Last night on the bus from National-I-mean-Dulles to the metro, there was a large (7-15) group of black folks at the back of the bus having a party loud enough for everyone on the bus to enjoy. The reason this sticks in my mind is that right before the stop I got off at, their conversation had taken a turn for the morality of sex.
Dude #1: Man, you going to hell! You had sex in a church! In a church, man!
Dude #2: I only did it once!
…
Dude #2: Yeah, but them faggots, they’re going straight to hell!
(The … was a lapse in my memory of or attention to their conversation, not in their continuous banter).
The going to hell for sex in a church thing was eyerolling material for me. The scapegoating of homos to draw attention away from his own socially disapproved behavior was chilling. I started thinking about how every minority needs someone to look down on, so that they can assure themselves that, even if they can’t convince themselves they’re at the top of the heap, they’re not at the bottom. Poor sots. And I immediately noticed that I had fallen into the same trap. Not that I have any real notion as to what the “right” response is.
As an interesting sidenote, let’s talk about blacks and disruptive behavior on public transportation. If you ever doubt that a town has racial minorities in it, ride the bus. Not an express bus, just a bus. The correlation between the poor and the black is marked, and obvious, particularly there. Public transportation also brings a bunch of people with annoying habits. Conversation through shouting, continually singing, cranking their headphones up so loud that people sitting nearby get to share in their musical experience, whether or not they share musical tastes. Disproportionately, in my observation, the people with the annoying habits have been black. They’re a tiny minority of transit riders, and also a distinct minority of black transit riders. Of the truly rare occasion that someone tells one of these disruptive people to shut up, turn down the music, or drop the volume, it’s usually another black transit rider. I’ve also seen some spectacular examples of obnoxious white people on transit (no examples come to mind of obnoxious other-racial-group transit riders). What’s my point here? I’m not sure. I used to regard it as racism to take note of another person’s skin color, let alone correlate that with anything. I don’t feel that way anymore (I wonder if I have any black folks reading this blog. Ah the echo chamber). I do wonder if I’m just documenting my own biases.
A couple days ago, at a bus-stop in downtown minneapolis, we had a black continual rapper at the bus stop. His sense of rhythtm and key were good. He didn’t seem to be wearing headphones as I recall. It still irked me. Another black guy walked up to me, shaking his head, giving exhasperated looks at our bus stop musician. He started up conversation with me, based on the “some people’s children” theme. I was game, nothing better to do, after all. And three sentences into it, he asked if I had a dollar. I said no, and wished him luck, and he immediately left. I’m a bit surprised that I was surprised by his request, but I was, and there you have it.
I also remember once while living in berkeley, taking BART back from SF, wearing a tie, and a nice shirt (probably wrinkled, but this is me we’re talking about). Two black guys, one loud and aggressive, got on in downtown sf. I pretended to sleep in my seat, while he belittled and mocked me (he called me “exec” most frequently). When I got up to get off at the downtown oakland station for a transfer, loud, obnoxious guy jumped up, and yelled something like “you ain’t pushing us to the back of the line no more” then barreled on past me and through the door.
I don’t think I’m prejudiced, in the direct definition of the term. I don’t prejudge based on race. But it seems to me that African Americans show a higher incidence of flaming assholes than most other American subcultures. Or maybe it’s poverty. I dunno. But I don’t think pretending it doesn’t exist helps anything.
I think it’s kinda funny that the BART experience you had seem to be cetered around a sort of class-warfare. It strikes me as very “fight the power” liberal kinda of stuff.
as a gun owner and a soldier I run into that attitude quite a bit, just a passive agressive form of it, rather than an open display of hostility. Hard to tout the pacifist line when you’re being hostile… hard not impossible though, I’ve seen it.
-DS
My thoughts at the time revolved around two points: “Buddy, just because I’m wearing a tie does not mean I’m an executive” and “Poor guy, wonder how long it’s been since he had a job.” (in the genuine pity, rather than snide superiority sort of way. I was rather marginally employed at the time.)
How would you describe your political views on the larger scale, anyway? I get sort of a Colin Powell pre-reputation-suicide-at-the-UN feel from what you’ve written, but I’d like to hear it in your own words.
I’m a militant moderate. If I weren’t as easy going as I am I could be mistaken for a libertarian. I think there are a lot of americans like me in this catagory, but by nature of not being radicalized they get lost in the tidal wave of dissent from the far left and the far right.
