Hey, welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the Daily Show podcast that goes a little deeper into segments and topics that originally aired on the show. This is what this podcast like. This podcast like. You know when you get an unexpected first class upgrade. You know, you thought you was gonna be in coach with a middle seat with a kid with the cheeto dust and he's trying to touch your hair and you're fighting somebody for an arm rest, and then that flight attendant emerges like a goddess and there's clouds around there and she floats down to your row and she looks at you. She goes, are you Mr Wood? And I go yes, and she goes, welcome the first class. And now you're sipping champagne. You've got extra leg room as a DJ, cutting and scratching your live flat seats. That's what this podcast is. We are the first class upgrade that you didn't know you needed and that you didn't see coming. I'm Roy Wood, Jr. And today we're talking about the building of a America's highways, the lasting impact these highways had on black communities, and the opportunity to rebuild new highway infrastructures and heal these historic wounds, roll the clip highways. They're the vital arteries that criss cross America, helping the country's truckers transport goods, its workers commute to and from the office, and it's O J's flee the L A p D. What you may not know is that when America first started building its highway system back in the nineteen fifties, people were often forced to leave their homes to make room for all these fancy new roads. And guess which people were moved the most. Yes. The Federal Aid Highway Act of nineteen fifty six was one of the largest public works projects in American history. It added forty one miles to our interstate system. It became a pattern in cities across the country. Poor and minority residents were displaced to make way for highways, and white residents used those highways to commute in to the city for jobs and commute back home at night. Planners had an uncanny ability to pick out the black neighborhoods, and the fact that they destroyed black neighborhoods wasn't the only racist thing about how highways were designed. You see, around the time the highways were being built. Segregation laws were being struck down in America. But lucky for the racists, they didn't need the laws to enforce segregation, because now the highways did it for them. Joining me today is Daily Show writer Randall. Otis Randall. Great to have your back on again. Good to see you again, my friend. I'm sorry to always bring you home when we're talking racism, Randall, but it is what it is. You're a black man from Florida. You are a specialist. You know you gotta do what you're good at. We're also joined by author of the Vanderbilt Law Review article entitled White Men's Roads through Black Men's Homes. She's an INVITU law professor and president of the a c l U, Professor Deb Brooke Archer. Professor Archer. Welcome aboard, beyond the scenes by that. Thank you for having me well, thank you, and thank you for them the wonderful book arrangement in the background as well. Those those books are wonderful. And I can tell you read them books because they're all a little uneven. She keep going back and checking them, every last one of them. See this is how you know she read them books, Randall. They're not color coordinating. That is true. It's the standard law professor background. Yeah, I don't trust anybody with color coordinated books. You just went to barns And how you even know them books? You probably printed up some sleeves at FedEx office. Anyway, let's talk racism, Randall. I'll start with you this segment on the show. Can you walk us through how this idea came about and how it was conceived? Yeah. So it was around the time, uh, where the Build Back Better bill was being discussed, and I remember seeing a segment on Tucker Carlson Show where he was talking about it and kind of belittling Pete of Jazz, saying that there's racism in the roads of America. Roads can't be racist. You can build racism into a road. Roads are made of sand and gravel and asphalt. Ask any road builder. Roads cannot be racist anymore than toasters or sectional couches can be racist. They are inanimate objects. They're not alive. A pretty easy way to come up with ideas is like, find whatever Tucker Carlson saying and be like, that's probably wrong. And so then I did a little bit more research into it, looked up some architects, Robert Moses was one of them I looked into and that's kind of what jump started the idea of seeing how racism or prejudice can work its way into the infrastructure. So, then, Professor Archer, because what's really interesting when we do these deep dives on the show, it's always the first thing is how far back do we want to go to show the impetus for this particular form of discrimination and racism. Professor Archer, I guess the first thing we need to do is break down how the interstate system was created and designed in the fifties and sixties, and how did that starting point create a lot of the class and equalities that we see today. And you were talking about how far back do we go? And I think we can go even further back, just to set a context, Black people have always had a fraud relationship with transportation, and transportation has always been both a reflection and a driver of inequality. You can you can think back to plus the versus Ferguson and Jim Crow, separate but equal, Think back to the Green Book driving while black, and our interstate highway system is part of that tradition. It really did shape where black people lived what was taken from them, how they were valued, the places they had access to, the wealth they could accumulate in the opportunities that they had access to. So, as you mentioned, the officials who built the interstate highways system in the nineteen fifties in nineteen sixties were often motivated explicitly by racism, and they placed little value on black communities, and federal and state highway builders purposefully targeted black communities to make way for these really massive highway projects, and so in states around the