Are the NAACP and ACLU serious when they argue, in a lawsuit filed last week, that cancellation of the Baltimore Red Line light-rail project is a civil rights issue? Or are they just acting as a front for, or the unwitting stooges of, rail contractors and other rail proponents?
In Los Angeles, the NAACP filed a successful lawsuit against the county Metropolitan Transportation Authority for building light rail. The group argued that light rail was so expensive that the agency was forced to cut bus service to minority neighborhoods, resulting in a huge decline in transit ridership. The court ordered the agency to restore bus service, allowing ridership to recover. But in Baltimore, the NAACP seems to be arguing that cuts in bus service are worth building a billion-dollar tunnel under an African-American neighborhood.
Maybe this is a case of the NAACP’s Right Coast not knowing what its Left Coast was doing. But the heart of the complaint in Baltimore seems to be that blacks are somehow harmed because the state of Maryland chose to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on bus improvements instead of billions of dollars on one light-rail line. This suggests that the Maryland NAACP thinks dollars spent are more important than results. After all, Baltimore’s other light-rail lines are all embarrassing failures, with costs greater than projections but ridership well below projections.
The lawsuit also complains that Maryland chose to spend money that would have been spent on the Red Line in other parts of the state. But isn’t it better that money be spent cost effectively than that more money is spent in particular cities or neighborhoods? The lawsuit is basically an argument for more pork.
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To bolster its case, NAACP hired ECONorthwest, an Oregon consulting firm. The firm found that the light-rail line would somehow improve the commutes for 70 percent of black residents of, presumably, Baltimore, a number I find pretty unlikely. The report also says the rail line would improve 7.9 million black commuting trips per year, which works out to less than 14,000 round-trips per work day. That’s not 70 percent of anything that I can find.
According to the 2014 American Community Survey, the city of Baltimore has 143,000 black commuters, just 38,000 of whom take transit to work. So the Red Line won’t even improve the commutes of 70 percent of black transit commuters, much less 70 percent of blacks overall. Moreover, unlike the light-rail line that would take years to build, the first proposed bus improvements are already being implemented and could eventually help far more people.
ECONorthwest’s founder, Ed Whitelaw, was once a professor of mine whom I greatly admire. At one time a skeptic of Portland’s light rail, he used to be willing to tell cities the truth even if they didn’t want to hear it. But lately, ECONorthwest has become just another player in the consultant racket, telling clients whatever they pay for. For example, when a client wanted an overblown estimate of the economic benefits generated by its proposal, ECONorthwest used a computer program called IMPLAN to make those estimates. But when another client critical of a project that used IMPLAN to estimate its effects hired ECONorthwest, the firm argued that IMPLAN “overestimates the impacts of the alternatives.”
Poverty and civil rights remains serious problems in this country and those who say we are in a post-racist society are living in a fantasy world. But the problems won’t be solved by wasting money on absurdly expensive transportation projects that few people will use.
To support an ideology, ideologues seek out confirming data. Consulting firms recognizing this market provide the confirming data. All the more reason to have tenured faculty at universities with independent funding who can objectively provide research on any topic, then publish this in peer reviewed journals. I recall in the NAACP case in Los Angeles civil engineering transport professor helped the NAACP provide data showing how the buses for the poor were being weakened by the rail transit for the rich.
The AP usually blows it in the conclusion. Today’s piece is no exception when he writes that “those who say we are in a post-racist society are living in a fantasy world.”
Our society is likely the least racist it has ever been, and I would argue that our society is largely racist free except for a few fringe groups. Racism is the belief in the genetic superiority of one “race” (a concept that anthropologists and other scientists dismiss as being non-scientific) over another. I don’t hear many people espousing this belief. Yes, bias, prejudice, and discrimination exist and will likely always exist, but compare America in 2015 to America in 1815 or even 1915. When one does so in a rational way rather than as a victimologist, one finds that we are indeed living in a post-racist society.
Good point Frank. I been saying for a few years now that we need a new word that encompasses the issues of bias, prejudice, and discrimination we face today because racism isn’t the correct term. I also agree that our society is the least racist it has ever been and that that trend is likely to continue. Despite the fact that much of racism in America had laid latent for a few decades only to become unearthed upon the election of the first black president, is beside the point. The racism that was there, was there weather we were aware of it or not. As generations pass into history and new one’s are born we will see racism continue to decline.
Regarding the lawsuit: There are lies, damned lies and statistics. Surely another group could argue under Title VI the red line and any service cuts associated with it disproportionately impact minority communities. As Mr. O’Toole points out, this strategy worked nicely in LA.
I’ll take it one step further and say that the United States is absolutely the least racist large country in the world. From personal observation traveling and doing business in our closest size-neighbors, China is very racist, India is extremely racist, Indonesia is very racist, and Brazil—while the people themselves are very open minded—is economically much more stratified by race than the US, The Continental EU countries are also much more racist than the US from my experience spending time in those countries. Yet the US is constantly being criticized by the EU countries for being racist. The only reason why that I can think of is because those countries are so very, very white so they don’t have much opportunity to ever interact with a person of a different race. Ditto for Canada and Australia which are extremely white.
When has the EU ever criticized the US for being racist?