[ For many low-income and minority Americans, automobiles have
been turbo-boosted engines of inequality, immobilizing their owners
with debt, increasing their exposure to hostile law enforcement, and
in general accelerating the forces that drive apart haves and
have-nots.]
[[link removed]]

ONCE YOU SEE THE TRUTH ABOUT CARS, YOU CAN’T UNSEE IT  
[[link removed]]


 

Andrew Ross and Julie Livingston
December 15, 2022
The New York Times
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ For many low-income and minority Americans, automobiles have been
turbo-boosted engines of inequality, immobilizing their owners with
debt, increasing their exposure to hostile law enforcement, and in
general accelerating the forces that drive apart haves and have-nots.
_

, Yannick Lowery

 

In American consumer lore, the automobile has always been a “freedom
machine” and liberty lies on the open road. “Americans are a race
of independent people” whose “ancestors came to this country for
the sake of freedom and adventure,” the National Automobile Chamber
of Commerce’s soon-to-be-president, Roy Chapin, declared in 1924.
“The automobile satisfies these instincts.” During the Cold War,
vehicles with baroque tail fins and oodles of surplus chrome rolled
off the assembly line, with Native American names like Pontiac,
Apache, Dakota, Cherokee, Thunderbird and Winnebago — the ultimate
expressions of capitalist triumph and Manifest Destiny.

But for many low-income and minority Americans, automobiles have been
turbo-boosted engines of inequality, immobilizing their owners with
debt, increasing their exposure to hostile law enforcement, and in
general accelerating the forces that drive apart haves and have-nots.

Though progressive in intent, the Biden administration’s signature
legislative achievements on infrastructure and climate change will
further entrench the nation’s staunch commitment to car production,
ownership and use. The recent Inflation Reduction Act offers subsidies
for many kinds of vehicles using alternative fuel, and should result
in real reductions in emissions, but it includes essentially no direct
incentives for public transit — by far the most effective means of
decarbonizing transport. And without comprehensive policy efforts to
eliminate discriminatory policing and predatory lending, merely
shifting to electric from combustion will do nothing to reduce car
owners’ ever-growing risk of falling into legal and financial
jeopardy, especially those who are poor or Black.

By the 1940s, African American car owners had more reason than anyone
to see their vehicles as freedom machines, as a means to escape,
however temporarily, redlined urban ghettos in the North or segregated
towns in the South. But their progress on roads outside of the metro
core was regularly obstructed by the police, threatened by vigilante
assaults, and stymied by owners of whites-only restaurants, lodgings
and gas stations. Courts granted the police vast discretionary
authority
[[link removed]] to stop
and search for any one of hundreds of code violations — powers that
they did not apply evenly. Today, officers make more than 50,000
traffic stops a day. Driving while Black has become a major route to
incarceration — or much worse
[[link removed]].
When Daunte Wright was killed by a police officer in April 2021, he
had been pulled over for an expired registration tag on his car’s
license plate. He joined the long list of Black drivers whose violent
and premature deaths at the hands of police were set in motion by a
minor traffic infraction — Sandra Bland (failure to use a turn
signal), Maurice Gordon (alleged speeding), Samuel DuBose (missing
front license plate) and Philando Castile and Walter Scott (broken
taillights) among them. Despite widespread criticism of the flimsy
pretexts used to justify traffic stops, and the increasing
availability of cellphone or police body cam videos, the most recent
data shows that the number of deaths from police-driver interactions
is almost as high as it has [[link removed]] been
over the past five years.

In the consumer arena, cars have become tightly sprung debt traps. The
average monthly auto loan payment 
[[link removed]]crossed
$700 for the first time this year, which does not include insurance or
maintenance costs. Subprime lending and longer loan terms of up to 84
months have resulted in a doubling of auto loan debt
[[link removed]] over
the last decade and a notable surge
[[link removed]] in
the number of drivers who are “upside down”— owing more money
than their cars are worth. But, again, the pain is not evenly
distributed. Auto financing companies often charge nonwhite consumers
higher 
[[link removed]]interest
rates
[[link removed]] than
white consumers, as do insurers
[[link removed]].

