Nov 3, 2011

B110 - The Disco On Wheels

Remember that Hassidic fellow who stood up on the B110 bus and said "No More Segregation!"? Maybe he was the gilgul of Rosa Parks after all!

The saga of the B110 gender-segregated bus has come to an end with an order of desegregation. Now those people on the bus can finally party! Mark my words - by the end of the year the B110 route is going to become known as the disco on wheels!

Just joking. Seriously speaking though, according to The New York Jewish Week, the operators of the bus line capitulated under threat of losing their license to run the line and said the line would no longer be segregated.

The issue they are all worried about now is how this bus line got away with running the segregated bus for 40 years without being stopped until now. The segregation was obviously known about by people who should have put a stop to it, but they turned a blind eye.

At the end of the article, a legal expert on law and religion asks an interesting question, and I don't know what the answer should be:
The larger question for consideration, he said, is whether citizens can voluntarily give up rights in the name of religious practice. Should we acknowledge that different religious groups have patterns of conduct and should we accommodate them or not? When it is a profit-making enterprise, the general consensus is: no.”

1 comment:

  1. desegregation?! I just rode the bus yesterday. מפטירין כדאתמול. Women in back, men in front.

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