We sat in the front car for added safety but it didn't make me feel any better. He finally gave up hasseling us for money and eventually got off the train. I don't know how he materialized - we had been watching to make sure he wasn't behind us heading to the platforms then all of a sudden there he was ON the train as we left the station. Then on the way back to the airport we had a panhandler follow us from our hotel. Then it's downhill from here - hardly anyone was on the train for the incoming and outgoing trips to and from downtown with the exception of some questionable passengers who boarded at each stop in between. It was cheap and easy to purchase 3 roundtrip tickets from the vending machines to take us from the airport to Peachtree Center. Nor any other supposedly harmless quip that plays on race.Let's start with the positives. But now, after hearing that young woman spit it out, rat-tat-tat, as though it were some pointed weapon in a war for white supremacy, I never will be able to hear it again without shuddering. It is supposed to be only mildly offensive, a naughty commentary on the belief that Atlanta's public transit clientele is largely black. "Anyone white who has lived more than a month or two in these parts has heard a fair bit of racial humor, including the longstanding joke about the "real" acronym for MARTA - Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta. He couldn’t forget the image of “a furious young white woman, the tendons in her neck strained and popping, her features distorted with rage, shrieking at the marchers, ‘Do you know what MARTA stands for?!?’” Reporter Frederick Allen wrote about hearing the phrase while covering a massive racial protest march in Forsyth County in January 1987. The derogatory saying is steeped in a racist history, as demonstrated by another article from the AJC archives. We proudly serve all who need transportation and anyone who denies our passengers are diverse, doesn’t ride MARTA,” Fisher said. The fate of that transit expansion bill will be known by Thursday, the last day of the legislative session. "Rebranding will do some good," the Alpharetta Republican and chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee has said. Brandon Beach unveiled a proposal that would include calling an expanded regional transit system, to include MARTA, "The ATL." The 17-year-old article describes how “an Internet search of the phrase shows it turns up in national publications such as The New Republic and as far away as Turkey.” It also notes that the transit agency had considered a name change as it prepared to pitch an expansion to Gwinnett County voters, “in part because it was common knowledge that the acronym was being altered into an ethnic joke.”Īttempts to change MARTA's name are still around. Earlier this year, state Sen. The story mentions how the acronym has long been the subject of a racially charged joke: "You know what MARTA really stands for, don't you?" However, in the section on the effects of race on expansion and funding, the entry says MARTA is "sometimes sarcastically said to stand for 'Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta', a replacement backronym, due to the relatively low number of white riders, particularly after peak commuting hours." That sentence is cited with a 2001 AJC article about a marketing proposal designed to improve MARTA's image. The incorrect result used information from MARTA’s Wikipedia entry, which, in its first sentence, correctly defines MARTA: "Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority is the principal public transport operator in the Atlanta metropolitan area."
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