I think that gay marriage is perfectly fine, any moral objection a person has is based on their particular religious beliefs. No one can make a religion recognize a marriage that they disagree with, but we’re not talking about wether the baptists think you’re married, we’re talking about insurance companies, inheritance law and what not. THat’s purely civil and should not be affected by religious beliefs.
I think that abortion is killing. I’m fine with that though. I have to admit that I do find it confusing when people who are pro-abortion are anti-euthanasia or animal rights activists. It’s kind funny when I try to see the ideologies mix. I’ve also noticed that there’s more of a market for viagra than there is for medical contraception. Figure that one out.
I think everyone who is able to should be armed. That’s a philisophical thing to me in general, in particular I think that armed uprising should always be a fear of the federal government. Keeps em honest.
I think that universal health care, though a good idea is a slippery slope for more control over my personal life by a governmental agency. Once the taxpayer has to subsidize my health, the government will have some say over what I can do with my body. Instead I think that some kind of coordination should be done to manage the cost of health care, something akin to how the fed manages the economy. That MIGHT be a solution, but who knows.
I find affirmative action insulting.
I hate fanatics now matter what side their on or how well meaning they may be, they are a danger to us all and sometimes I have an urge to put them down like a lame horse. However, that would make me a fanatic too.
I think that America has provided the west with luxuries and securities that they take for granted. I find it incredibly offensive when western euro socialist types decry our actions (which benefit them) more than Russia, or China does.
I think the UN has turned into the new kings court, with just as much usefulness. I’m not going to go so far as to say that we should kick them out of new york, but I do think we need to start rethinking the concept. Otherwise we’re stuck with another league of nations, and we all remember how well that went.
I hate france, I don’t trust Isreal, England will stick with us, and Russia has more incommon with us psychologically than most of western europe does.
The middle east is a clusterfuck because it’s filled with Arabs who have been taught for the last 50 years that every problem they have is due to some outside force that is undermining their right to relieve their glorious past. Unfortunately they don’t realize that all the liberal innovative thinking that they had in their glorious past was cut off when some caliph decided he hated what wasn’t traditional. Islam has been suffering every since, the Safist-Wahabists are just the newest puritanical strain of this. I think Islam-o-fascists is a good term for them, since it’s not islam that is the problem, it’s those fucks.
I think that blamming everything wrong in the US on the religious right is completely moronic, short-sighted, and itself intolerant.
I think idealists are their own worst enemy, and once people start listening to them, they become our worst enemy. I’d also like to point out that Ghandi was not an idealist, if you actually read what he did and the deals he made you can see exactly how much of a realist he was.
same with Mao, same with Che, but not marx and engles, and it shows.
I can go on and on… In fact I’m having some bumper stickers made that say;
“My politics don’t fit on a Bumper Sticker”
Oh, and I have an issue with alot of feminists. I don’t think they ever really tried to understand the “man’s world” before decrying it and trying to change it. I think the future will be their fault, and I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.
Because of their gender? no… because of the nature of their politics. Then again, I’m all for equality, but I hate feminism. maybe there’s hope in third wave… they don’t have the chip so much on their shoulder. Empowering yourself and then getting respect that way is always the way to do it, whinning and throwing a tantrum until you get your way may work, but it always keeps you under the hands of those who give it to you. I think there’s a lot to be said about women who complain that when they try to be assertive they’re seen as a bitch… I say that it’s because no one has ever taught them to be assertive WITHOUT being a bitch.
my .02
-DS
Growing up in Atlanta, public transit was considered to be a welfare program for poor folks, meaning of course, “The Blacks.” Growing up, I’d hear repeatedly that “MARTA” stood for “Moving Afros Rapidly Through Atlanta.” My the ’80’s, that had changed to “Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta.”
The only exception to the “public-transit-is-for-po’-folks” assumption was the nice, clean rapid rail system. White folks had no trouble taking that to downtown sporting events or to the airport, but they wouldn’t dream of taking a bus to the rail station.
My father was quite a racist, although I don’t think he would admit to the term. He was always scared to find out that I’d been riding a bus.
I’m always trying to be conscious of my own racism. It’s so ingrained in others that they don’t see it, so how can I expect to see all my own stupid presumptions?
My only real problem on MARTA is the escalators. Twice a week, there will be two people standing next to each other, blocking the entire (long) escalator for those who need to hurry to make connections. I’ve been keeping track: they’re nearly always black and female.
