This is an adapted excerpt from “Arrested Mobility: Overcoming the Threat to Black Movement” by Charles T. Brown. Copyright © 2025 by the author. It is reproduced here wtih the permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C.
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When I give presentations around the world on the importance of centering equity in transportation, I start with racial segregation maps. They’re useful in showing the stark racial and ethnic divisions in cities across the United States and illustrating how past transportation and land use decisions shape present-day mobility challenges.
The maps are color coded to show the predominant race in each neighborhood (White indicated by blue, Black by green, Hispanic by orange, and Asian by peach). There is rarely a spot where the green, orange, and peach neighborhoods seep into the blue ones. “Every city in America looks something like this,” I say, pointing to maps of Peoria, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan; Houston, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; and Washington, DC.
Without fail, someone asks, “Are there any exceptions to these cities?” Jokingly, I respond by showing a map of Portland, Oregon, and exclaiming, “Yes, go to Portland, where there are no Black people!” That line usually gets a laugh from everyone, even people from Portland. But the truth behind it is far from funny. The maps reveal deep segregation, born from a history of exclusion, that still dictates who has the freedom to move, to live, and to thrive in the city today.
Portland—and Oregon as a whole—were built on exclusion. The state of Oregon was founded on a Black Exclusion Law, which was enshrined in its constitution and prohibited Black people from settling in the state in 1857. Although the law has been repealed, its legacy is alive and well. Portland remains the Whitest big city in America, with more than 66% of its residents identifying as White. And for the few Black people who settled in Oregon — primarily drawn by the shipbuilding industry during World War II — racism limited their opportunities. As in other cities around the country, Black residents were systematically excluded from wealth-building opportunities, redlined into certain neighborhoods, denied mortgages, and later displaced by highway expansions and urban renewal projects that bulldozed their communities.
Oregon’s political leaders have been slow to address the systemic racism in the state. Laws and policies designed to promote racial equity are often weakly enforced or underfunded, and racial disparities in public infrastructure persist. Even in Portland, which has a reputation for being progressive, policing has been weaponized against Black bodies in public spaces. Portland has the fifth highest arrest disparity rate in the country, where Black Portlanders are arrested 4.3 times more often than White people and are killed by police 3.9 times more often than White people. Existing in public as a Black person comes with inherent risks, from police or civilians.
In Portland in 2017, a White supremacist fatally stabbed two men and injured a third, all of whom were intervening while the man hurled racist and anti-Muslim slurs at two Black teenagers on a MAX Light Rail train.
In September 2023, Adrian Cummins stabbed two Black teenagers on a MAX train in Portland. The teens were attacked without provocation, with one suffering a life-threatening injury that necessitated emergency surgery.
Incidents like these call attention to the lack of safety for people of color moving about the community. This is arrested mobility. The ability to move freely, safely, and confidently through one’s city — whether in a car, on foot, by bike, by e-scooter, or by public transit — is a fundamental aspect of participating in society. Yet for Black and Brown people, mobility is constrained by systemic racism in policing, planning, polity, and policy. They are more likely to live in neighborhoods with dangerous roads and less likely to benefit from the city’s vaunted bike infrastructure. Their access to safe public transit is often undermined by racial profiling and violence.
Although Portland is celebrated for its investment in public transit, bike lanes, and sustainable urban development, these improvements often came at a cost to communities of color. Many Black and Brown residents were pushed out of their neighborhoods as property values rose in areas that received transit investments, forcing them into more isolated, less connected parts of the city with higher crash rates and fewer public amenities. Therefore, Portland’s investments in green infrastructure may have created a reputation for progressiveness, but they also reinforced the racial divide.
I experienced this firsthand during my research for a 2021 study for PeopleForBikes, “Where Do We Go From Here? Breaking Down Barriers to Biking in the U.S.” Although Portland boasts one of the highest bike ridership rates in the country, our study found that Black and Brown residents rarely felt comfortable or safe using the city’s bike infrastructure. During a focus group with Black Muslim residents, the consensus was clear: They did not feel that Portland’s bike culture was meant for them. The city’s bike lanes may be celebrated by White cyclists, but Black and Brown residents felt alienated, excluded, and in some cases even targeted. Hijab-wearing women in the group reported feeling specifically vulnerable while cycling, adding yet another layer of racial and cultural exclusion.
But Portland also offers a glimmer of hope. There are efforts underway to un-arrest mobility. The city’s BIKETOWN program, launched in 2016 in partnership with Nike, was designed with equity in mind. In fact, BIKETOWN was one of the few bike share programs in the country to prioritize station placement in low-income neighborhoods. Of the 10 bike share systems we looked at in various U.S. cities, BIKETOWN was the only one with a higher-than-average station density in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods and lower density in the advantaged neighborhoods. It was the highest-ranking program for bike share equity among the 10 cities.
Even in a city as overwhelmingly White as Portland, planners and policymakers can — and must — take steps to un-arrest mobility for Black and Brown people. The stakes are high. For Black people, the right to move freely isn’t just a matter of convenience or comfort. It’s a matter of life and death.