WEBVTT - Lines in the Sand: How Maps Shape Power, Borders, and Belonging - Lab 107 0:00:03.680 --> 0:00:09.960 I'm t T and I'm Zakiah, and this is Dope Labs. 0:00:11.360 --> 0:00:14.600 Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:17.599 science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship. 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:25.920 Tt. I've been thinking a lot about maps lately. 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:29.880 Every time I see a headline it's talking about border patrol, crackdowns, ice, 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.640 tensions at the borders, or even maps in the different context, 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:36.600 which is like I call these imaginary maps, but like 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:41.120 political maps, you know that follow different lines and redistricting, 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:45.400 it's clear that maps are not just neutral tools. 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:48.600 Right. I was reading this book it's called The Address Book, 0:00:48.680 --> 0:00:51.320 and it basically says where you even get mapped in 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:54.320 a zip code that is like a better indicator of 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:57.840 like your lifetime earnings and success and health than other 0:00:57.920 --> 0:01:00.920 factors that we may think, like what you're you were born, right, 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:03.760 that's wild to me, It is really wild. 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:06.640 And it's clear that the lines that are drawn on 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:10.120 maps are tied to power and they've been used to 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:13.600 enforce who gets access, who gets surveiled, who gets shut out. 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:16.319 And it's not just history, it's happening right now. Like 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:20.400 you were saying with there's a lot of redistricting in Texas, 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:23.399 and it's all very confusing to me because I know 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:26.920 nothing about this. Yeah, and everybody shouting border, border, border, 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:28.480 and I'm like, baby, do you know what a border 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:29.440 really is? 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:32.760 Right? When did we start talking about this? So today 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:35.720 we're digging right into it, into the politics of map making, 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:39.479 borders and how these lines, both visible and invisible, shape 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:40.040 our lives. 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:42.640 And we couldn't think of a better person to talk 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:46.160 to than doctor Joshua Enwood, a professor of geography and 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:50.760 African American Studies at my alma mater, the Pennsylvania State University. 0:01:51.080 --> 0:01:55.240 His work dives into racialized cartographies and cartography is the 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:59.800 study of map. He also researches spatial justice and how 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:03.320 the Green Book functioned as a countermapping during Jim Crow, 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:05.560 Doctor Mwood, We're so excited to have you here. 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:06.840 Thanks so much. 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:09.440 I really appreciate the invitation. And it's always great to 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:12.040 be with some Penn State alone. And all I can 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:12.680 say is, we. 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:16.320 Are Penn State. Oh here we go. 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:23.360 Okay, So let's start from the beginning. Maps feel natural 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:25.920 to us now, because I mean every device that we 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:28.880 have has a map function on it. But at some 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:31.880 point there had to be someone that decided, hey, let 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:35.360 me start drawing lines on a sheet of paper to 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:36.280 create this thing. 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:39.000 Before we were all looking at Google maps, you know, 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:42.000 and before that there was map quest. I don't know 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:44.960 if you remember that, but I had a lot of printouts, okay, 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:49.440 maps for like these hand drawn interpretations of the world. So, 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:52.880 doctor Enwood, can you start us broadly before we zoom in, 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:56.800 and just explain to us what maps mean to a society. 0:02:57.919 --> 0:02:59.639 Well, you know, one of the ways I think we'd 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:02.080 kind of nice to jump into this conversation is to 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:04.640 think just really broadly for a second about geography. And 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:06.120 you know, one of the things I always tell my 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:08.560 undergraduate students, and I always tell my graduate students, and 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:12.280 I always tell anybody who will listen, is that geography is, 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:14.799 for most of us one of the most important things 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:17.600 in our lives that we don't really think critically about. 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:22.560 And the places you work, the places you live, if 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:26.040 you go to worship someplace, the community you grew up on. 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:29.600 It did not just magically happen. I did not just 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:33.000 appear out of the ether. But it's the result of 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:39.240 really particular economic systems, of political systems, of culture, and 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:41.360 it's this kind of coming together of all of these 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:46.320 different things that really produces space and place. And if 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:51.560 you think about it, maps being human inventions are the 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:53.440 invitation for us to think. 