Driving While Black

Abstract

This chapter argues that the car’s power can be used to illuminate some neglected aspects of the twentieth century’s black freedom struggles. The twentieth century was the century of the automobile, of auto-mobility and mass motorization. Commerce in motor vehicles constitutes the overheated core of unchecked and unsustainable consumer capitalism, but the impact of car culture extends far beyond those buoyant commercial processes. The determinedly critical standpoint outlined is offered as a route into a more motivated political history of car cultures than is available. During the period of decolonization and the era of Black Power that responded to it, the basic idea of black solidarity depended upon building a transnational bridge across the chasm of imperial exploitation and combined but uneven development. The planetary reach of the African-American vernacular has meant that globalizing black culture has been repeatedly oriented towards north American standards, desires and passions.

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