Some like it HOT: The racialization of mobility, the racial tax state, and silence in managed lane conversions

ABSTRACT

Transportation in the United States is a deeply and intricately racialized system. In this paper, we use Seiler’s ideas regarding the racialization of mobility and Henricks and Seamster’s theory of the racial tax state, in conjunction with Presser’s analysis of the unsaid, to explain high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) to high-occupancy toll (HOT) lane conversions in U.S. metropolitan areas. We argue that silence on race in the major push for HOV to HOT lane conversions by libertarian “think tanks” and U.S. Department of Transportation guidance is fundamental to instrumentalizing transportation policy for racist tax regimes.

KEYWORDS:

• Transportation equity
• racialized mobility
• transportation policy
• racial tax state
• high occupancy toll lanes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Abigail Tobias-Lauerman

Abigail Tobias-Lauerman is an assistant professor of Sociology in the School of Psychology, Sociology, and Rural Studies at South Dakota State University. She holds a PhD in Sociology and an MA in Rhetoric, Writing, and Linguistics, both from the University of Tennessee. Her area of specialization is in critical race and ethnic studies, and has research interests in racial ignorance, symbolic interaction, rhetoric and discourses of racism, the racialization of space, urban sociology, collective memory, and the contemporary legacies of historically segregated spaces. Her work has also appeared in Sociology Lens.

Stephanie Bohon

Stephanie Bohon is professor and head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Tennessee and founder of the Center for the Study of Social Justice. She is also a Leadership and Governance Fellow at the Howard H. Baker Center for Public Policy. Her work on nativism and racism in the labor market has been published in several articles and books including Latinos in Ethnic Enclaves and Immigration and Population. She is a past-president of the Southern Sociological Society and the Southern Demographic Association. She has also served as the executive officer for the Southern Sociological Society and on the board of the American Sociological Association. She, along with co-editor Bridget Gorman, was the first woman to edit the journal Population Research and Policy Review and she currently serves on the editorial board of several journals.

Lois Presser

Lois Presser is professor of Sociology and Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at the University of Tennessee. She holds a PhD in Criminal Justice/Criminology from the University of Cincinnati, an MBA from Yale University, and a BS in Human Development and Family Studies from Cornell University. Guided by critical criminology, feminist theory, cultural sociology, and social constructionism, she has published extensively in the areas of narrative, harm, identity, and restorative justice. She is a founder of the field known as narrative criminology. Dr. Presser has authored several books including Why We Harm (2013), Inside Story: How Narratives Drive Mass Harm (2018), and Unsaid: Analyzing Harmful Silences (2023).