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:55.480 About some of those power dynamics and some of. 0:03:55.520 --> 0:03:59.480 Those economic dynamics that go into how we think about 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:01.680 geography and the way that we relate to these different 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:05.320 kind of places and spaces. And so the reality is 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:07.880 is that maps, in some kind of form or another 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:11.840 arguably have been around for as long as humans have 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:14.920 been on earth. And the reason for that is is 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:17.960 that you can communicate a lot of really complicated information, 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.760 and you can communicate a lot of spatial information in 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:24.680 a way that when it was paper maps was super portable. 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:28.920 And these maps and these ways of thinking are super 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:32.800 important to document experience, and it's a hugely important piece 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:36.320 of human history is how we think about these relationships 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:38.200 and how we think about how we engage with one another, 0:04:38.440 --> 0:04:39.440 and maps reflect that. 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:43.000 Thinking about even little neighborhood maps, I used to drop 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:46.120 out like whose house was where? And how far and 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:48.479 like what's the shortest path? And I remember, I don't 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:50.120 know if anybody else did this, but I would just 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:52.640 try to make these little routes from where I live 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:55.440 to my school, and like I was making my own 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:58.760 little maps of my little world. And so before we 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:00.760 zoom out to bigger maps US, I have a little 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:03.880 bit more of a historical question, like is there you're saying, 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:06.040 as long as we know, but I think I tend 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:09.520 to think about like the globe or like a US map. 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:13.159 Are there, like any artifacts like that that are super 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:15.479 important that we should be thinking about for a time 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:18.120 scale or just know that maps have always been around. 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:20.200 Well, I mean there's certainly some you know, if you 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:22.680 go back and you can look at in particular from 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:26.920 the era of kind of colonization and the era of imperialism. 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:29.000 I think for most of us, those are probably a 0:05:29.040 --> 0:05:30.960 lot of the maps that we're familiar with. They're often 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:34.240 in history textbooks, there's sometimes in geography textbooks that are 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:38.400 often used to illustrate historical processes, age of explorers, or 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:41.000 whatever it is that you necessarily want to think about 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:41.600 and talk about. 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:45.320 And so for a lot of us those maps are important. 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:47.000 But to give you a sense. 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:49.600 Of what we talk about when we think about why 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:54.840 maps matter and how they reflect particular kinds of power dynamics, 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:58.880 there's a really famous map from the time. 0:05:58.640 --> 0:05:59.359 Of the Crusades. 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:03.200 What it does is it places Jerusalem in the center 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:06.040 of the world. And what it does is it means 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:08.839 that all of the rest of the world is situated 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:12.720 around that one central point. And so that reflects at 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:14.880 the time, really the kind of power of the Church 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:19.159 and also a time of Western intellectual thought which really 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:23.680 plays Jerusalem and Christianity at the center of the universe. 0:06:24.200 --> 0:06:26.120 And so there's maps like that that we can start 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:28.200 to go back and look at and think about and 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:31.280 work through and really start to try to understand how 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:34.520 people were thinking about, in this case, not just their 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:38.120 relationship with one another, but their relationship in the broader cosmos, 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:40.719 and how it relates to some of the kind of 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:43.400 supernatural forces that they were thinking about or trying to 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:47.240 work through as it relates to early Christianity. One of 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:50.000 the first map makers was actually an ancient Greek named Ptolome, 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:52.800 and some of your listeners might know he was one 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:56.599 of the early Greek mathematicians who really figured out that 0:06:56.640 --> 0:06:58.800 the Earth was round and not flat. I'm sure you 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:01.279 could go back and you could find