A new piece in The New York Times discussed the framing of bike lanes as DEI, but the League of American Bicyclists responded with a reassuring message in the piece and on LinkedIn. While not any where near a direct quote I will paraphrase, “Good news TAP still funds the kind of cycling that matters, and most Republican like cycling, the real kind.”
(See, I get subtext too guys!)
From the article:
66% of Republicans support bike lanes where they live.
That is just swell Will!
TAP pays for rail trails, scenic routes, and bicycling for the children of roadies, because apparently that doesn’t count as “DEI.” No darkies are roadies!
In the U.S., urban cycling is pathologized as cycling for people who aren’t really cyclists (or people.)
On my Instagram post regarding how Bloomfield Avenue is killing people, a guy in the UK thought I was from his country’s Essex and told me to just get on the sidewalk. He wasn’t trolling; he was seriously asking why I would put myself in danger. He then apologized when he realized I was in New York and asked what he could do to help.
I responded, “Stop platforming American cycling ‘advocates’ abroad who are handmaids to development & tech oligarchs.”
He thought that was funny, but it’s not actually a joke.
I thought about our online discourse and realized no man cyclist in the US had ever suggested I ride on the sidewalk or even said they were scared of the road, because admitting fear is just not an American thing. The (unasked for) advice I typically get is “wear a helmet” or “take the lane.” Anyways, I couldn’t go to sleep or make another video, as Chas was sleeping, so I began to reread Babel by R.F. Kuang, a fictional fantasy tale about Oxford and how language is used to manipulate and retain power. Then I had this weird Keyser Söze moment or an anagnorisis or epiphany, since I’m a real person, and not a plot point in the fictional retelling of capitalism (I think. I hope. I am real right?!) Urban cycling in the US is pathologized, not simply by car drivers, but by US cycling itself.
(My friends not in the US please understand US cycling is run my tech oligarchs, developers, and lawyers not cyclists or environmentalists—you think you know what is going on here, you do not.)
When they say ‘not just bikes,’ it means something a little deeper than one might think. I’ll be explicit: not just humans.
That is why all these weird terms (within US cycling, like these are their DEI part)
like micromobility, pedestrian, and road users exists, to separate urban cyclists from REAL cyclists, roadies.
It is how the nonprofit industrial complex always tries to separate out women, racialized people, from their fields:
They do journalism, and YOU do civic information.
They are writers, and YOU are a content producer.
They are critics and theorists, and YOU are an organizer or activist.
Hegemony can racialize (and genderize) just about anything.
Cycling is for humans, and like the term America, it is for them—you are a hyphen, if you even exist.
We need to all accept our racialization and our role as not real cyclists, not like them, according to them. My assertion to the contrary (and my hundred of miles ridden) has continued to be an irritant to US maket neoliberal living urbanism writ large.
“We’re not DEI!!”
See what they mean they are human, and you are not. Like how dare you put us all into the same category.
Class solidarity disappears when an American gets his LCI card.
In Western Europe, Asia, & Scandinavia, there is no need to make up additional terms for commuting that includes bicycling, because of course, commuting to work might include public transit and it might include a bike, why does it need a label…a grant oh yes, we need names for grant purposes….sigh
If you understand the history of US cycling, you’ll understand what exactly is going on here, and even when they were doing DEI, they were doing it in a very specific way, which is why I was so very irritated.
“OK colored people talk about walkng and diabetes! See not just bikes!”
The League of American Bicyclists started as the League of American Wheelmen. It is an organization that is rooted in patriarchy and eugenics- now not explicitly eugenics, but in the US racism means dehumanization, i.e., the human race is white, and the rest is the animal race-like; this is why racists will often say “there is no race but the human race.”
So anyone extremely racist is typically of the belief that white men are human and everyone else is a lower kind of animal, which is why I don’t use the phrase “racial justice,” because it’s like “misogyny justice.” It makes no sense to me.
Hence, urban cycling is treated as weak, scary, and less human, while road cycling is treated as premium and human- I would say superhuman, but remember, in this scenario the rest of us are not humans.
(They do not think delivery riders are human, they don’t now and they didn’t when it was a bunch of ethnic white guys from outer boroughs and Jersey.)
Their narrative is that cycling is for humans, and micromobility is for those not as skilled. You need tonbe taught how to ride a bicycle in traffic, because you’re a subhuman that can’t figure it out.
“But you don’t ride your bike in traffic, you only ride your bike once a month, up the coast.”
“You sure ask a lot of questions for a replicant lady with a blog.”
This is the real issue to them: CYCLING is NOT DEI, because what I am doing by using a foldable bike and train combination to get to work is not the same as what they do, which is real cycling. Getting on your bike, putting on some spandex, drinking a protein drink, and riding 200 miles, that’s cycling.
At the end of the day, it’s a bizarro, US-warped, sadist version of eugenics. The US can turn anything into a eugenics contest and also grant exceptions. Major Taylor, well, cycling is a skill; he just had power, so…
This is why they can write books for the public on urbanism and theory, and you can talk to the less human people, not about cycling, but about micromobility, until you get old, because field workers aren’t much good after they turn 40; that’s the peak for non-humans.
When they say they are not DEI, I get it now. They MEAN that. They mean the part that was the cycling part that was never DEI to them. DEI was micromobility, walking, those weird branches, like how they separate r&b from rock and how they tried to separate pop music by Koreans into a separate category that was all done, so you couldn’t sully US cycling, so you could keep it white and male.
I always knew that, but their entire strategy was to pathologize urban “micromobility” so as not to sully the reputation of American cycling; I just caught that right now. White-abled-body men are cyclists, and the rest of us are plebeian tools, and that’s why the roadies-lawyers of cycling, the tech oligarchs, and the League of American Bicyclists are negotiating right now to put robots in urban bike lanes; to them, an urban cyclist is no different than a mule or a robot.