I’ve noticed that in San Francisco, you can point out the tourists during rush hour as the ones that stand on the left and seem oblivious to the pedestrian patterns around them.
Tourists from cities that don’t have a lot of pedestrian traffic on sidewalks also don’t realize there are rules when walking down a sidewalk similar to ones on a road: walk on the right, pull off to the side if you need to stop, etc.
Atlanta does have one transit quirk I haven’t seen elsewhere. Peachtree Center Station’s escalators are so-o-o-o long that businessmen during rush hour will routinely turn around and sit on the stairs and read the paper as they go up.
Ooooh, I remember that escalator – I took it from the airport to my hotel for a conference. I got vertigo looking up and down, and I don’t usually suffer from that at all. It was, just… woah.
The Mariott Marquis didn’t help with the vertigo either. Oy, it was open on the inside, so you were painfully aware of how far up the tower you were. Eek.
The vertigo wouldn’t be as much of an issue if they’d hadn’t laid the white rectangular tiles along the sides of the escalators perpendicular to the slope of the rails. The only visual cues you have to which way is “up’ are the stairs and the other passengers.
We got a little bit of that in Minneapolis during the bus strike that coincided with‘s first school visit up here. The governor wanted to slash the city transit budget, and when people said that a good bus system benefits everyone, his attitude was basically “what do we need buses for? I have a car. We can use the money to widen the freeways.”
Part of the Atlanta Metro political landscape in Atlanta (at least from 1979 when the train system opened until 1991 when I moved away) has always been the counties which join the MARTA system. Race is always a factor whether people realize it or not. So much so that Gwinnett and Cobb counties created their own bus systems.
I remember listening to a radio call-in show in the early ’80’s. One after another after another Gwinnett resident voiced their concern that bringing the MARTA rail to Gwinnett Place Mall (huge suburban mall) in their county would “bring crime” and “the wrong element” to their county. There was definitely a pattern emerging.
Then, a guy called from midtown Atlanta and identified himself as gay. He complained that if their took the MARTA rail out to Gwinnett County, it would “bring rednecks to Lenox Square Mall (intown upscale mall) and we simply can’t have that!”
Also, I recently read that MARTA is the only public transit system in the country that doesn’t recieve state money (only city and county.)
hey stevie,
there’s been a lot of noise in pittsburgh about the rising cost of public transport.
do you know of anywhere that does a comparison between cities of fares and how much public transit costs in total?
…He lets you call him Stevie?
My kidneys are still bruised from the last time I made that mistake. 🙂
Bisexual privledge?
Lara and I met him when he was still going by “Stevie”.
Correction: you met me when started calling me Stevie. A subtle distinction. By the time you got back to cmu, I’d gotten past resignation and into indifference. =)
It’s probably not my place to do so, but I kind of agree with Bill Cosby’s recent rant about how a person is responsible for his or her behavior 24/7/365 no matter the current circumstances or emotions. It’s okay to call an individual asshole an asshole even if he’s black. Racism is when you prejudge someone on some unrelated axis after knowing only their race (offering a job, voting for office, allowing to prom, etc.)
Race relations here and around the world are a twisted cycle of unfortunate patterns and misdirected angst. White man is upset that loud black family move in next door, so the next layoff he oversees is a black employee. Black employee gets depressed and desperate and threatens white woman on street for cash. White woman genuinely fears for her safety, and later refuses to work with a black classmate. Black classmate feels alienated, doesn’t realize that laid off guy was representing “his people” in that woman’s world, yadda yadda and so forth.
I see my share of white assholes and, more than race, I think it has to do with poverty as you suggested. It just so happens that there are more black people in poverty. But another way to look at that would be, “assholes breed poverty” not vice versa. *shrug*
Yeah, but what does anyone ever do but pretend it doesn’t exist? That or get all backlashy and turn into racist fucktards.
Here’s the cognitive dissonance:
Thought One: Everybody is equal and we cannot draw any conclusions about behavior based on race because that’s prejudice and bigoted and bad.
Thought Two: The vast majority of obnoxious and inappropriate behavior on the bus is perpetrated by black people.
…and the subject’s brain bursts from trying to resolve the two points, like some poor robot in an Asimov story.
But, I mean, you can think this through without any input. You know that what you’re seeing is economic as much as anything else. You know black people make up a disproportionate chunk of poor people. Thus the correlation.