maps in ancient 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:04.320 China that go back maybe even earlier and really think 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:07.000 about how some of the early Chinese dynasties were also 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:10.040 in relationship with each other, the Silk Road, those kinds 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:12.920 of things, and so maps are central to the human 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:17.040 experience and being a storytelling species. Maps are really central 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:21.000 to that process and how we think about how humans 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:24.560 can tell a spatial story. And humans are also a 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:28.320 species historically that have traveled and explore and push boundaries, 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:30.800 and of course this causes conflict, and we can talk 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:34.800 about that too, but that's a piece of wide cartography 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:37.160 and mat making is really important. 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:41.640 You talk about Ptolemy and how in some ancient Chinese dynasties, 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:44.160 I'm sure that they were making maps, but who did 0:07:44.160 --> 0:07:47.840 they dub the map makers? Was this like a special 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:51.560 job for only certain types of people that had a 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:54.600 certain pedigree, or how do they decide who has the 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:55.320 power to do that? 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:57.280 Because it's a really powerful tool. 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:01.320 You know, it goes back really into the development of 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:05.320 modern Western ways of thinking, at least in the context 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:08.120 of Anglo American geography. We're talking about, you know, the 0:08:08.160 --> 0:08:13.640 fourteen fifteen, sixteen hundreds, when cartography, which is the science 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:17.000 of map making, really starts to get its kind of 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:22.560 intellectual outlines, and as that grows, it grows along with colonialism, 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:26.960 it grows along with imperialism, it grows along with colonization, 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:29.760 and it was really the role of a lot of 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:33.320 European monarchs and monarchies to try to map and understand 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:37.520 the world, and probably again map making being the center 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:39.920 of power. I don't know how many of your listeners 0:08:39.960 --> 0:08:42.000 have ever been to Grantwich, England, but you can go 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:45.880 to the observatory there and you can think about the 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:47.560 establishment of the prime meridian. 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:50.360 Ooh, I remember when I learned what the prime meridian was. 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:51.880 It was a long time ago, but I remember it 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:53.840 feeling like meridian was a fancy word. 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:57.679 I don't remember ever learning what the primary When he 0:08:57.720 --> 0:08:59.160 said it, I was like, I don't know what you're 0:08:59.200 --> 0:08:59.720 talking about. 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:03.199 Well, well, you know on the map there's the long lines, 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:07.360 those that are vertical, those are longitudinal lines, and then 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:09.520 there are the lines that go horizontal and those are 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:11.920 our latitudinal lines. So at the middle there's the equator, 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:14.520 and we talked about that so much throughout school. The 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:17.959 zero degree line, right, it splits our planet into the 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:22.320 north and south hemispheres. But the prime meridian is our 0:09:23.200 --> 0:09:27.520 basically like your tall equator. It splits our planet into 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:31.280 our eastern and western hemispheres. Ah okay, so. 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:33.720 It's the twelve o'clock six o'clock line on our big 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:34.880 clock of the world. 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:37.640 And the reason that that's located there, and the prime 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:40.360 meridian that's located there, which is super important to map making, 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:42.800 is because of the needs of the British Empire at 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:47.120 the time and the role of British science and technology 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:49.440 and the way that it was connected to both the 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:52.800 growth of early capitalism in Britain but also the growth 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:57.440 of the British Imperial State. And so there's those kind 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:00.880 of technological advancements that also make map it's more accurate. 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:05.719 That kind of tie into a larger story of how 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:09.000 maps and not making connect to power and power relationships. 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:27.760 There's a viral clip right now of woman talking about 0:10:28.520 --> 0:10:30.840 she says when she travels, she says that she's going 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:33.040 to the far West if she's going to the United States, 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:35.200 and people laugh, and she was like, but when I 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:37.800 say Middle East, you don't laugh because it is accepted. 