country, highways disproportionately displaced or destroyed black households. But even if that wasn't the most efficient way for the freeway to go this way, like it might have been more efficient for the freeway to cut through the rich side of town to form the interchange with the other freeway, they would still just know they're gonna run it, run it down around the corner about our dockies percent. They were targeting black communities, avoiding white communities. Black communities where the path of least resistance, the least political power. Um they placed little value on black homes. White communities resistant. But we also know that white communities requested it. Some of the highways were placed at the explicit request of white communities, UH to form a barrier between black and white communities for white communities that fared um black migration. There was a statistic that you know, I think Randall and our team dug up that the United States Department of Transportation estimated that almost a half a million households and more than a million people were displaced nationwide as a result of this highway building. Now, when these people were displaced, where they given adequate compensation to at least go find a new crib somewhere, No, they weren't, absolutely not. Many people were not given any compensation, And in black communities, they just valued those homes less, valued the communities less. So people were not given um sufficient compensation, compensation the real value of their home. They were not giving enough compensation to go find a new house right in a similar community, a similar house, And so that contributed to kind of the economic um and segregative impact of the highways. It's interesting because you know, when I think of this UH in terms of white communities have all this power to stop rows being built in their area. I never thought of it in terms of like requesting it, like making a proactive to make it go through certain or other communities. It's kind of like, uh, like the very new specific evil X man power, you know, like magneto can control metal and shoot it everywhere. It's like, all right, I got concrete, I'm gonna just blow it through your neighborhood. My job is to make you feel sad and depressed dealing with the droned out noise of the freeway in your neighborhood, hour after hour after infrastructure man coming this summer now Randall, Professor Archer has given us a very present back story on all of this. How to hell did you'll try to figure out a way to make this funny because you know, we can go backstory on this is how it was created. But then what we also do in these deep dives on the show is that you have to show what were the long lasting impacts on black communities? How did you all go through the process of sparsing? Now so many insidious like because I'll be honest, this is well hidden racism. This was one like we didn't learn about this one in black history growing up in Alabama. They didn't teach the freeway racism. So as you're learning these new things and seeing just how deeply embedded discrimination has been built into how our nation was put together. How are y'all sparsing out the facts versus the sadness versus the punch lines. How are you all trying to set up the proper ratio for a story like this. I feel like the sadness and kind of the novelty of it, and also just the general um energy that people feel towards infrastructure actually makes it easier to do, you know, like if like I don't really drive when I'm in New York, but I used to drive all the time when I was in Florida, and driving just pisces you off constantly. It is one of the most annoying things. I cannot stand it. You constantly have road rage, and I feel like, wherever you have all that energy, that energy can be redirected towards humor. And so yeah, I feel like you got to throw the broccoli in there, like let people know, like the history in the background of what's going on. But since it's such a common experience, you know, driving through these roads, having annoying highways that are like blaring loud if you live anywhere close to them, or even just walking by. I feel like that relatability UM and that energy makes the issue UM, even though it's new, much more easy for people to grasp once you break down the basic building blocks of what the issue is, Professor Archer, did the government know how insidious this was and the the long term implifications that would happen if we're talking about health from the state of pollution constantly passing through, if we're talking about generational wealth and power, property value going down. If white folks didn't want it, how did they sell Black people on it? Because they, let's be honest, black folks in the sixties, we was out there in the streets. So how did they sell black people on, Hey, we're gone tear down a bunch of your houses and not get you no money for it. But it's gonna it's gonna be convenient. They didn't really need to sell black people on it. They didn't feel they needed to. Um. There was full awareness of the impact that was this was gonna. Have you mentioned Robert Moses earlier? Robert Moses at this time, after the Interstate Highway Act was passed in nineteen fifty six, he said that the new highway program was going to affect our entire economy and also our economic and social structure and leave a permanent UM imprint on our communities and our people. And it was gonna be the framework. And he knew that UM and and he was right. And so the interstate highway system connected white communities but destroyed Black communities and really changed the physical, social, and economic characteristics of our communities. Black communities fought back. That's where the phrase white men's roads through Black men's homes came from. That was the slogan UM that people in Washington, d C. Had used to resist the highway um and they were successful. People in New Orleans were successful, but most communities, despite incredible efforts, despite litigation, were not successful in fighting back. And we're talking thriving communities that already had some sense of economic empowerment and infrastructure already in place, Yes we are. You know. They did this under often under the the title of slum removal or blight removal, but it really was vibrant communities that were being targeted um for for displacement. And then in a way that almost sets up white flight because it's like a white people, we get a quick as wayf you get out of here and get over that to the suburbs. Real fest and showing your commute to the job at the factory. You want to you okay with this plan? Hell yeah, green lighted. It's absolutely right. The highway connected white people who were moving to the suburbs with opportunities in the city. The black people were prevented by discrimination from moving to the suburbs as well, and we're trapped in the city as economic opportunity. Um was leaving. This has nothing to do what we're talking about. We moved to Birmingham in the early eighties, you know, as crack was coming in in white flight was happening. There were nothing funnier and sadder than that one white resident in the hood who couldn't afford to flight. I don't know where you grew up in Florida. And to believe it, tell yourself that one white person is still left in the hood. Oh man, not with some comedy because you could get like, I know, you broke. You couldn't even afford to get to pack up your bady town. You know you're talking about Birmingham. And that's one of the examples of really where they were incredibly explicit about the goal of using the highway to lock in segregation UM and so in Birmingham, city and state officials used I fifty nine and to help maintain residential segregation. In the nineties, Birmingham, like most other cities in the South, had adopted a racial zoning ordinance that divided the city into racial districts and required the legal separation of black and white neighborhoods. And there was just one black neighborhood um for single family housing. The Supreme Court had already struck down racial zoning in nineteen seventeen, but Birmingham didn't care, and it wasn't until nineteen fifty that a different federal court struck it down. And so Birmingham officials, led by notorious segregationist Bill Connor, who was Birmingham's Public Safety commissioner, used the construction of Interstate fifty nine in to advance their segregationist agenda. And so those highways are ultimately built along a route that almost precisely mirrors the racial zoning boundaries that were included in that old racial zoning ordinance. Man, I'm hoping the lawmakers don't remember how effective this is. I feel like if I was Trump would be like, look, I'm not building a wall. I'm just gonna make a big gas highway across the southern board. It's gonna be really loud, it's gonna be a lot of pollution, and it's not a wall, it's a highway. So you say New Orleans fought bag Are there any because it seems like when we talk about this and the racism attached to the design of a lot of these freeways, that it seemed to be extremely heinous in the South. For there any other cities in the South specifically where they lost this battle. I think basically every state in the South has an example where they lost this battle. Um Randall, you were talking about being from Florida, and I think about, um the destruction of a black community to make way for nine D five in the Overtown section of Miami as an example of where they used the highway to remove a black community. And so I tour through the center of Overtown, which was this really economically vibrant, self sufficient black community that was considered to be the center of economic and cultural life for black people living in Miami, and the destruction of Overtown by the highway was the realization of a decades long campaign by white business leaders who wanted to remove black residents and to claim that land to expand Miami's Central business district. And they had tried many other tactics UM to limit its success, and the highway gave them the tool that they needed. So by the late nineteen sixties, despite efforts by Overtime to fight back, overtime was dominated by the highway. UM. There was no corner of it that was saved. They demolished homes and churches, apartment buildings, they removed UM many many businesses. About forty people lived Black people lived in Overtown before the highway expansion, and only about eight thousand remained in this hollowed out community afterwards. UM and really tried to make a go of it. Living underneath the highway with the pollution, with the noise cut off physically UM from opportunity. But you can see if you visit over town today that there's still they still have the scars of that destruction. I'm curious about that in the sense of like you could you said, these business these white business owners have been trying for years to UM attack or take over this area, Like what is it about the highway that was that made it easier as an easier avenue of attack as opposed to their other messo other methods like what's it easier to sell? What's it either to package as something and that it's not both of those. It was easier to UM to sell the removal and destruction of this community because it was going, you know, it's part of this big nationwide effort to connect us and to improve UM. It provided money UM to facilitate the building of the highways. And then once you were going to build the highway, the state and the local government had the tool of eminent domain to just take your house from you. You didn't have to consent, you didn't have to volunteer to move, you didn't have to agree. They took your house and they gave you what they thought and you deserved UM and forced you to move. I love that imminent domain sounds more per fessional than debo or strong armed, like you just snatched it, snatched it deft, you know. And then you think about what happened in Montgomery, Alabama, where I believe you correct me, I from wrong, professor, where like they could have either built the freeway on the open piece of land where what nobody. So they could have run it straight through some black folks homes, and they chose deliberately to go through the black people's homes. That's right, they did, And so it shose to me that they really weren't ashamed, didn't really try to even hide the intent behind this. This is maybe a very dumb point, but I don't know if you've seen that movie up where the Pixar movie with the the balloon house. Yes, the balloon balloon started. The house is floating, remember that the whole movie starts because of an eminent domain Like there's like, look, we want your house because we want to build stuff right here, and the whole the guy just like, no, I'm taking balloons up to escape this. So I'm like, all right, So people should have sympathy for the situation. Can be sad for this old cross of the old man to get in this hout stake, and just imagine that times I wish that. But none of the black people had balloons that could carry their homes away. I'm should back in those days, black people weren't even allowed to buy balloons. I'm sure there was some anti happiness clause Randa, what did you learn doing this piece? Well two parts, what did you learn? And how do you think black people's lives would have looked differently if these interstates had not been put where they were where they were put. I guess learning is just how difficult it is to um kind of like respond to a project like this after it's already been put in place, like I because you know, a bridge is something that's very difficult to remove. It's not just like legislation where you can have someone sign it away and now the law school is shifted. It's like this is people build their whole lives around where they drive, where hot where parts of travel are. I mean, if you've lived in New York, there's a whole l trank or fuffle years ago, and like tons of people moved just because you know this line might be shut down for a little bit. So it's kind of just seeing like how effective this is um putting in infrastructure when used in a malicious manner to reverse, and then how it could affect black people. I mean, I feel like it would affect black people in the same way that like a lot of discrimination does, which is it has this immediate effect that this significantly harms a group of people. But then what's potentially even more um detrimental than that is the downstream of fact is like, all right, you lose a ton of capital, you lose a ton of land, and so over the years, that's a ton of wealth and money that can't grow from itself. So you lose a ton of potential wealth for a massive group of people. And professor, how do you think black people's lives you know, would have been I know for sure we would have been healthier and that would have stopped a lot of the cancer rate. But yeah, what what do you think if we could have reversed this, how would this have benefited black people? So I think that fundamentally, we know that where you live matters, and so we created communities um where we have um to put a block around along racial lines. We have created communities where we have limited access to jobs and opportunity. We are forcing communities of color to bear a disproportionate share of environmental harms. Building the highways in the community kind of labeled black communities and sacrifice zones that then allowed government to put in hazardous waste. We put in major roads, we put in UH put train tracks through everything became housed in black communities. We also blocked off access, isolated those communities. We stick but highs those communities. So the layers and layers and layers of um, of inequality, and the layers of harm to those to those communities. They could have looked like other communities, like every other community. We like to um have this division of good community versus bad community, But we faith we created those communities. Our policies and our actions created those communities. We talk about the wealth gap between white people and black people. A lot of our wealth in this country comes through home ownership, comes through the own ownership of land, and we took that from black people. We we took their homes and we took their land across the country, and we're still living with those consequences today. Do you have any personal relationships with anyone that's been affected by this issue. In the course of my research, I have spoken to a lot of people who have their families, their lives, their childhood has been impacted by the highway. They often talk about UM sitting there and witnessing the pain that their parents were going through, that they had spent decades saving up and making payments to own this home and it was going to be taken away from them. I've talked to some people who UM talk about the pain of watching their neighborhood be torn apart, brick by brick and building by building. Someone who told me UM that their their neighborhood that used to be beautiful and UM a joy where they would play in the park and they would play jump rope in the street became overrun by rats because the rats were displaced too, and they were in their homes and they were forced to move out. It's hard for folks who who lost their homes. I spoke to some people Indianapolis and they talked about UM. Their their home is under the highway and they mean that decades ago the highway that ran through Indianapolis took their home from them and it is now under the highway and they still feel pain by that. I spoke to a woman in Syracuse whose family still will not drive over one because of the pain that they have experienced of having their home taken to build. I any one, well, after the break, I want to dig in a little bit more on the public transportation. Transportation as a whole and the inequities that exist within it. And I need to tell you all the story about rodding the bus in Birmingham and how the public bus system. We'll talk about in a second. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back on. Let's talk a little bit more about just transportation as a whole. Like let's just not go Okay, we understand the freeways, but that's one facet of the Department of Transportation. What are some of the other ways that transportation policy and infrastructures have impacted Black communities? Professor, Yeah, transportation has always been both a reflection and the driver of inequality. Communities of color often forced to kind of host all the burdens of our transportation system and get to enjoy a few of the benefits. UH. The inequality that we see the highway, it's in our roads and our street grids. There's an important civil rights case called Memphis versus. Green. In nineteen seventy four, at the request of white residents, the city of Memphis closed off a street that connected an all white UH neighborhood to a predominantly black one. And in this important case, Memphis versus Screen, the United States Supreme Court rejected a challenge by members of the black community who challenged this, stating that the road closure was just an inconvenient The court called it a routine burden of citizenship, but Justice Thurgod Martial, dissenting Notifum noted that it was really a powerful symbolic message and that it was a way for white people to keep black people off their streets. And so that's just one way, um that that we see it. But it's in community around the country, they use street grid layouts, dead ended roads to make it difficult, um to get from black communities to white communities. One way streets to influence racial demographics through exclusion and isolation. Atlanta is an incredible example of using the streets in that way and community on the country, street safety is often dictated by race and class. Black people bear the brunt of roadway injuries, in part because predominantly black neighborhoods are less likely to have crosswalks, warning signs, and other pedestrian safety measures like just a regular sidewalk, just a regular and a light. Can I get a street light so people could see me? Exactly? Many blackmuns don't have that sidewalk, They don't have street lights. Yet we have high speed roadways that are akin to many highways coursing coursing through them there. I mean, and this is all and you're talking present day stuff like we because we're not talking back of the bus, colored bathrooms in the train station, segregated water fountain, like we're at least past that. But it's seems like it just has been remixed into something new. It's been layered, right, So it's the highways on top of then the roads on top of the sidewalks on top of lack of other infrastructure for UM pedestrian infrastructure. It is really layered, and it is current. Lots of studies going on today about the impact and UM that it's having in communities. I mean, this may be anycdonal, but I like riding my bike in the city a lot, and two things stick out of me. One because I use those city bikes. And when I go to black areas, I'm like, damn, there is one of these per maybe like five miles, and so I don't see any bike lanes. I'm like, I'll be going on a white area. I'm like, all right, I'm on this nice safe bike lane that eventually I'm like I am dodging traffic like I'm in fast and furious a right, now, give me some bike lades. Yeah, there's definitely hurdles as well with just the bus system now in the present day. So so growing up, I remember I had a car in high school, but it was a very shoddy car and you know every month it was down for two months type of car. And so something as simple as going to the mall, which Birmingham, the mall is a sojourn from the west side, all of it. Like it's two buses in a connection and the bus on the weekend, the last bus from the White Mall from the Galleria was at six thirty. The mall don't close till nine. So even trying to get a job when I had a car, I had to think about the bus route in the time it was taking. Can I get the last But but for whatever reason, on the Black side of town you can get a bus us late at seven or eight, which was for Birmingham terms, that was a very very late bus. But like just the way the busses were scheduled, they were scheduling in such a way that if you're gonna come our hand shop, you're gonna come during the day, You're gonna come crack a dawna, you're gonna take your butt home. But you can forget about working out there because you can't even get to like and even when you live in like say in Hoover, it's a forty five minute walk to the button. The bus ain't going all through the white neighborhood, is going to the edge of the white neighborhood. And you meet me back here if you want to go back to the black side of town. So how do you when we talk about the legislation of this, how do you prove that because this is this is the type of this is that shifty, gelatinous type of racism. This isn't as concrete. This is one that people can go, well, you know, funding we can't take the bus out that way? How do we create better legislation to undo all of this? Professor? Can that even be done? I would like to speak to that situation that you describe, because that's exactly the situation we see around the country where we have um particularly around buses which are disproportionately used by people of color, Buses that only get you to the edge of the white community, but won't take you far into the white community. Buses that stopped running at a certain hour. White communities around the country have resisted having bus stops in their communities because they don't They'll say, we don't want crime. But we all know what they mean when they say we don't want crime. Um. They they stop buses early. And as we see more jobs moved from inner cities and um and cities into the suburban rings, it makes it difficult for people to access economic opportunity, to be able to get to work. UM. I spoke with someone who UM lives in Michigan and takes a bus to their job at the mall. But the bus only gets them far enough where after that they have to get off and walk two miles UM to get to their job at the mall. There's a story of a woman in upstate New York. The bus could not go into the parking lot of the mall. It couldn't get you all the way to the mall. The bus could only drop you off on the black side of the highway. And then she had to try to traverse the highway to get to work, and she was hit by a car and she died. UM. And so we have to push back against the way that white communities are denying access based on public transportation when we know what that is about. The challenge with