CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Monday was Transit Equity Day. It’s held on Rosa Park’s birthday.
Rosa Parks is a largely misunderstood figure from the civil rights movement. She’s portrayed as a tired seamstress who refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery city bus. She was actually a trained agitator. She was coached by the NAACP and intended to be arrested.
And I’m still glad for her protest. She sparked one of the watershed moments of the Civil Rights movement. And, more importantly, she changed people’s hearts. Even if such laws were still on the books, the mood of the public today is that no one would follow them. You would not be able to find bus drivers who would enforce such a rule. The conscience of whites today would not permit them to sit in the seat that a black bus rider was just told to vacate.
The racist behavior of whites would not be tolerated today. A restaurant that said ‘whites only’ would go out of business. White customers would find such a sign so offensive that they’d eat somewhere else. A store that had whites-only changing rooms, or whites only water fountains or toilets would be a pariah. I, and most other people of conscience, wouldn’t give such a business a penny of my money.
Transit equity means something different these days. It suggests that we have an obligation to provide public transportation to poor people who might not have other ways to get around. I’m very skeptical about that. In Wausau we run busses that few people ride. The next time you’re stopped next to a bus, look inside. You’ll most likely see only one or two passengers. Somehow we’ve created a dynamic that equity involves taxpayer wasting their money to sustain a bus system that almost no one uses. That’s a twisting of what Rosa Parks sat for.
Chris Conley
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