They promised liberation but delivered something else.
For as long as Americans have been driving, cars have been synonymous with liberty — the open road, that ribbon of highway — and have been sold to us as freedom machines that both reflect and advance the national ethos. |
But a guest essay published today argues that for many drivers — in particular those who are poor or nonwhite — cars have been powerful engines of inequality. |
The essay is written by Andrew Ross and Julie Livingston, professors of social and cultural analysis at New York University. They are both members of N.Y.U.'s Prison Education Program Research Lab, part of a program at the university that offers associate's degrees to inmates at Wallkill Correctional Facility, a men's prison in Wallkill, N.Y. |
In interviews with inmates, "We noticed," Ross recently told me, with a laugh, "that guys talked about cars a lot." To some degree that talk centered around commercial aspiration: "There's a lot of embellishment of the cars they used to drive, and a lot of dreaming about the cars they'll drive when they get out." But the car talk also went in darker directions. "There are also a lot of stories about how being in a car led to their arrest and their encounters with police of all varieties while they were in a car," he said. |
Ross and Livingston's new book, "Cars and Jails: Freedom Dreams, Debt and Carcerality," grew out of those interviews and the realization that cars are vehicles for so much more than transportation. "The car also functions at the crossroads of two great systems of subjugation and immobility," as they wrote in the book, "the credit economy and the American carceral system." |
Their essay draws on that research and connects it with the Biden administration's signature legislative successes on infrastructure and climate change. The legislation is justly recognized for advancing an environmental agenda. "But without comprehensive policy efforts to eliminate discriminatory policing and predatory lending," they argue, "merely shifting from combustion to electric will do nothing to reduce car owners' ever-growing risk of falling into legal and financial jeopardy." |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
Forward this newsletter to friends to share ideas and perspectives that will help inform their lives. They can sign up here. Do you have feedback? Email us at opiniontoday@nytimes.com. |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment