The Racial Dilemma: Advocacy for Public Transportation in Detroit

• In Event: 1565 - Implementing Racial Inequality in Urban Policy

Abstract

This paper presents research on the field of advocacy organizations working to promote various reform efforts around public transportation in the metropolitan Detroit area. A great deal of research conducted over the past several decades has described the ways that racial politics and structural racism affect the development of transportation systems in the United States. The “racial dilemma” that advocacy organizations face is whether to openly confront racism in their efforts. I find that Detroit transit advocates, with important exceptions, have generally ignored race in their public-facing advocacy. Three transit-focused organizations have different structures, and only one of them has recently engaged in “race conscious” advocacy, and then only after the 2016 general election. I further find that the goal of the “race neutral” strategies developed by several Detroit-area transit advocacy organizations is to attract support among the White populations in the wealthier areas of the region. These findings are important because they show the changes—and lack of changes—in advocacy strategies even as racial politics have undergone significant shifts in the 2010s.

Author

• Erik Love, Dickinson College