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:40.720 And I'm like, Middle East to who, right? And I 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:43.240 think this is just kind of very similar to the 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:48.160 same thing You're saying, and even in preparation for this episode, 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:50.640 I was thinking about this in the context of power 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:53.720 and what it means to be a member when you 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:56.679 start making these maps, and you said these maps tell stories, 0:10:56.840 --> 0:10:59.439 there are also stories we tell about ourselves about what 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:01.480 groups we belong to. I belonged to the group on 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:03.920 this side of this river on the map, or this 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:06.600 side of this line on the map. And I was like, 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:10.600 you know what, I should start calling the United States 0:11:10.800 --> 0:11:13.600 Northern Mexico. And I was like, I don't even remember. 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:17.080 I don't know what your history is. Like I was like, 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:19.760 but I don't even remember when did we bring in 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:23.080 Texas and all of these things. And so I went 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:26.360 back to the Treaty of Guadaloupe Hudalgo and I was 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:29.320 reading all of these things, and I was like, Hey, 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:33.680 this isn't even really our land, okay, you know, And 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:35.520 I think there's so much history. In the same way 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:38.880 that you say maps tell stories, they also can collapse. 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:43.200 You know a lot of stories as well. And when 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:46.280 we think about maps as tools of power, and we 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:48.760 think about somebody had to draw these things in the 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:52.040 same way that we talk about different groups of identities, 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:55.160 in a way I feel like maps could be more 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:58.800 of a social construct than an objective reality, because if 0:11:58.840 --> 0:12:01.599 you think about it, the land itself doesn't change, just 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:04.600 what the value we assigned to it does exactly. And 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:09.120 so I'm curious, doctor Ewood, in your experience research classes 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:12.960 that you're teaching, do you find yourself leaning towards or 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:16.080 away from the idea of maps being more about human 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:18.560 decisions or do you find that you feel like they're 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:20.560 more about geography for you? 0:12:21.679 --> 0:12:24.120 Well, I mean, that's a really interesting kind of provocative question, 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:25.840 and I think, you know, as a way to make 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:27.880 me jump into this, you know, I always tell my 0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:33.720 students being in the Northern Hemisphere, there's nothing that says 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:38.360 in reality that the North is always positioned at the 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:42.400 top of a map, right, And that in itself reveals 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:44.360 a particular kind of way of thinking about a set 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:47.160 of spatial relationships and reveals a kind of way of 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:48.080 what we think is. 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:48.800 Kind of important. 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:51.000 And I had a chance to go to Australia a 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:52.640 few years ago, and if you go to Australia, most 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:55.160 of their maps actually have South on the top, and 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:57.600 it takes a minute to kind of think about those 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:00.320 kind of relationships and the way that we in the 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:04.240 Northern Hemisphere and in particularly in the West, really put 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:07.720 forward a vision of ourselves is the center of the universe. 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:10.199 And so why we might kind of chuckle at that 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:12.880 old map I mentioned earlier about how Jerusalem is the 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:15.679 center of the world and that this is really the 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:19.760 center orientation in a real sense, we still do the 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:22.760 same thing. We just placed North America or he placed 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:25.280 Western Europe, or he placed the Northern Hemisphere for most 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:27.520 of our maps and most of our globes as the 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:28.680 center of our attention. 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:32.960 So it's not really about geography, it's about power and perspective. 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:36.360 So always like how Tom Cruise refuses to stand next 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:39.960 to the tall people in his movies, go back and 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:42.959 watch Top Gun Maverick, people either have to be sitting 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:46.720 down or be far away from him. John Hamm sitting 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:48.559 down throughout the entire movie. 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:52.520 And you know, for me, the interesting piece of maps 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:57.600 is really about the power relationships and the human constructions 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:01.000 that they represent. And so an example that I using classes. 