Red light racism: How jaywalking became a tool of racial profiling

“I was walking across the street. 17th and Broadway. The police officers stopped me on the sidewalk and asked for my ID. They sweated me about my name. The officers said, 'You have to learn your place.' They were charging me with jaywalking.” said Tupac Shakur, one of the top-selling and most influential Black rappers ever.

In October 1991, Shakur – who was killed in September 1996 – faced a scene familiar to many Black Americans: a seemingly routine pedestrian walk turning into an act of suspicion and intimidation.

“I was riffing and arguing about why would they charge me with such a petty crime. So I kept yelling, asking them to give me my citation and let me go about my business. Next thing I know, my face was being buried into the concrete, and I was lying face down in the gutter, waking up from being unconscious, in cuffs, with blood on my face, and I'm going to jail for resisting arrest,” Shakur recounted, his voice filled with frustration and disbelief as he relived the trauma at a press conference.

He was stopped by police officers while crossing a street in downtown Oakland, who questioned his identity and, upon his resistance, he was slammed to the ground and arrested for jaywalking.

This firsthand experience with racial profiling led Tupac to sue the Oakland Police Department, ultimately resulting in a $42,000 settlement—a rare victory that reflected the deep-seated issues of systemic racism in law enforcement.

The incident, one among many, revealed the reality that minor offences like jaywalking—previously punishable by base fines of up to $196 in California and $250 in New York—were too often wielded as instruments of racial bias.

The hip-hop icon’s experience was not an isolated case but rather a part of a larger pattern of racial disparities in jaywalking enforcement, an issue that resonated in cities like New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles.

After decades, New York City finally moved to legalise jaywalking for the first time since 1958, allowing pedestrians to cross streets outside designated crosswalks and against traffic signals.

This overdue reform was advocated to combat racial discrimination, as over 90 percent of previous jaywalking tickets were issued to Black and Latino individuals.

Defining “jay-walking”

Over the years, jaywalking laws have been shaped and enforced not merely for pedestrian safety but often as a means of asserting control over marginalised communities.

Award-winning writer Brian Addison observes that the history of jaywalking reveals deeper layers of "classism, racism, and the domination of the automobile over the human," shifting blame from drivers to pedestrians and singling out people of colour in urban spaces.

Even the term “jaywalking” itself harbours a layered history, embedded with biases that reflect America’s evolving urban landscape and social divisions.

Originally “jay” referred to someone from rural areas—an outsider to city norms.

As Peter Norton, the writer of the essay Street Rivals: Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street, explains, it was a “mid-western slang” for a “person from the country who was an empty-headed chatterbox, like a bluejay”.

This early use of “jay” carried a derogatory tone, labelling those who wandered streets as unsophisticated or out of place in the organised, bustling life of the city​.

The negative connotation only grew as the automobile industry, in its push to dominate public spaces, shifted blame for pedestrian accidents onto walkers.

By branding pedestrians as “jaywalkers,” the industry reframed the conversation, assigning fault to those who dared to cross streets rather than the drivers who endangered them.

This redefinition marked a turning point, not only in street use but also in the implicit power dynamics over who “belongs” on the streets.

Over time, laws aimed at controlling pedestrian behaviour became less about traffic flow and more about exercising control, with minority communities often bearing the brunt of this shift.

The implementation of “broken windows” policies —built on the idea that targeting minor infractions, like jaywalking, could deter more serious crimes— intensified this trend in cities like New York.

In practice, however, these policies disproportionately targeted people of colour, imposing ‘an added tax on the crime of being poor’—especially in cities like Los Angeles, where Black and Latino communities face significantly higher rates of ticketing.

For instance, in Ferguson, Missouri, a Department of Justice report found that 95 percent of jaywalking citations targeted Black residents, underlining the systemic racism at play within local law enforcement​.

Similarly, in New York City, low-income neighbourhoods like the Bronx saw the vast majority of jaywalking tickets, with 81 percent issued to Black and Latino pedestrians—a stark contrast to the relatively affluent Upper East Side, where such enforcement is rarely applied​.

Over the past five years, approximately 200 people have been killed while jaywalking in the city.

These disparities in enforcement patterns speak volumes about how minor crimes are manipulated as tools for racial profiling, aggravating the perception that minority pedestrians inherently “disrupt” urban spaces.

“Jaywalking is not genuinely associated with traffic safety and instead is often used as a pretext to stop black and brown individuals,” Mike McGinn, executive director of America Walks, stated.

The impact of such policies goes beyond mere fines. Each citation serves as a reminder of the unequal terms under which minority communities interact with law enforcement.

An encounter over a minor infraction can quickly escalate, as seen in the 2018 case of Johnnie Jermaine Rush in Asheville, North Carolina.

Rush’s simple crossing turned into a confrontation, resulting in his being tasered, choked and beaten by officers for jaywalking.

Cases like Rush’s reveal how minor “offences” open the door for excessive police interventions, often ending in violence against individuals already vulnerable to deep-rooted inequity.

For many, these encounters feel inescapable—a sentiment powerfully captured by Tupac Shakur in his song Trapped. Reflecting the frustration and vulnerability of constantly being seen as suspicious, he raps:

"They got me trapped / Can barely walk tha city streets / Without a cop harassing me, searching me / Then asking my identity / Hands up, throw me up against tha wall / Didn't do a thing at all..."