is also a tenured
professor and Associate dean at New York University School of
Law and the Faculty director of the Community Equity Initiative
at NYU Law. Her book is Dividing Lines, How Transportation
Infrastructure reinforces Racial equality. You're listening to get Connected on
(04:59):
one zero six point seven light FM. I'm mina del rio.
So jumping forward a little bit, the planning for federal
highways began in Earnest in the nineteen forties. The majority
of the highway's highway system was built in the fifties
and seventies between the fifties and seventies. Concurrently, this is
also the era of the Civil Rights Movement. So how
was segregation, racial zoning, and integration being fought socially and
(05:22):
responded to by the courts.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
So as legal segregation began to crumble during the Civil
Rights Movement, we started to see the victories in the
fifties and sixties, cities across America turned to infrastructure as
a more permanent, more visible way to enforce racial hierarchy.
And one example I focus on in the book is
the connection between the decision in Brown versus Board of Education,
(05:47):
which held that separate education for black and white kids
was unconstitutional, and the building of our interstate highway system
so Brown was decided in nineteen fifty four, and then
the Interstate Highway Act was passed in nineteen fifty six,
and following the decision in Brown communities around the country
showed that they were willing to make incredible sacrifices and
(06:10):
use every tool available to them to protect their way
of life, to really protect racial segregation. And with the
Interstate Highway Act just two years after that decision, they
used that act to really lock in and recreate in
many ways the effects of Jim Crow laws. Talking about Birmingham,
(06:31):
Alabama with their racial zoning laws. After racial zoning was
struck down, Birmingham, Alabama, led by notorious segregationist Bull Connor,
explicitly used the highways I fifty nine and I sixty
five to lock in racial segregation, built the highways in
(06:51):
places that mirrored the racial zoning laws. I talk about Indianapolis,
who used a different tool. They had redlining, and we
know that redlining indicated that there were certain communities, black
and brown communities that people were told not to invest
in We're not going to give you mortgages, we're not
going to give you loans to start businesses, and that
(07:12):
resulted in real economic devastation.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I think in New York City also, we tend to
think historically our city has a better track record, right,
But for forty years New York City public works were
commanded by Robert Moses, who was insidious in how he
went out of his way to punish black and brown communities.
And I think a lot of New Yorkers it's such
an anecdote that still like boggles the mind a bit
(07:36):
about those the low bridges on the way to the beaches.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
So Robert Moses, in many ways was the father of
so much of this because he believed in using infrastructure
not just to move people efficiently, but to shape where
people lived, who had access to public spaces in which
communities could thrive. And that meant that he was driving
expressways in parkways through low income, largely black, and neighborhoods
(08:00):
to clear them out communities that he considered to be slums,
while also protecting and preserving white, wealthier areas. But he
also believed in the durability of infrastructure, and that using
infrastructure would evade the evolution of laws. And so one
story that I tell in the book that is often
repeated is that he built the overpasses on some of
(08:23):
the parkways leading to Jones Beach too low for buses
to get through, because the buses were the mode of
transportation used by black and Puerto Rican folks in New
York City, and he wanted to make it difficult for
them to get to Jones Beach, and so if the
buses couldn't pass under the overpass, then they couldn't get
to the beach, and that that would that design policy
(08:45):
of exclusion that didn't require a single discriminatory law to function,
would outlast civil rights laws and the developments and civil
rights law.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
As a rule, aggressiveness towards buses and bus riders seems
particularly insidious even today. The story of Cynthia Wiggins in
Buffalo in nineteen ninety five is emblematic of that.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
I think, yeah, Cynthia, It's a story I learned about
during my research. A seventeen year old black woman who
worked in an upscale mall in Buffalo, and the mall
did not allow the city bus to come into the
parking lot. Other buses were allowed to come into the
parking lot, and in order to get to work every day,
then she had to race across seven lanes of traffic.
(09:30):
And one day, when she was racing across those lanes
of traffic, she was struck by a bus and killed.
And that story is repeated around the country that we
have folks who live in cities trying to get to
economic opportunity in the suburbs, needing to take the bus,
and the bus is the mode of public transportation that
(09:50):
sees the most discrimination against it because it is disproportionately
used by black and Lentino folks, and those suburban communities
doing everything that they can to keep buses out of
their communities.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
As you stayed in the book, I never would have
thought about it. Really, Bus transit receives only thirty one
percent of capital funds spent nationwide on transit, while buses
account for more than sixty percent of all trips and
trains and light rail also, are you know they're further
down on the hierarchy of transit. What is that net
result of underfunded public transit?
Speaker 4 (10:21):
Yeah, we're not investing where it's needed the most. We're
not investing in the ways that black and brown folks
disproportionately use public transit. So we're a culture that is
focused on cars, and we are building roads and highways
to make it easier for people who own and use
cars to get to where they need to go. But
black and brown folks just proportionately do not own cars
(10:43):
and are relying on other forms of public transportation. And
even when we're investing in public transportation, it is not equitable.