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:04.520 You know, there's different kind of projections for maps, and 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:07.640 I'm sure all of your listeners know. If you take 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:10.199 a globe and you flatten it out, if you want 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:12.040 to test this, you can peel an orange and you 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:15.760 flatten it out. There's going to be distortions and things 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:19.040 are not going to line up, And depending on the 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:21.440 different kind of projection you use, you're going to have 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:24.240 a different set of distortions in that map. 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:26.680 And during the Cold War. 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:30.320 A projection that was really favored by the US government 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:34.320 and in particular textbook makers who wrote textbooks or brown 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:39.560 geography was a Mercader projection. And probably view a lot 0:14:39.920 --> 0:14:41.960 are familiar with that Mercader projection from your. 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:42.960 Time maybe in high school. 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:46.080 And if you think about it and Mercader projections, they 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:49.160 tend to exaggerate the size of things in the far 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:51.680 northern part of the map and the far southern part 0:14:51.720 --> 0:14:54.560 of the map. And so for example, Greenland off the 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:58.080 coast of Canada, and a Ricadi projection often looks as 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:00.960 big as Africa when it it would just fit into 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:03.320 a small piece of Africa. Well, the reason the US 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:06.680 government liked to use this projection is is it made 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:12.520 the Soviet Union look exceptionally large in comparison to the 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:16.360 United States and Western Europe. And so when you started 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:19.200 to talk about Cold War and geopolitics and you started 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:21.720 to want to represent the threat that the Soviet Union 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:24.400 presented to Western Europe and to the United States. A 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:29.400 mercator projection in a really subtle way, because it distorted 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:32.480 the Soviet Union, made it look much much larger in 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:35.800 land mass than it really was, was a really effective 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:42.240 tool for representing that geopolitical reality and the geopolitical reality 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:46.560 that the US government wanted to give to US society 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:51.160 and in particularly US school children. And so that's where 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:53.320 I think I'd really come down on that kind of 0:15:53.400 --> 0:15:58.080 question and think about maps tell stories, and so when 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:01.640 you see a map, you want to ask yourself, what 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:05.120 is the story that this map maker is trying to 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:08.560 tell me? And the map on your phone is telling 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:10.280 you how to get from point A to point B, 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:13.200 but it's still telling you a story. It's still picking 0:16:13.280 --> 0:16:16.480 a route, it's still making decisions about. 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:18.520 Where that route is, how it goes through the city. 0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:20.440 It's of course taking real time data in terms of 0:16:20.440 --> 0:16:23.160 traffic and those kinds of things or whatever, but it's 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:26.440 still a story about how you should navigate a city 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:28.600 space or a country lane, or wherever it is that 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:29.560 you're traveling from. 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:30.480 This is actually true. 0:16:30.720 --> 0:16:33.760 I recently saw a video on Instagram where someone was 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:37.840 using some type of software where you could grab a country, 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:40.360 or in part of the video, they grabbed Alaska and 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:43.160 you can drag it all over the world and see 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:47.200 what the actual size of those countries are. I'm gonna 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:50.040 drop a link in the episode description so that you 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:52.960 can see it on Instagram, and we'll probably make some 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:55.280 things on Instagram to show you what that looks like. 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:56.360 Oh my goodness. 0:16:56.920 --> 0:17:01.440 Maps when we think about inequality and how it's used 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:05.360 to enforce inequalities. We see that in the United States 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:09.239 with redlining and redistricting and things like that. Can you 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:14.040 talk more about how racism shapes the way that maps 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:16.160 have been created and used historically? 