Can A Highway Be Bigoted?

Yes, actually. Also a bus route and even a sidewalk (or their absence). A conversation with ACLU President Deborah Archer.

Last night at Washington’s Politics and Prose bookstore I interviewed Deborah Archer, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, about her fascinating new book Dividing Lines, which details how our transportation infrastructure—interstates, surface roads, bus routes, subway lines, even sidewalks—is rigged against African Americans. The book complicates the Abundance liberalism argument advanced by Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, Yoni Appelbaum, and Marc Dunkelman. (I discuss what’s missing in these books here and here.)

Local regulation can abet racial exclusion, as Klein et. al. argue. But it can also be used to check it. President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill, which President Donald Trump put on hold (probably out of pique that Biden was able to pass an infrastructure bill after Trump, despite naming practically every other week “Infrastructure Week,” could not)—Biden’s infrastructure bill includes provisions mandating that projects be screened for racial bias. That means delay. It also means upholding the principle of racial equality. Life is complicated!

Anyway, Archer had some interesting stories to tell, some of them involving contemporary figures like Newt Gingrich and Larry Hogan. This ugly chapter of American history is unfolding in real time. You can watch our discussion here.