It is not invested in where there is the most need,
where we have most neglected, in the ways that low
income folks really need us to.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Really interesting thing you note about different street names between neighborhoods,
which is a pretty cheap and effective way to create
a sense of boundaries between communities. How does the naming
of streets even get to property values?
Speaker 4 (11:14):
Yeah, So one of the ways I talk about historically
was Atlanta, where they even wanted to spare white folks
the indignity of having to say they lived on the
same street as black folks. And so in Atlanta, as
a street move from a white neighborhood to a black neighborhood,
the street name would change and you can still see
that on maps in Atlanta, but also street names around
(11:36):
the country kind of give a signal of the nature
of the community. So I talk about the way that
Martin Luther King boulevards around the country signal that it
is a black community, and it has led to some
disinvestment because people do not want to put their businesses
on a Martin Luther King boulevard because there is a
vision of what that means. Property values are less, homes
(11:57):
are valued less, the community is just valued less. And
it's triggered by those street names. And it's a shame
because the naming of streets after civil rights heroes is
the result of decades of work of advocates who want
to recognize the important work that folks like Martin Luther
King or Malcolm X or Marcus Garvey have put into
building more equitable communities.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
But their names.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Are on streets and communities that represent the exact opposite
communities that have suffered from disinvestment and economic isolation.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You talk about how Atlanta was pretty much in a
league of its own when it came to these practices,
but to pull questions from sort of the other side
of the argument until the nineteen until the rather twenty
twenty census, Atlanta remained a black majority city. So how
were segregation techniques They're detrimental in the long run.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Yeah, even if though it's a majority black city. The
leadership wasn't right. So during the time when a lot
of this was done, there was a white mayor who
was trying to be responsive to white community and their
calls for protection, their calls and demands for protection. Atlanta
was built up in a way now that makes it
(13:07):
very difficult for anyone who lives there to get around.
It is a tremendous traffic in Atlanta, and some of
that is because of the way the highways were built.
They were built in a way not to optimize efficiency,
but to instead destroy and remove black communities and lock
in segregation. Their street grid has lots of one way
(13:27):
streets that were originally designed to make it difficult to
move from a black community to a white community, and
now it makes it difficult just to move around Atlanta.
They turned lots of through streets into cul de sacs
or dead ended them to make it difficult to get
from one neighborhood to another, and now it makes it
difficult for anyone who lives there to get around. So
(13:47):
although Atlanta is now a majority black city, it wasn't
always and the leadership was not always, and so it
was not built. It was built in a way to
lock in racial inequality and has resulted in inconvenience.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
And lack of opportunity for a lot of folks.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
You have just addressed a little bit, but I still
want to ask the question for people who are thinking,
it's just as likely that these neighborhoods would have developed organically.
There would be a white neighborhood, there would be a
black neighborhood. People are living near people who were like
them by choice.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
I think we often hear that that segregation is by choice.
Segregation is evolving. I think that that it's not true
that segregation is natural. There are so many ways that
government has intervened historically and today to facilitate that. And
until we really move beyond the idea that segregation is
(14:38):
natural and people will only want to live with the
people who are like them, and start to focus on
the many ways in which we are still encouraging, facilitating, requiring,
driving segregation, we're not going to make progress. We have
to really acknowledge the many ways that government facilitates racial segregation,
(14:58):
and we're doing it to day, not just with transportation,
but with many many other policies as well.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
As our highway system needs to be rebuilt, our subways,
all these things. These are long term projects that will
inevitably be hit by political forces from either side during
years and years of planning and debate and all these things.
It really does reinforce the permanence of some of these
decisions from fifty to sixty years ago. What do you
think or hope will be the biggest influence ultimately going forward?
(15:29):
What happens to influence it going forward in a better direction.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
We're at a point of great need, and I think
even President Trump has said that we need to invest
in transportation. And so as we're at this point where
we all recognize the need to invest in transportation, transportation
infrastructure is falling, I hope dividing lines can be an
intervention that can force us to have a different conversation
(15:53):
to build back better. I think we need a shift
in national transportation policy that forces us to reimagine how
we use transportation infrastructure to serve and support all of
our communities, including communities of color. So whether you call
it community equity focused, you call it anti racist design,
you call it equitable design, or something else. Entirely, it's
(16:15):
about not looking at our current situation as a neutral baseline,
as an equitable starting point. It is about us connecting
seemingly isolated incidents and projects to common policies and laws
and approaches that keep leading to racially inequitable, discriminatory, or
oppressive outcomes. And it's about finding ways to build the
transportation infrastructure that traditionally marginalized communities need, to connect them
(16:40):
to opportunity, to do that in a way that is efficient,
to do that in a way that is fast, to
do that in a way that is equitable, and to
do it in a way that doesn't re injure these
communities that have been so often harmed in the past.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Our guest is Deborah Archer. She is president of the
ACLU and author of Dividing Lines, How Transportation Infrastructure reinforces
Racial inequality. Debora Archer, thank you for being on Get Connected.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Thank you so much for this conversation.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven Light FM. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
of the station. If you missed any part of our
show or want to share it, visit our website for
downloads and podcasts at one oh six to seven lightfm
dot com. Thanks for listening.
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