our laws is that they don't get at that kind of um a morphous discrimination that you talked about. They don't get at impact. We have a legal system that is firmly grounded in challenging instances where there are this proof, hard proof. Someone calls you the N word, someone says we don't want black people, and that just doesn't work, UM with the kind of racism that we are challenging and experiencing today. It doesn't help us, um get at these deeply entrenched inequality that's in our system that can be invisible to people if you take a quick look and as wild to go from. You're sitting in the back of the bus too, all right, we're just gonna get rid of the bus being pretty much pretty much. Oh, I could tell you like that. That has always been one of the biggest issues that I've had, you know, and I love you know, I love Birmingham, it's home, but mass transportation has always been a hurdle. It is and it remains a hurdle to this day. Randal when you all are assembling these stories, who decides when it's time to put the pencil down? Because this is a deep rabbit hole because like, honestly, you can get into transportation, but then if we'll get to united second on this, professor, you can get into how transportation intersects with housing inequity and education inequity and all of those policies all working in concert to create the racism gumbo that I like to call or you know, to fay whatever you prefer. Randall Um, when do you all make the decision to finally put the pencils down and go, okay, this is all we can cover on this topic. I mean, it is difficult because there is a bunch of stuff in the gumbo, as you say, but you know, same with gumbo, you can only eat so much before you about. It has pass after get the items, so you kind of it's kind of like a feeling, and it's also mixed with Luckily, time itself is a little bit of a limited because the segment has to come out eventually, and since we wanted to tie it to the infrastructure bill, was like, all right, well this segment has to get out before that bill either passes or fails. So it's a mix of just intuition, but also the context around whatever the segment is professor to that point of so many different things working in concert. You know, when we talk about you know, these different factors from housing to education policy in addition to transportation impacting black communities access to opportunity, Like, how do you decide which part of the problem to attack first, because you know, we were talking federal housing mandates, local housing policies, you've got public education systems, employment discrimination, you've got crooked banks not loaning your money to get the house to help rebuild the hood, and you have the highway system. Are these issues that can be tackled one by one or do they all have to be taken down at the same time. Definitely, not one by one, all at the same time. We have to have a conservative effort to tear apart all these systems, all these systems of oppression, all these systems of inequality. They feed each other, um, they drive each other, and so we have to really work on attacking all at the same time. Often transportation is forgotten about in that conversation. We talk about criminal legal system, reform, housing, voting, um economic opportunity. We forget about transportation, but transportation is far more than a means of just moving people back and forth. Transportation systems shape who gets to feel like they belong, who gets to enjoy access to opportunity, who gets to live with safety and dignity. Transportation infrastructure is the infrastructure of equitable education, of good health, of economic opportunity, and really of a vibrant democracy. We're talking about fixing our democratic process and challenging the ways that we are making it harder for black people and other people of color to vote. One example, um that we've seen is the closing of polling places. So a black community used to have twelve polling places and now legislation passes and there's one polling place there. One of the reasons why that's a challenge is because of transportation, people have no way to get to that one polling place. UM. So it's all inter interconnected, and I'm glad that transportation and infrastructure is really now part of the conversation about civil rights and racial equality. On the other side of the coin, though, is there or was there a degree of freedom that black people felt from having the interstates and going fine, you don't the buses trip and we're cool. I was finally able to afford a car. Now I can drive and get to everywhere I want to go. Absolutely, it's certainly offered some measure of freedom where black people didn't have to deal with segregate the back of the bus and segregated buses. They didn't have to wait and segregated UM waiting rooms. But black car ownership and driving on the interstate opened up a whole new body of discrimination targeting black people. Um. I mentioned driving while black and the need for the Green Book because black people often did not arrive at their destination safely because they didn't know what communities were safe to stop and where they could stop to get gas, where it was going to be safe, um to stop at a hotel, and so there were dangers that opened up with the with the freeway and so yeah, it's certainly had so many positives, absolutely, but a lot of challenges. So we gotta attack this issue and all these problems at the same time. Can currently like in the pend ended today random you can't just take down. Yeah, I never even thought of that, Like that is one of my favorite things about riding the somewhere of the bus is like, look, I can't get pulled over right now. I say that, but I actually have been on a bus that's been pulled on for some now. That's kind of take it. I don't know how they do it. These are some of the most inventive police officers of all time. After the break, we're going to talk about some people that are trying to attack this issue and be a part of the solution. We need to break down on Joe Beezy's Build Back Better Bill and h Also some opponents of everything that we've talked about today. You