No need to bring race into this - people into calling out car culture want to build and upgrade cities to make things better for everybody wherever they live. Bikes are obviously a lot cheaper than cars too, so better bike infrastructure everywhere reduces inequality in a way.
Anyway, as to your other points - firstly, changing or building cities in a way that is not car centric doesn't mean there are no cars and nobody drives - obviously people still have to and will. Actually, building cities in a way that is not car-centric is safer for people who still drive, and there's a lot less traffic, so that's good. It's just even better for people who don't or can't drive (think of people under 16 years old, who have little independence to travel living in suburbs).
It should be noted too that non car-centric cities are much better for e.g. elderly people to live in, because everything is much closer, and good cycle and walking paths are much better to ride mobility scooters on. Things being in walkable distance also helps people age better, because the exercise means you retain your mobility longer. It's pretty scary how as people age, you get to a point where if you're not staying active, you really quickly start to lose the ability to be active, which is a unfortunate spiral.
The last thing - it's not just bikes (look up the YouTube channel with the same name, by the way - it's awesome). Improving zoning laws and building good public transport is also a key part of the puzzle, and helps solve lot of the issues as well.
> Not everyone is young, healthy and rich enough to bike.
Bikes are orders of magnitude cheaper than a car. Both in terms of the infrastructure needed as well as the individual cost of bicycles. Good bicycle infrastructure also improves accessibility for those using mobility scooters, and a bicycle culture has hugely beneficial health benefits to individuals and society - not to mention the awful health effects of cars.
> Not everyone is young, healthy and rich enough to bike.
In the same way curb cuts improved the well being of way more than people in wheelchair, good, grade-separated walking and biking infrastructure makes moving around much easier and safer for way more than just cyclists.
Not everyone is young, healthy, and rich enough to be able to own and operate a 2.5t vehicle at high speed. And where walkers, wheelchairs, and other assisting devices can mix with little difficulty with bike traffic, that’s not the case with high-speed road traffic.
Did you know, that the Netherlands is rated higher than the US for car friendliness?
Making biking, public transport and walking more attractive also improves the experience for the few that still need to use a car.
Cars have a really low capacity. If you reserve the fastest route for biking or public transport and force cars to take a longer route then you will still be faster by car over the longer route than you would over the shorter route if cars where allowed there.
Not just bikes did a video on just that and explains it much better than I have:
As a Dutch person: everybody bikes here. Young people, old people (sometimes with electrical assist bikes), women, men, people with and without an immigration background.
It's the money sink that is a car that's the real privilege.
Not everyone is young enough (or old enough!) or healthy enough or rich enough to drive a car either. That's exactly the point of people advocating for less car-centric infrastructure. Walkable neighborhoods and public transit are much more inclusive.
>Not everyone is young, healthy and rich enough to bike.
This is such an alien attitude to me. Why would you need to be young or rich to ride a bike? Then I remember that American cities are so hostile to cyclists that, of course, only the young and rich would be able to do it there. Then this inequality is somehow taken to be a problem with the _bikes themselves_ rather than the cities that made cycling so dangerous. It's maddening to see.
And cars are not cheap either, you know.
Go to a European metropolis, you will see cyclists young and old, rich and poor, black and white.
Is there a name for the following fallacy:
"X is good, we should have more of X and make X available for more people."
"No we can't do that, X is only for rich white people and therefore bad."
Luckily, basically everyone who advocates for bicycle infrastructure also advocates for public transportation, which as I understand it in the U.S is more utilized by less privileged groups.
I find it hilarious that anyone would ever try to start a debate making the standpoint that car-oriented development would be the less racist alternative, what with highways inside cities having been used to absolutely ravage areas where non-whites have lived, and suburbs basically having entirely excluded non-whites, by both economic and non-economic means. Not to mention the added economic strain of owning a car, making it even worse for those who are less well off economically.
In what way do you need to be young and rich to ride a bike? Cars are significantly more expensive than bikes by almost 2 orders of magnitude. And people can ride bikes well into their 60s. In the Netherlands, old and disabled people are allowed to use small single passenger electric vehicles in the bike lanes. Meanwhile you can't drive a car until you're 16 which seems like a bigger problem for child development. The restrictions you've listed are only problems in the US because of how exclusive riding bikes is in the US. It's too dangerous to be used for anything other than leisure or exercise for most people.
Anyway, as to your other points - firstly, changing or building cities in a way that is not car centric doesn't mean there are no cars and nobody drives - obviously people still have to and will. Actually, building cities in a way that is not car-centric is safer for people who still drive, and there's a lot less traffic, so that's good. It's just even better for people who don't or can't drive (think of people under 16 years old, who have little independence to travel living in suburbs).
It should be noted too that non car-centric cities are much better for e.g. elderly people to live in, because everything is much closer, and good cycle and walking paths are much better to ride mobility scooters on. Things being in walkable distance also helps people age better, because the exercise means you retain your mobility longer. It's pretty scary how as people age, you get to a point where if you're not staying active, you really quickly start to lose the ability to be active, which is a unfortunate spiral.
The last thing - it's not just bikes (look up the YouTube channel with the same name, by the way - it's awesome). Improving zoning laws and building good public transport is also a key part of the puzzle, and helps solve lot of the issues as well.