The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘White People Don’t Ride the Bus’

Posted on | July 17, 2022 | Comments Off on ‘White People Don’t Ride the Bus’

When I got hired by The Washington Times in 1997, we moved from small-town Georgia to the D.C. suburbs in Montgomery, Maryland. I found an apartment in Gaithersburg, and told my old college buddy Patrick Carter — who grew up in the suburbs of Washington — how pleased I was with the location: Our apartment was just three miles from the northwest terminus of the Metro rail Red Line at Shady Grove Station, and there was a bus stop right next to the apartment complex, which would make my commute to D.C. much easier.

Patrick’s response was memorable: “White people don’t ride the bus.”

It was one thing to ride the Metro train — everybody did that — but riding the bus? Not something white people did in the D.C. area.

Now, as it happened, on most days either I drove to the Shady Grove Station or my wife dropped me off (“Kiss Ride,” as the sign said), but on days when my commute did involve riding the bus to or from the station, I could vouch for the truth of Patrick’s observation.

Often, I was the only white person on the bus, but if there was another white person on the bus, he usually had the unmistakable look of Got My License Suspended After My Third DUI. Bus-riding was a shameful necessity, a socially stigmatized lower-class phenomenon and, once I perceived this, the fact that I was on the bus — because we only had one car, and my wife couldn’t pick me up that evening for whatever reason — felt like a sort of humiliation: The Downscale Ghetto Cracker.

If bus-riding had such sociological implications in leafy green suburban Gaithersburg, what must be the situation in Queens, N.Y.?

Police are looking for three suspects accused of beating a woman on public transport in what is being described as a racially-motivated attack.
New York City investigators say the three suspects, all women, got into an argument with a 57-year-old MTA bus passenger.
The interaction escalated, and the three suspects allegedly began hitting the unnamed victim over the head with an unidentified object.
The assailants reportedly made aggressive racial remarks to the victim, and said that they “hate white people” and “hate the way they talk.”
“The New York City Police Department is asking for the public’s assistance in ascertaining the whereabouts and identity of three individuals depicted in the attached photo and video in connection to an assault that occurred within the confines of the 102nd Precinct,” the New York Police Department said in a press release.
The suspects disembarked at Woodhaven Boulevard and Jamaica Avenue and fled the scene. The woman is in stable condition, but suffered lacerations and bleeding from the attack and needed three staples to close her head wound.
The authorities are investigating the incident as a hate crime.
“The individuals fled on foot and the victim was removed to Jamaica Hospital in stable condition where she received 3 staples on her head as a result of her injuries. NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force is investigating this incident,” the report added.

Probably my old buddy Patrick would say, “See? Didn’t I tell ya?” But just try to imagine the media reaction if the roles were reversed in this Queens case, and three white people had beaten up a black person while making hateful comments like that. CNN would be leading with the story every hour, all week long. As it is, they’re ignoring it.




 

Category: Racism

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