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:19.720 Oh sure, I mean redlining for those listeners who maybe 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:23.600 don't know. Back historically, there are these Sandborn maps, and 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:27.399 they were insurance maps, and in particular fire insurance maps, 0:17:27.440 --> 0:17:30.080 and every city had a Sandborn map when they had 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:34.680 different toads for the insurance risk of lending money in 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:37.879 different neighborhoods. If I remember right, I think green meant 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:42.000 like you were really safe. Yellow meant that you were 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:45.160 you had some risk if you lent money or provided 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:50.679 insurance in those neighborhoods and red was no money, no insurance, 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:54.159 it's a high risk for you to ensure property in 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:58.760 those neighborhoods. That's the process of redlining were quite literally, 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:03.560 banks and insurance companies would draw red lines around neighborhoods, 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:06.560 and one of the key criteria was the question of 0:18:06.640 --> 0:18:10.359 race and who lived in that neighborhood, and neighborhoods that 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:14.640 were predominantly African American or other persons of color were 0:18:14.680 --> 0:18:17.160 red lined, and it meant that there was no capital 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:20.880 or very little capital that would inflow into those neighborhoods. 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:26.159 And interestingly, in a lot of cities, one of the 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:29.399 ways that we can see the kind of historic realities 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:33.440 of redlining are those interstate maps that you often get 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:35.280 if you stop at a rest stop when you're traveling. 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:36.640 At least when I was a kid, used to get 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:38.480 like the little map, but the rest stop would be 0:18:38.480 --> 0:18:39.040 about the state. 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:41.639 And if you look at those maps, and you in 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:43.760 particularly look at where those highways. 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:48.880 Are located in every American city really in the United States, 0:18:49.440 --> 0:18:53.920 often those highways were cited in what they call blighted 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:59.240 neighborhoods that were often had a high number of racial 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:01.399 minorities who lived there. And so to give you a 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:03.800 sense in the city of Atlanta, which is where I 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:06.439 wrote my dissertation about, if you look at where they 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:08.480 built I seventy five through the heart of the city, 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:12.320 and you look at where they built I. Twenty, those 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:17.879 were historically significant African American neighborhoods, and the city built 0:19:18.000 --> 0:19:21.960 those highways because the writing was on the wall in 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:24.520 the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, it was 0:19:24.600 --> 0:19:28.720 pretty clear that Atlanta, Georgia, by the end of the 0:19:28.800 --> 0:19:31.480 nineteen sixties, in the first part of the nineteen seventies, 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:34.240 was going to have a significant enough African American population 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:37.040 in that city that African Americans were going to be 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:40.000 able to elect an African American mayor in the city 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:43.879 of Atlanta. And the white power structure used highway construction 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:48.680 to try to remove black people from that community and 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:53.200 to keep Atlanta and the city government in the hands 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:55.639 of the white power structure for as long as they 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:59.000 possibly could. And what's true in Atlanta is true all 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:03.320 over the country. And so that's the power of maps. 0:20:03.359 --> 0:20:06.600 I mean, the story of highways in America isn't a 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:09.199 story of getting people to go from point A to 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:13.600 point B in the fastest possible route, particularly in American cities. 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:18.240 It's what Debra Archer wrote in a Law Review article 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:23.359 what she titled white Roads through Black Bedrooms and the 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:26.879 role of highways in America and in segregation is a 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:29.520 hugely important story to tell, and you can tell that 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:32.639 with what, at the surface, for many people probably appears 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:39.000 as an innocuous highway map, but actually represents a story of. 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:40.959 Segregation and resegregation in American cities. 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:45.760 This is a really good point, and it's something I 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:47.600 know from our time t T when we were in 0:20:47.600 --> 0:20:51.040 grad school in Durham, Black Wall Street in Durham and 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:54.040 thinking about these great areas and we saw the fifteen 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:56.040 to five OHO one corridor go through there and be 0:20:56.119 --> 0:20:59.639 built in totally disrupt neighborhoods. I can also remember even 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:02.600 in Greensboro where I grew up, when the highway came 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:04.879 through town and it was like we could walk to 0:21:04.880 --> 0:21:06.679 the edge of our neighborhood and see where they were 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:07.479 building a highway. 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:07.760 Wow. 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:11.360 And I'm always curious about that. When I'm driving. Highways 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:13.240 feel like they should be straight, But do you ever 0:21:13.280 --> 0:21:15.520 find yourself like on a windy part, and you're like, 0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:18.119 why are we going out this way? Which neighborhoods do 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:21.320 we avoid? Which neighborhoods Even as I'm riding along, which 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:24.280