![]() ![]() That is why the recently released PBS documentary Driving While Black: Race, Space and Mobility in America - first broadcast in October 2020 - is such a welcome and significant intervention. Suffice it to say, the dynamics of race and mobility are still not part of the public discourse or the national political debate. These stunning findings inspired an interview with the researchers published in the New York Times and a smattering of op-eds in a few big newspapers, but received no attention whatsoever on network TV or cable news programs. One such study, of some twenty million traffic stops by police in the state of North Carolina over a 14-year period, revealed that Black drivers were 63% more likely to be stopped by police than white drivers, even though Black people on average drive 16% less. Similarly, while the recent outcry over systemic racial bias in policing has focused increased media attention on research showing that African American drivers are far more likely to be stopped, ticketed and arrested than white drivers, the enormous body of evidence documenting huge disparities in traffic stops by race turned up by every single scholarly study on the subject ought to be covered more regularly and in greater depth. No doubt, the fact that this deterioration disproportionately affects urban-dwelling Blacks and Latinos, who are far more likely to take public transit on a regular basis than white urban residents, has a lot to do with this. For instance, the dramatic deterioration of the nation’s urban public transit systems rarely merits a mention by big (suburban-oriented) corporate news outlets (although there have been a few notable exceptions). Yet, even in the midst of a national conversation about race and racism, the ways that race, racial inequality and discrimination limit people of color’s access to transportation and constrict their freedom of movement continue to be ignored by the dominant media as well as by policy makers and politicians. The dynamics of race and mobility are still not part of the public discourse or the national political debate Thanks in large part to the Black Lives Matter movement and the waves of grassroots protest that erupted after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor over the summer of 2020, the corporate media have - at long last - devoted more resources to reporting on the devastating impact of racial segregation and structural racism on communities of color in Chicago, as well as other large cities. Above all, race circumscribes where people can go - and specifically limits where in the region it is safe for Black people to drive or stop for gas. ![]() Race constrains where people in Chicago work, eat, worship and play. Race determines, to a significant extent, where residents of the Chicagoland area live, their social networks, their income and wealth, the educational opportunities they enjoy, their relationship to the criminal justice system and the police, their access to medical care and other public services, and their overall life expectancy. ![]() The Chicago region remains one of the most racially segregated urban areas in the country, exhibiting persistently high levels of African-American-white segregation and Latino-white segregation compared to other (often very segregated) US metropolitan areas. Steve Macek reviews the PBS documentary Driving While Black: Race, Space and Mobility in America and discusses the history of race and mobility in the United States.Īs a white person living and working in the Chicago metropolitan region, I am constantly reminded of the degree to which race and racial segregation shapes the American urban landscape.
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