Over the course of his career, Charles T. Brown has been searching for answers about how to dismantle the structural forces that keep Black Americans from moving freely, whether they’re traveling through their city streets or up the socio-economic ladder. Now, he’s brought together everything he’s learned as a researcher, podcaster, CEO of Equitable Cities, and advocate, in a slim volume that’s poised to become a cornerstone of the mobility justice genre: “Arrested Mobility: Overcoming the Threat to Black Movement.”
We sat down with Brown to discuss the origins of the Arrested Mobility framework, why some of its dimensions go under-discussed in advocacy circles, and how the challenge of “unarresting” the mobility of Black Americans has changed — or hasn’t — during the Trump era.
The following conversation has been edited for clarity and length. An extended audio version will be released on our podcast, The Brake.
Kea Wilson: Tell me about the genesis of the term ‘arrested mobility,’ and the framework for thinking about mobility that it represents. What does it mean, and how did it become a book?
Charles T. Brown: Arrested mobility is a term I coined to describe the systemic restrictions of movement for Black Americans — and that is not just physical restrictions, but also social and economic [restrictions]. And this happens through over-policing, disinvestment, exclusionary planning and, of course, discriminatory policy.
The way that I frame arrested mobility starts from what I call the cumulative weight of four systems called the “four P’s.” Polity is one, and that refers to the structures of power: who holds the decision-making authority and whose voices are excluded. Historically, the voices excluded have been Black, brown, low income people.
The second “p” is policy. It shapes the rules of movement, often written in ways that unfortunately criminalize rather than protect Black and brown people.
The third “p” is planning, a field that I’ve been in most of my career. I love most planners out there; I think there are some of the most well intentioned people you’ll find on the planet. They really do get into this work because social justice is an aim of theirs. However, something has happened within planning. It’s been there since the beginning, the sort of exclusive nature of it. But planning determines, as we know, the physical design of our communities, where sidewalks are placed, where highways cut through, and ultimately, again, who gets access to opportunity.
And then lastly is policing. And what policing does in this system is it enforces — often, with disproportionate scrutiny, force and harm against our Black bodies. And so as we approach the anniversary of George Floyd’s death, I think is critically important that we look at these four systems and understand how and to what degree they arrest our mobility.
Arrested mobility, for me, is really a diagnosis of an awful thing that has happened — and continues to happen — to Black people. But instead of it being addressed directly, it’s being addressed in silos. So I wanted to bring it together with a name so that people can recognize it when they see it — and of course, do something about it.
Wilson: Part of what was most powerful about reading this book, for me, was seeing how the term “arrested mobility” grew out of your personal story. Tell me a little bit about how growing up in Shuqualak, Mississippi shaped your career, and led you to focus on the forces that arrest the mobility of Black Americans.
Brown: For the people that don’t know me, I am a son of Shuqualak, Mississippi through and through. And I’m also a son of Noxubee County in Mississippi; I’m a son of that place, and I forever will be. I’m also a military veteran, I’m a father, I’m a researcher, I’m a CEO, I’m a husband; all of those things mean a lot to me, because my work has always been around centering mobility as a human right.
Growing up, we didn’t have sidewalks in my town. We didn’t have access to parks and open spaces without fear of moving through or into a white-dominated space. Our school systems — although the people that administer the school, the teachers, were some of the most amazing people you could ever meet — at the time, it was failing, so I was ill-equipped when I went to college to compete at the level that I should have been competing at. We also had jobs that were low-paying.
It was integrated, in a sense, but you [still] couldn’t cross the railroad track; you knew, in a visceral way, that you were moving into a neighborhood in which you were going to be surveilled and your Blackness was going to be controlled. And if you were not aware of it, your parents definitely reminded you of it.
Mississippi, like other places, had many sundown towns, or places where after dark, you better be somewhere that was predominantly Black or heading that way. This wasn’t true everywhere, but there were certainly times in which I experienced that.
So this drew my attention to [questions like]: Why is my place this way? Why is it one of the poorest counties in the country?
And that led me to looking into urban planning. I felt that planning would tell me about the systems that created the outcomes that I saw in my community. And of course, that fire only grew when [several] of my friends ended up in prison, or killed, or drugs, or in jobs that really didn’t provide for their families
So I was searching for answers, because I love thy neighbor as thyself; that’s my religious upbringing, as well. So for me, this is about loving all people as thyself. Even though this book is written for Black people, this is about all people.