I think what you’re driving at is that there’s more to it than that. See, the economic divide isn’t just black/white. Poor-and-white just isn’t the same as poor-and-black no matter how you slice it. I don’t know a hell of a lot about race and economics, but what I do know is that if you’re poor-and-white, you have a much better shot at becoming not-poor than a poor-and-black person has of becoming not-poor. Economically-comfortable non-black people have a really hard time even seeing how this works, but it’s there, just as the glass ceiling is there for women. Public transportation in general and buses in specific are something of an unusual intersection between economic worlds that otherwise do their damndest not to intersect. Part of what you’re seeing is specifically black, and specifically a rebellion against this thing that white and well-off people refuse to talk about.
(Of course, some of it is also probably age. My work schedule has occasionally intersected high school kids, and they’re a nightmare.)
Strangely, what may be in part a kind of social rebellion against racism is also a useful tool for the machine that, let’s face it, keeps black people down. Something I never, ever hear talked about is this whole culture that’s appeared, seemingly out of thin air, in which young black people grow up dressing like thugs and hos and talking like fools. And then black people feel ostracized, ostensibly for their race, and white people find themselves perma-wary of black people, even though they don’t want to be. Yet, y’know, white people tend to be wary of white people who dress like thugs and talk like the uneducated.
And, you know, it occurs to me that the mass culture absorbs things pretty fucking selectively. As various parts of society have discovered, it’s entirely possible to be ingnored by the monoculture. Yet it very quickly assimilated as the primary black youth culture as one that:
– looks down on displaying one’s education
– looks down on anything percieved as “behaving white”
– prizes appearing dangerous and uneducated
and, y’know, I have to wonder who’s promulgating this thing, and how it made it into the culture so fast.
Then again, I’m paranoid and wear a tin foil hat.
By the way, I suspect that you were given a hard time about your attire because, well, you’re brown. Didn’t you realize you were selling out?
Now go get your do-rag and stop annunciating.
i think that if you spent more of your time in the literal middle of nowhere, say upstate new york or something, and not in a city — in other words, if you spent your time in a place where the truly poor are white (chris rock’s country of poor-ass white people), you would see similar behavior coming from them as you do the blacks you see on the busses….
in other words, i think it’s because in cities, the black people do tend to be the poorest… but elsewhere, it’s not the case.. and the behavior in those areas shows the correlation..
it’s probably similar to thinking that foreign people are smarter, if you live in a college town but don’t go to college yourself. you wouldn’t realize it’s because they’re all exchange students.. or something.
tons of parallels one can make.
Haha, the clan of Al-Khalid-Death-to-America Ulrich strikes again.
😀
But this is a good comment. You can’t blame anyone, white or black, for putting their personal safety first even if their “danger cues” are culturally programmed and not very accurate. Your suggestion of media conspiracy doesn’t sound very off the mark at all.
Brown you say? Well, there are rumors, several generations back on my dad’s side. =) But I attribute it mostly to outdoor summer swim team for 8 years, lingering despite 10 more years spent worshipping computer screens. =)
Pink I definitely ain’t. Sorta yellow-orangish, really. =)
As one who went to school with Snoop and was the only “white boy” in several of my classes. I can definitely attest that it is an economic thing. I had lots of black friend but I was also picked on just because I seemed to be wealthier. Eventually I learned to dress down and put up a false “I belong here” sort of stance and attitude. Once I had this down I was never bothered. I had friends who would really start to act up just to make “wealthy” people uncomfortable. Just because most wealthy people are white… Blah bla blah!
Two thoughts.
1. I have had a drastically different experience of black folk in public spaces than you have. In all three places I have spent a significant amount of time in public spaces (whether on public transportation, or as a homeless person here and there, or at the library or common areas downtown) the vast majority of my irritation has been produced by either (a) white boys between the ages of around 15 – around 20, and (b) people -mostly white, but not solely- afflicted with one psychosis or another. I have witnessed groups of black kids being hella loud, but this is entirely overshadowed by the number of groups of white kids being not only hella loud but just fucking rude and openly defiant of anyone who moved to say shit to them. So, while my experience does not invalidate your own, I think it indicates that an upping of analytic sophistication is in order here. Larger sample size, deeper probing of cause and… bringing me to point two…
2. Some of what you have mentioned does not fit my definition of behavior from “flaming assholes.” Rapping continually, for instance, is not inherently annoying (or, rather, not any more so than half of the other behaviors human beings express in public) and certainly not a sign of a “flaming asshole.” This is a cultural difference in definition of acceptable public behavior, not a sign of a personality defect, in my humble opinion. Same with the guy asking for a dollar. I used to be that guy, though I’m not black. The other instances that seem more aggressive probably are about half rooted in rather complicated social, political and economic causes and half based on the fact that a couple of these guys were just fucking dipshits.
