I hope you get the reference as it will be awfully awkward for both of us if I have to explain…
If you want to understand the impact of racism and classism in a smaller city, ride public transportation.
That is my advice to photographers, writers, artists, social workers, middle-class activists, and alt-right conservatives. I suppose it’s true for metropolises as well, but I specifically mean small cities like the one I live in (Tallahassee).
Smaller cities are generally not kind to people without access to a car 24/7. The government doesn’t have the money to provide a thorough and efficient public transportation system, and generally does not have the incentive to try. Poor people ride the bus; ex-felons ride the bus; homeless people ride the bus; disabled people ride the bus; children ride the bus.
And this is what I mean about the impact of racism and classism of a city, because it’s not the top 1% white cream of society who ride the buses here, nor is it the less-creamy but still-mostly-white middle class. No, in small cities the people riding the buses are everyone else.
As a bus rider myself, I see a lot of families and children riding the bus. Correction: I see a lot of PoC families and children riding the bus. I do not see white families riding the bus often; in fact, when I saw a young mother and her two kids on the bus the other day, I realized that I noticed her because she was white, as were her kids. Of course, they might not be “white” technically — they could have been Hispanic/Latinx, Arabic, or simply “some form of European refugee”, all of which throws you off of the “whites only” members-only social club here in the U.S.
Still, it’s telling that I did notice her. Because due to riding the bus, let me tell you, I deal with kids all the time to the point where I generally don’t notice them. They are everywhere, running around the downtown station, holding their guardian’s hand, pushing the strollers of their siblings, trying to gnaw on the plastic everything of the buses (once, a person holding a young child was standing near enough for the babe to try and gum the side-mirror casing. I thought that kid deserved a medal for gumption).*
It would be easy to make broad, sweeping generalizations about culture and class and society, which I would like to avoid here. This is just my experience in Tallahassee, whereas Pensacola might be different. What I am trying to do is raise the question about race, class, and public transportation — a topic with a long, storied history in the U.S. already, but one that has become less inflammatory and more insidious.
Basically, the demographics of Tallahassee are legitimately flip-flopped on the buses. The primary group of people using buses are PoC, while the primary numbers of local white people using the buses (which discounts the college students) are usually those who are quite visibly not middle class (Walmart workers, construction workers, homeless people, etc.).** I can honestly say the number of other regular, year-round riders on my route who are both white and “not poor” is two. There used to be a third, but she retired two years ago.
It strikes me that the significance of children is crucial, here; “where the white children at?” is a joke, of course, harking back to a classic moment in Blazing Saddles, but it’s also a valid question that reveals a lot about a small city’s priorities.
People who are fortunate and well off (who own cars and never have to use public transportation) often view the bus system as dirty, inefficient, and as a “last recourse” which is why only “the poor” and PoC use them. The theory is that if money magically appeared in the budget to make the buses “better,” then maybe other people (white, middle class) would ride them too.
Maybe that’s true. Maybe magically appearing money in the TalGov budget for public transportation would result in an amazing new combo train/bus system that would rival any big city, and droves of people would leave their cars in Killearn and Southwood to ride public transit into work.
I doubt it, and not because I don’t believe in magically appearing money. I doubt it because it’s not about the money, it’s about the priorities. Point blank, if lots of magically appearing money showed up for TalGov to spend on civil improvements, I guarantee you that StarMetro would get a minimal slice of that pie. Why?
Because it is more the case that since the perception is that only “the poor” and PoC use public transportation, the bus system is considered a community charity instead of a resource.
When people tell me that systemic racism is not an issue, I tell them I know it is because I ride the bus.
* Also let me tell you, those kids are incredibly well behaved. It’s a common joke to complain about babies crying in public, such as at the theater or the store or a plane. But what do you imagine when you think “crying baby”? Probably, I’m guessing, a white baby. I know that’s what I think, because a crying black baby would really surprise me, simply because I’ve ridden the bus as my primary transportation for four years now and babies on buses do not cry, and babies on buses in Tallahassee are almost never white.
** The demographics of Tallahassee can be found here and the 2015 statistical digest is here; however, my analysis of the demographics of bus riders is purely speculative and subjective, as there is very little way to track those kinds of facts about bus riders. Meh.
