STALLING THE DREAM
By Meizhu Lui

Fifty years ago, the late Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a
Montgomery, Alabama bus, catalyzing history-making events.

Imagine, however, if Rosa Parks had lived in New Orleans in September 2005
and was trying to escape from the gathering clouds of Hurricane Katrina.
Would she have jumped in her car? Would she have bought a train ticket? It
is likely she wouldn¹t have found any bus seat. Would she have survived?

In light of Hurricane Katrina, millions of Americans were forced to make
such nerve-racking calculations. And their transportation options,
unfortunately, depended on race. Those with cars largely escaped. But
African-American and Latino households are much less likely than white
families to own a car, leaving us with those indelible images of people of
color crying out from the rooftops.

A great deal of attention in the last two decades has been focused on the
"digital divide," the concern that unequal access to new forms of technology
such as the internet are leaving people behind based on their class and
race. But Hurricane Katrina exposed the "internal combustion engine"
divide, the alarming disparity in car ownership that literally was the
difference between life and death for many Gulf Coast residents.

A new report on racial disparities in car ownership reveals that one in four
Black households (24 percent) and one in six Latino households (17 percent)
does not own a car. This is compared to one in fourteen white households (7
percent) who are car-less. In the eleven coastal counties with the highest
incidence and future risk of hurricanes, people without cars are
disproportionately people of color. These include counties in Houston,
Providence, New Orleans, Tampa, New York City and Miami. In Orleans Parish
New Orleans, for example, over 35 percent of African-Americans, 26 percent
of Native Americans, and 27 percent of Latinos don¹t own a car, compared to
15 percent of whites.

Emergency planning for Katrina and other preparedness efforts is heavily
focused on traffic management for those who have cars. There are also some
publicly funded emergency evacuation plans for people in institutions such
as hospitals, nursing homes and mental health facilities. But there is
inadequate planning for those who simply don¹t own cars. New Orleans had
only one-quarter of the number of buses required to evacuate all its
car-less residents.

Beyond being able to save one's life, owning a car is often a stepping-stone
toward job security and prosperity. Unfortunately, the invisible "engine"
divide also influences a person¹s ability to find and retain a decent job.
Without a car, many jobs are unreachable, and many small business ideas are
unachievable. A growing number of jobs are located outside of urban centers
on freeway beltways and in suburban communities, areas with weak or
nonexistent public transportation.

The challenge for many people of color is not only owning a car, but having
a dependable car. A twenty-year old car used for short city trips is not a
dependable vehicle for a hundred-mile journey to higher ground - or a 30
minute daily commute to a job in the suburbs. People of color tend to own
cheaper and less dependable cars. Contrary to the stereotype of the
Cadillac owning African American, at no time since 1992 has the median car
value for people of color been even half as high as the value of cars owned
by white families.

Access to a vehicle is also essential for meeting the basic necessities of
life, such as obtaining medical care or buying groceries, especially in
rural areas. A recent national study by the Children¹s Health Fund found
that lack of transportation was a leading factor in children missing
doctor's appointments. Eleven percent of African-American families and 21
percent of Latino families missed out on medical care because of
transportation issues, compared to only 2 percent of white families.

Dependence on car ownership takes a big bite out of a family budget.
Americans now spend 38 percent more on transportation than Europeans. For
example, Detroit spends twice as much as Toronto on its roads - and Toronto
spent eight times more than Detroit on public transit. As a result, Detroit
"motor city" residents spent more than twice as much as their Toronto
counterparts on transportation, including the cost of car ownership and
insurance, repairs and gas.

The "engine" divide is rooted in two larger problems: the bias toward the
private automobile in transportation planning and our nation's larger racial
wealth gap. Over the last century, urban planning and suburban sprawl have
"hard-wired" our dependence on automobiles. Federal and state governments
have consistently shifted resources away from public transportation and
toward highway construction. Only 20 percent of gas tax revenue goes toward
public transport while 80 percent goes to building and maintaining highways.
Public transportation policies in many cities have failed to catch-up with
the changing demographics of where jobs are located, increasing the
advantages of car ownership.

But the "engine" divide is part of the larger racial wealth divide. Between
2001 and 2004, the median net worth of white families increased about 6
percent after inflation to $136,000, while the black median wealth remained
unchanged at $20,000, according to the Federal Reserve. This racial wealth
gap is the legacy of several centuries of public policies and private
corporate practices that have encouraged white wealth ownership and
disadvantaged wealth-building by people of color.

In our zeal to promote an "ownership society" with broadened wealth and
assets for low-income people, policy-makers have neglected the
transportation piece of the puzzle. We need to recognize how access to
dependable transportation is a fundamental step on the road to
wealth-building. Owning a home in a new affordable suburban community that
has inadequate public transportation further isolates families that don¹t
own private cars.

For ecological and quality-of-life reasons, the answer is not necessarily to
expand private automobile ownership. The cost of private car ownership is
prohibitive for many low-income families. A growing number of communities
already suffer from massive traffic congestion and many car users suffer
from longer and longer daily commutes. More cars won¹t solve these problems.

Instead, communities need to focus on dependable public transportation
systems and job creation closer to transportation hubs. A number of cities
are encouraging business and job development closer to subway lines and
rapid bus routes. For example, the District of Columbia has encouraged
economic development on leased land near Metro stations that includes
mixed-use retail and light industrial plants. This opens up jobs to
car-less workers who have the option to walk, bike, bus or train to jobs,
reducing traffic congestion and improving the overall quality of life.

People of color bear an unfair share of the risks resulting from public
policies that are biased toward car ownership. Given the present bias in
our emergency planning, car ownership is a matter of life and death. But
not owning a car also stalls out many people of color on the road to
prosperity, closing the highway to jobs that require private transportation.

These problems are solvable, but we must first see the invisible divides
that exist around us. Hurricane Katrina not only dramatically revealed the
grotesque racial and class divisions in our country, but also pointed to
some obvious causes, such as our car dependent economy. An inclusive and
dependable public transportation system should be at the top of the list.

***

Meizhu Lui is the Executive Director of United for a Fair Economy and the
co-author of the new report, "Stalling the Dream: Cars, Race and Hurricane
Evacuation," available at www.faireconomy.org.

 

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