So, yeah, whatever. Take it or leave it.
e
I think 1 may well have to do with comparative economic circumstances. I ain’t the richest motherfucker in town, but I probably project “well educated” as well as I project anything, and as unavoidably and unconsciously. “well educated” generally corresponds with “not broke”, “more likely to give” and “less likely to respond angrily or violently”. That would explain more requests for my money. I think the outdoor loonies are a westcoast thing, but maybe I just haven’t been to the right parts of the east coast. I certainly ran into some obnoxious white crazies in berkeley and sf.
When I said “flaming asshole” I was thinking flame as in “giant signal fire” not “destructive house fire”. So, obnoxious to or inconsiderate of others in a loudly proclaimed or readily apparent way. The continual rapping is akin to turning the headphones up (way) too loud, or wearing a very heavy perfume, or smoking (assuming we ignore health effects). It’s making a decision to broadcast things you like/prefer/etc, without regard to what others think about it. And public transportation makes for a captive audience.
Time may be money, but asking for the time is less offensive than asking for the money, imho. People asking me for money makes me sad on two counts. I can by no means afford to help everyone to any significant degree out of my own funds, and it means that society has failed them.
Besides making some very valid points in your entry, I have to say it was well said as well. I have had similar experiences and I feel some of the same frustration.
Sometimes I wonder why people do the things they do and then I realize it’s because they don’t stop and think about it nor anything other than their basic needs and wants. That’s the biggest thing wrong with this country…there aren’t enough folks like us who know how to think and then go ahead and actually think.
Thanks for posting this!
I don’t think the black ridership of public transit is entirely a poverty thing. Because the people I’ve seen playing with the coolest phones and DVD players on BART have also been black. I imagine it’s just that different cultural groups tend to want to spend their money on different things. Like for instance, the expensive souped-up car stereotype is definitely Asian, as in “rice rockets” or whatever else they call them. And the most expensive sneakers are definitely marketed at black people (as I read in some NYTimes Magazine article last year or the year before).
So if black people tend to value owning a car less than white people do, that would suggest that they have to be richer in order not to be riding public transit than white people do. And the fact that their average incomes are lower exacerbates that fact, but isn’t the entire explanation.
The other thing that surprises me though is how the racial composition of BART riders varies at different hours. In the afternoon (non-commute times) it’s mostly white people, but after 11 pm I’m often the only non-black person I can see.
I’m amazed at the number of potential research topics you can cram into a single post. =)
Blacks are still sitting at the back of the bus?
Have you seen this paper on light rail in Minneapolis? It’s old, but I thought he had some great points. I’d be curious to see if any of the numbers have changed since the Hiawatha line was put in.
I sit at the back of the bus. =) Some blacks do too, some don’t. It would be an interesting note to study.
Reading it, his argumentation style seemed not-quite-right. He’d provide a statistic that was tangentially related, and possibly verifiable. Then he’d make unsupported statements immediately following them. Furthermore he cites _nothing_ for his statistics. This should instantly promote skepticism. (I am recognizing a few techniques that I’ve used to cover my lack of data in places, and wincing.)
My suggestion would be to be careful on your sources. A simple web search on the author’s name turned up a couple interesting reviews documenting his bias and “creative” (ab)use of data (listed below), not that these sites are remotely unbiased either. My real suggestion is that if you want an unbiased answer to this question, you need to talk to an academic expert. The answer will be more complicated than you expect, and there will likely still be some bias, though probably less.
http://www.lightrailnow.org/facts/fa_00014.htm
http://www.carquinezassociates.com/ptlibrary/wendellcoxurbanexpert.htm (funky character badness, but interesting data)
I don’t know anyone at the humphrey who is looking at the light rail (probably yesterday’s news). And I think the basics of transportation cost effectiveness, etc, are more of the stuff taught in classes than researched these days, so it’s hard to find a paper summarizing it all (I just looked =)
My understanding is that in the US:
Unfortunately, I won’t be taking the transportation & urban structure course until next year, because it conflicts with energy & environmental policy. =(