Episode 305: Talking Anti-Racist Transportation Policy

Talk Policy To Me

We’re not used to thinking about transportation as a raced policy area. But, like all other policy areas, transportation policy has the potential to improve racial equity or widen racial disparities. But writer and historian Dr. Ibram X. Kendi asserts that all ideas, actions, and policies are either racist or anti-racist, removing the gray area of so-called ‘race neutrality’ in his recently published book, How To Be An Anti-Racist. This means that transportation policy – like all other policy areas – has the potential to improve racial equity, or widen racial disparities.

For the final episode of our policy design series, Talk Policy To Me host Reem Rayef interviews two transportation experts about how planners and policymakers can build transportation systems that serve all communities, and improve accessibility for those who need it most. Dan Chatman, Associate Professor at UC Berkeley’s Department of City & Regional Planning, discusses how public transit infrastructures can facilitate increased racial segregation, and describes the inequitable distribution of transit’s costs and benefits between white and non-white communities. Lateefah Simon, District 7 Representative on the BART Board of Directors and President of the Oakland-based Akonadi Foundation, makes the concept of anti-racist transportation policy concrete through discussion of current policy debates happening at the BART Board of Directors. Dan and Lateefah are passionate about centering racial equity in designing both transportation infrastructures, and the policies that we lay over those infrastructures. If you listen closely, you can hear them banging their fists on the studio table, as they drive home their points on transit justice.

The inequities of transit and transportation systems are clearly visible in the Bay Area, where BART lines and highways bisect historically Black neighborhoods, transit fares are regressive, and transit-oriented development is code for Black displacement. But the system isn’t broken beyond repair. Listen to this episode of Talk Policy To Me to learn how policymakers are integrating radical ideas of anti-racism into bureaucratic and regulatory processes to bring about justice in transportation systems, and beyond.

For more information about anti-racism, check out Ibram X. Kendi’s book, How To Be An Antiracist. It’s an impactful and important read.

For reading about equitable and just transportation policy in California, visit TransForm at www.transformca.org.

The study referenced in the interview with Dan Chatman, titled “Race, Space, and Struggles for Mobility: Transportation Impacts on African Americans in Oakland and the Bay Area” can be found here.

Thanks to the UC Berkeley Othering & Belonging Institute for the use of footage from the September 2019 talk by Ibram X. Kendi which was excerpted in this episode. The speech and panel conversation can be found in their entirety here.

See show notes and full transcript here: https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research-and-impact/news/podcast/episode-305-talking-anti-racist-transportation-policy