know, not everybody's going to agree with this. This is a very interesting topic. We'll bring it home after the break. This is beyond the scenes we're learning here. According to Professor Archer, the only way to change transportation is to also change housing inequity, and also change educational inequity, and also change employment inequity, and we have to attack it all at the same time. The way, Will Smith and Jeff Goldbloom was installing the virus on the alien mothership while down on Earth, the President and a drunk Randy Quaid were getting ready to shoot missiles at the alien mothership at the exact same time, we have to coordinate an attack just like that. That was what you were saying, Professor Archer, right, you said, it's just like Independence Day, just like it, just like it exactly. So if we compared to Independence Day, then Joe Biden's first missile at this monstrosity of transportation and equity is his bill Back Better Bill. Where do you see that infrastructure Bill in terms of the efficacy of it to be able to affect some degree of racial equality. I think it's not only the Infrastructure Bill, but also um his broader commitment to racial equity and racial justice and transportation that we hear from President Biden also members of his administration, And I think the Infrastructure Plan holds tremendous promise. It could be truly transformative because it represents a historic investment in urban communities and communities of color. But that alone does not mean it's going to advance racial equity. The bill includes billions of dollars to reconnect neighborhoods that were cut off by highways and to ensure new projects increase opportunity and advance racial equity, environmental justice, promote affordable access um Members of the administration have used the phrase restore and reconnect, But there's still a lot of open questions about how that's actually going to work because it takes far more than just a stated commitment to racial equality. Is going to take more than a one time and infusion of capital and investment in these communities before we really see a fundamental change. And Randall, that's the part of it where I feel like we don't always get to live within the show, this idea that here's how the problem started, here's what's happening today. Damn we're out of time. Hope you laughed. I wouldn't. I would just wish there was a way to really get into like how we think the country would look in five to ten years on the other side of Biden, Like I know, like there's there's a legitimate analysis aspect of it, Professor Archer, but also like what if there was just a bus ryding through a white neighborhood at ten thirty at night? Do you understand how hilarious of the sketch for me? Like that just makes me laugh. Like in the studies that you've done on the Bill, Randall, how do you think things will be different in the next five to ten years? Honestly, if I don't know, if I'm being fully honest, I really don't know. It could um, you know, like the professor Saide bringing together all these communities, UM provide more, you know, just opportunity for the groups of evolved. Or I feel like what a lot of things that happened is there could be massive pushback. So you know, in the same way there's pushback in the past that divided all these neighborhoods, it could be pushed back. It's like, all right, um, black people are easy to transport now wheels and bands, all right, and now people flying cars and example walk all right. So it's hard for me to know because I feel like pushback could be so strong against any type of advancements. It's it feels like there's just this huge spectrum of what could happen. It could we just need this utopian projects, or it could just be like another transformation of how people push back against um equity to that to that point about the city bikes earlier, Randall, I feel that way about electric cars, like there ain't no way to charge him in the hood right now, and even if you wanted to be efficient and go green as a black person in a certain part of town. You're not gonna have a lot of places where you park. You know, Family Dollin and Otto zoning got the charge in port parking space. Yet I agree that there's and likely to to see that much change in five or ten years. Maybe in ten years we'll see a physical difference with this, with this funding highways being replaced with recess highways or a place with street grids, highways capped with a pedestrian bridge to reconnect UM these communities, but it's going to take efforts, sustain efforts unlike we've seen before, to restore economic empowerment UM that does not also become a tool for displacement. It's not gonna be easy, and as the nursery rhyme says, it's hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Weaving cities back together, rebuilding them UM is going to be really challenging. And as Randall said, there's as much risk UM as there is potential right now because the same people who suffered UM during the original build communities of color, their homes are still in the way of the bulldozers. As we try to reimagine and and rebuild the possibility of short term and long term displacement is there again, the possibility of losing their homes, It's there again. Racism and classism are still woven deeply into the fabric of American society, and um those forces are going to drive even this new change. I see it in South Carolina where we're working with a community in Conway, South Carolina that's trying to fight back against a new road that's being built with new funds but targeting a black community doing what you described, hitting all the black houses, but miraculously avoiding a white storage facility, a white owned storage facility. Um So, there are a lot of challenges moving forward. The moment has promised, but the moment has risks as well. Okay, so then to the point about Conway, South Carolina. So Pete Boutage said that races is physically built into some of our highways. If that is true, how do we rebuild new highways without repeating some of the same mistakes of the past and make sure that those things are that what you're talking about