Columbus, COTA & Race

I went on an adventure today.

Columbus has always been a looming city over my small town mentality. In all of my exploring of cities around the country, and around the world, I never really took time to get to know the city that has been closest to me for the longest. My mentality of discovery never seemed to apply to Columbus.

It is probably because I grew up here. I was raised in the time when the media only portrayed the city as the "bad place" where the "bad things" happen. Where people who were different from me would do bad things to me if I went anywhere near where they lived. There was always a "bad" part of town, and rarely was there a "good" part of town. The line was solid and bold. There was an "us versus them" attitude. Yet I left to go explore other cities that held the same connotation.

Once I made it out, I had the culture and the media dampened from my senses. No longer was the city a "bad" place, and the countryside a "good" place. The dichotomous perceptions fell apart and fractured. I wasn't hemmed in by my surrounding culture anymore, and I was free to explore and discover. Yet I started small.

I stayed within the small comfortable zone of our college campus for a while when I first started at Warren Wilson. The whole experience of going to college was such a huge impact for me that I couldn't start exploring quite yet. When I eventually made it to Asheville, my drive for uncovering "place" really began.

My first bus ride in was exhilarating, yet terrifying. I had never been on a public bus before! Show your ID to the driver, and that's it? Okay, well I take it I'll know when I get into the city. I don't know exactly where I'm going. Wait. The bus doesn't stop at every stop? How will he know when I want to get off? Well crap. I reached the end of the line, at the terminal, with no idea/clue of the city I was in.

Secretly I enjoyed every minute of it.

Asheville remained the largest city I routinely visited for four years. I thought it was everything a city should be. It had everything! A transit system, a vibrant downtown, lots of shops, festivals, and really great food. Then I moved to Vancouver, Washington.

The population difference still astounds me to this day. Asheville, the hub of it all for the Blue Ridge Mountains only clocks in around 87,000 people. Whereas Vancouver adds up to over 160,000. It is so much more, that you have to add a new place to the number. Yet it did not feel as vibrant as Asheville. Nowhere as unique, vibrant, or exciting. There are two areas of Vancouver worth talking about for any middle class white person: Uptown and Downtown. Asheville had Prichard Park, Lexington Avenue, West Asheville, the River Arts District, the Grove Arcade, along with several within-easy-driving-distance outlying communities like Black Mountain, Fletcher, Woodfin, and Weaverville.

Needless to say, Vancouver was not the city I was expecting it to be. The city was too residential, and not unique enough. While it was larger than Asheville, I felt trapped by it's size. In the interim I've explored all kinds of cities on short notice. I spent six weeks in Barcelona, and found refuge in Portland (across the river from Vancouver.)

Seattle, Pittsburgh, Washington DC, New York City, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Chicago, Omaha, Cleveland, Wheeling, Knoxville, Lexington, Cincinnati, Tampa, Spartanburg, Birmingham, Saint Louis, Dublin (Ireland), Charlotte, Virginia Beach, Charleston (West Virginia), Tarragona, Huntington. These are just some of the cities I've visited, passed through, and explored.

Yet here I was in Columbus. On a bus riding down Livingston Avenue, going for an adventure once again.

The landscape of east Columbus is quite striking. First you pick up the bus at a Park & Ride in Reynoldsburg, a nice suburban town with little pedestrian infrastructure but overall nice layouts. Crossing into Whitehall you then get the glimpse of what white flight can do to a neighborhood. Houses are boarded up, crumbling, and the bus violently shakes with the potholes in the ill-kept road. Businesses have bars over the windows to prevent break-ins, and are painted with that 70's shade of white that is not quite there. As if on queue though, this is where the bus picks up the most amount of it's riders.

Up to this point, I am the only white rider on the bus. It was apparent that I was the odd man out. But not many people seemed to mind, and while I was uncomfortable (for reasons I knew very well of, and talk about in other posts), I enjoyed feeling unsettled. It offered me a chance to reexamine myself, and to ask: Why do I feel this way?

While I can't speak for other routes or services, it is clear to me that on the East side of Columbus, COTA is mainly utilized by people of color. I did not see anyone remotely close to my skin color on the entire route. We passed right through the affluent (and white) Bexley, and didn't pick up a single person. Why don't white people ride the bus here? In Vancouver there were lots of white people who rode. Granted, they were lower on the income scale, but maybe it is because of demographics?

Actually, just researching this, I got a new clarity on demographics. Columbus' population is 28% black, where Vancouver's population is only ~3% black. Even enlarging the region to include Portland would explain the demographic gap: Portland's population is 6.8% black. That would explain why I was the only white guy on the bus.

Or would it?

While the proportions may be a large influence, there was still an inconspicuous lack of white people on other routes I took around town. Why aren't white people riding the bus?

Let's get real folks. It's race. Remember that feeling I talked about at the beginning of this entry? Where the city was "bad" and the country was "good"? That was good ol' rural American racism talking. When we saw terrible things on the news, it always included people of color. The good stories always focused on white people. Where I was raised was the reason that, even though I have exposed myself to all kinds of people, I felt uncomfortable on the bus. It runs deep. And I'm working against that which my culture hammered into me when I was young.

And it doesn't reside solely in rural America. I would guess the exact same reason is why we did not stop in Bexley, and why I was so often the only white face on the buses throughout that day.

And I love the fact that I can go and observe and learn. Because it makes me a better person. I would recommend others do the same. Go take a bus ride around your town and simply look. Listen to the people on the bus, their stories, and their struggles. Go eat some food you've never tried before. Experience others.