All Working Class people have a right to the City: From Jason Arday to the politics of disposability

Institutions celebrate “Black excellence” and then distance themselves when the funding runs out (or the winds of popularity change), revealing a familiar pattern of the device of racism.

Also, why do Black people have to be so excellent and perfect?

(Don’t ask Lo about her helmet! EFF all helmets. )

In this episode of Auto Asphyxiation, we use the horrific digital lynching of sociologist Dr. Jason Arday as a starting point for a larger conversation about racism, legitimacy, and power.

They are ALL doing it. It’s the new hot thing—well, the old one—from transportation nonprofits, planning agencies, and philanthropic foundations.

Black people are used, overamplified, and instrumentalized as signs of progress, diversity, and inclusion, yet when Black people propose structural changes in investment, redistribution, and transformation, vicious resistance follows.

(See when Lo asks for a bike lane on Bloomfield Avenue for more information.)

The number of Black faces used for roadie hobbies, when seen 20 years from now, will be seen as disgusting exploitation.

(You folks are disgusting.)

Black neighborhoods have been key features in grant applications for over a decade in urban planning projects, yet people in Black neighborhoods remain 118% more likely to die while walking.

Why is that? Maybe urbanism, like Nathan Cofnas, believes in scientific racism too!

While wealthy, foundation-led organizations discuss Black people getting run over for media eyeballs and grants, little institutional change happens, and the gap between image and action remains.

Using the Law & Political Economy and feminist urbanism lenses, this episode explores how being included in a system differs from having the power to change it.