Wilson: I want to dig into a few of your “four Ps” a little more. Tell me more about the concept of “polity” and how it shows up in this conversation about arrested mobility, because I’m not sure everyone will be familiar with that term.
Brown: For me, “polity” refers to the structure of power, who holds the decision-making authority and whose voices are excluded.
Think about, for instance, your local government. Are your elected and appointed officials representative of the people that live there? [If you live in] a city that is predominantly Black and brown, do those representatives still elevate the voices in the needs of people that have been historically underserved — which, for most conversations, are Black and brown people?
Think about planning boards. I happen to be on my planning board here in my township. And even for a well-meaning planning board, I’ve seen a change in terms of how we view the necessity of sidewalks and bicycle lanes in my community; because I’m a planner, my presence on that planning board advocates very strongly for the need to ensure that all parts of our community have sidewalks, have access to bicycle lanes, have access to dignified and safe transit.
And so when you’re absent the representation, especially of excluded voices, the polity maintains what it has always maintained — and that is centering whiteness, centering wealth. That continues to harm Black people in an invisible way, and it needs to be challenged. Because when we’re discussing all four “p’s,” we’re talking about power, and that’s why it was important to identify polity that’s on the government level.
But then there’s another level [of] who governs our community. When we think about our neighbors, [we need to] talk about the concept of a Karen or a Ken who sees a Charles or Tyrone running in their community – and because they have access to policing, because they are influencing policy, because they’re more likely to be connected to the planners, they then feel deputized to determine whether I have a right to exist in that space at that time.
So polity, in the way that we’re describing it here, is twofold. It is your traditional sources of power, but it could also be your neighbors in the community with you.
Wilson: Yeah, it’s pretty easy to see how “polity” flows directly into your second “p,” which is “policy.” You argue in this book “most planning policies and practices [today] are not overtly racist, as they were in the mid-20th century, but they rarely take history into account.” Why is it important to take history into account as we are crafting policy to “un-arrest” the mobility of Black Americans, as you put it?
Brown: A quote that I like says, “History doesn’t say, ‘Goodbye.’ History say ‘See you later.'”
When we have not healed the wounds of the past, when we have not eliminated policies that have advantaged some and disadvantaged others, [then] we are shifting quickly towards a race blind or a race-neutral society. But when you when you eliminate race from the conversation, you’re normalizing the experiences of Black and brown people, and that is to their disadvantage.
And so we need to continue to focus on history, because the things that were done in the past have not been addressed fully; they still show up. It’s a reminder that these systems that we’re under are not just social determinants of health, but they’re political determinants of health. And these sort of political decisions are determining, again, who gets access to opportunity and who doesn’t.
Policy could be the decision to invest in a community, or to disinvest [in that community]. Unfortunately, in Black, brown, low income communities, the policy has been disinvestment, and that has hurt us physically, socially, as well as economically. And if it’s hurting us, it’s hurting all of America, whether they see it or not.
Wilson: You wrote most of this book during the Biden administration, and now we’re about 100 days into the Trump administration where assaults on equity, diversity and inclusion have become much more overt. Has the project of unarresting mobility changed since Trump took office, or is this just another version of the same challenges that Black communities have always faced?
Brown: It hasn’t changed. DEI might be under attack, but the way I feel fighting for dignity and safety isn’t a culture war. It’s about justice. I believe that both administrations have an obligation to ensure that everyone is safe, regardless as to the political discussion around whether or not DEI should be a virtue of ours.
For me, if that truth makes people uncomfortable, I believe that’s where their growth is going to begin. Yes, DEI is losing favor, but when you travel like I do around the country, you quickly realize that it really never had favor. There are many communities that were opposed to this idea of diversity, equity and inclusion. But what I tell them as their brother is that, yes, DEI might lose its favor, but these disparities will still persist.
Mobility justice isn’t politics; it’s people. And the most effective systems that I know are the most inclusive ones. So what are we really saying when we say we don’t want systems that are diverse, equitable and inclusive? We’re saying that we want some people at the party, and others we don’t. And that’s not a world that I want to live in, regardless of who’s president.
But it’s not something that’s just new under Trump. This is a position we’ve had to take for a very long time, which is seeing, hearing, understanding, and, most importantly, investing in the Black experience and struggle.
