Racism is Alive and Well on CTA

Or Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right

I take the X80 Irving Park Bus twice a day five times a week. I also take the Blue Line between Irving Park and Harlem twice a day five times a week. I noticed something about a year ago and since then I've kind of kept a watch on it just out of curiosity and today's incident prompted me to write.

A little back story for the non-Chicagoans. CTA offers an "X" route or eXpress route on some of it's longer and more high traffic routes. Coming from Lakeview's Center of the CTA Bus Universe that is Irving Park Road and the lake, the 80 Irving Park Route is a popular option for getting from my area by the lake to the Blue Line and on to the airport.

The Irving Park 80 route will make approximately 20 stops between Broadway and the Blue Line. The X80 will make approximately 8. So you can see that the X80 is a commuter's best friend! I've been in Chicago long enough that when I first started commuting, there was no X80 as it started in 2004. For the first month or so drivers would stop for people who hadn't quite realized the difference between the 80 and the X80. Then after that they would motor right past them.

Flash forward to the past year. In the mornings I walk to the Broadway stop where there are at least two buses parked at any time. More often than not there is one 80 and one X80. You can easily guess which one I will get on.

Often times you'll see people still at a stop that is not serviced by the X80 and, as they should, the express bus goes right past them. Sometimes, on the rare occasion, the bus WILL stop. I notice these times and I also notice this:

The rider waiting to be picked up is black and the driver is black. OR the rider waiting to be picked up is Hispanic and the driver is Hispanic. I've never seen a driver stop at an undesignated stop for someone of a different racial group. While yes, it's a nice thing to do, two wrongs don't make a right. There are those screaming "Well it's what white people have done for ages!". To those I have two rebuttals; not THIS white person so get off the generalizations, and does that make it right to be done in retaliation?

There are so many things done these days in the name of this "retaliation" that it is clear to me that racism will NEVER fully die. Not as long as it is kept alive by the ones who say they're the victims of it. Once a black woman was making racial slurs toward a white guy. Someone called her a bigot. She said "I'm not a bigot, I'm not white".

I guess it's time for me to go out and persecute and throw rocks and slurs at the straight folks and beat them within an inch of their life so I can tie them to a barbed wire fence to die.

What, that would be wrong??