Formerly incarcerated buyers whose credit scores are depressed from
inactivity are especially red meat to dealers and predatory lenders.
In our research, we spoke to many such buyers who found it easier,
upon release from prison, to acquire expensive cars than to secure an
affordable apartment. Some, like LeMarcus, a Black Brooklynite (whose
name has been changed to protect his privacy under ethical research
guidelines), discovered that loans were readily available
[[link removed]] for
a luxury vehicle but not for the more practical car he wanted. Even
with friends and family willing to help him with a down payment, after
he spent roughly five years in prison, his credit score made it
impossible to get a Honda or “a regular car.” Instead, relying on
a friend to co-sign a loan, he was offered a high-interest loan on a
pre-owned Mercedes E350. LeMarcus knew it was a bad deal, but the
dealer told him the bank that would have financed a Honda “wanted a
more solid foundation, good credit, income was showing more,” but
that to finance the Mercedes, it “was actually willing to work with
the people with lower credit and lower down payments.” We
interviewed many other formerly incarcerated people who followed a
similar path, only to see their cars repossessed.

LeMarcus was “car rich, cash poor,” a common and precarious
condition that can have serious legal consequences for low-income
drivers, as can something as simple as a speeding ticket. A $200
ticket is a meaningless deterrent to a hedge fund manager from
Greenwich, Conn., who is pulled over on the way to the golf club, but
it could be a devastating blow to those who mow the fairways at the
same club. If they cannot pay promptly, they will face cascading
penalties. If they cannot take a day off work to appear in court, they
risk a bench warrant or loss of their license for debt delinquency.
Judges in local courts routinely skirt the law of the land (in Supreme
Court decisions like Bearden v. Georgia and Timbs v. Indiana_)_ by
disregarding the offender’s ability to pay traffic debt. At the
request of collection agencies, they also issue arrest or contempt
warrants
[[link removed]] for
failure to appear in court on unpaid auto loan debts. With few other
options to travel to work, millions of Americans make the choice to
continue driving even without a license, which means their next
traffic stop may land them in jail.

The pathway that leads from a simple traffic fine to financial
insolvency or detention is increasingly crowded because of the spread
of revenue policing
[[link removed]] intended
to generate income from traffic tickets, court fees and asset
forfeiture. Fiscally squeezed by austerity policies, officials extract
the funds from those least able to pay. This is not only an awful way
to fund governments; it is also a form of backdoor, regressive
taxation that circumvents voters’ input.

Deadly traffic stops, racially biased predatory lending and revenue
policing have all come under public scrutiny of late, but typically
they are viewed as distinct realms of injustice, rather than as the
interlocking systems that they are. Once you see it, you can’t unsee
it: A traffic stop can result in fines or arrest; time behind bars can
result in repossession or a low credit score; a low score results in
more debt and less ability to pay fines, fees and surcharges.
Championed as a kind of liberation, car ownership — all but
mandatory in most parts of the country — has for many become a
vehicle of capture and control.

Industry boosters promise us that technological advances like
on-demand transport, self-driving electric vehicles and artificial
intelligence-powered traffic cameras will smooth out the human errors
that lead to discrimination, and that car-sharing will reduce the
runaway costs of ownership. But no combination of apps and cloud-based
solutions can ensure that the dealerships, local municipalities,
courts and prison industries will be willing to give up the steady
income they derive from shaking down motorists.

Aside from the profound need for accessible public transportation,
what could help? Withdraw armed police officers from traffic duties,
just as they have been from parking and tollbooth enforcement in many
jurisdictions. Introduce income-graduated traffic fines. Regulate auto
lending with strict interest caps and steep penalties for concealing
fees and add-ons and for other well-known dealership scams. Crack down
hard on the widespread use of revenue policing. And close the back
door to debtors’ prisons by ending the use of arrest warrants in
debt collection cases. Without determined public action along these
lines, technological advances often end up reproducing deeply rooted
prejudices. As Malcolm X wisely said, “Racism is like a Cadillac;
they bring out a new model every year.”

_Andrew Ross and Julie Livingston are professors at New York
University, members of its Prison Education Program Research Lab and
authors of the book “Cars and Jails: Freedom Dreams, Debt, and
Carcerality [[link removed]].”_

* automobiles
[[link removed]]
* debt
[[link removed]]
* Inequality
[[link removed]]
* criminal justice
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]