is taken into consideration. Like you're talking about recess highways, you you sit them low, you build a bridge over them. Boston did the whole big dig where they literally put the freeway under the city. I know every city is not going to have the type of terrain that lends itself to that type of you know engineering, But how do we get the engineers on board? How do we get the construction companies on board? How do you get the zoning and the planning people on board with understanding as we rebuild and repair new highways. How do we get these groups to take it with the same level of gravity as as you and as President Biden and as Buda. You have to get all those people on board. And you have to get white communities on board because they're gonna have to host more of of the the unwanted aspects and they have in the past. I think broadly, racial equity has to be central in both the process and the outcome. We have to UM know that it's it's not just about the absence of a physical divider of a highway, but creation of conditions for the community to flourish. We need to embrace this infrastructure change as a catalyst for rebuilding. We need to explore the dynamics and models of community control and um really deepen ways of democratic decision making in these communities, allowing communities to participate, but also allowing them to exercise some power in deciding what happens to their UM community. And so it's it's it's complicated in so many ways. We need to address all of the compounded harm and the multiple layers of harm. We need to help the folks who have been displaced be able to return to their communities, sometimes getting something that may look akin to reparations UM, but support for returning UM. And dealing with the fact that these communities are in many ways considered to be, as I said, sacrifice zones. So you moved the highway, but black and Latino people are still going to live with pollution because we put so many other things in those communities. All of that has to change. Are there any places in America or many or UM cities in the world where like this is kind of like a north star for how we want to build or rebuild? Yeah's it right? Yeah? I don't know anyone has it right as in terms of here that it's all done and they got it right. There are lots of people who are doing it better. And I think wold promise Indianapolis. I think is an example of this incredibly, incredibly diverse community effort that's centering the voices and perspective of those who were most deeply impacted by the highway, that continued to be most deeply impacted by the highway. They're providing tools, educational tools so that community members can knowledgeably and really participate, meaningfully participate in the process. And they're doing it over the long term. They're starting the process now even though that highway is ultimately not going to be replaced for another UM five or ten years, and so that's one example of doing it better. They're thinking about how to bring in all aspects of their community. So they're thinking about long term sustained support for UM small businesses. They're thinking about affordable housing and how to build affordable housing, sustain and protect home ownership by people of color in the community. They're thinking about all those pieces that we talked about needing to be needing to be considered. So that's one example I think of people who are thinking about how to do it better. Okay, now you talk about reparations, and we know reparations ain't gonna come strictly in the form of money. As we talk about ways to prevent this from happening again in communities like Indianapolis who are doing things to make sure that in the future things are better. Is there a way to repair what has been done up until now to these black communities that were displaced and that lost generational wealth, and that lost opportunities, and that are dealing with chronic health issues. I'm sure if we pulled health statistics of whatever cancer per capita near the pollution versus further away from the pollution, we will probably be shocked by those numbers. Is there a way to fix what has been done so far? Though? I don't know that we would ever be able to undo undo all the harm and meaning that these communities will catch up and be where they should have been. But that's what build back better has to mean. It has to mean that we have a commitment to try to trying to rebuild the economic core of these communities, trying to rebuild the well from these communities, trying to create access to opportunity, to to choice, feel lives, to to joy fiel lives. And so if we're not considering how we do that at the same time that we are thinking about envisioning and reimagining these highways, and we're not doing it the right way. Um I I call it reparations. It has to be a part of the conversation to rebuild those communities, but also those individuals and those families people who lost so much as we built the interstate highway system. How do we get somebody like Tucker Carlson on board. We've got to build a highway through his living room. Yeah, I heard those comments. And actually a reaction I often get from people when I talk about the highway is that it's just a road. They'll say, it's just a road, and it's just a road unless it was your community that was targeted, um, your home and community institutions and businesses that were destroyed, robbing people um in the community of their wealth and economic foundation. And it's just a road, unless it was your community that was cordoned off by what amounted to state impose racial segregation. And it's just a road unless it's your community that is still looking at that highway as a monument to white supremacy, to segregation into racial inequality. Well, this has been a wonderful, wonderful discussion. Professor Archer randall otis I wish if we had more time, but we do not. Thank you all both so much for going beyond the scenes with me. Thank you, thank you so much for having listen to the Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple Podcasts, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcast