Lawsuit: White Driver Makes Black Men Sit In Back Of Bus
Lawsuit Filed After Investigation Found White Bus Driver Made Black Passengers Sit In Back Of Bus
Bruh — what year is this?
Look, we all know that the current presidential administration is bound and determined to turn the clock back and make Jim Crow great again, but two years before President Donald Trump made his triumphant (or abysmal, depending on who you ask) return to the White House and turned anti-DEI propaganda into a which hunt on Black progress, a white bus driver in North Dakota was making Black passengers ride in the back of the bus as if we weren’t 70 years removed from the iconic arrest of Rosa Parks.
According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, in 2023, two Black men boarded a Jefferson Lines bus bound for Minnesota from North Dakota when the driver, who hasn’t been identified by name, told them they needed to sit in the back of the bus. An argument reportedly ensued, and the driver threatened to call the cops if the two men, who did not know each other, didn’t move to the back and sit down, which they eventually did. Four months later, one of the Black men, Xavier Davis, called for a Minnesota Department of Human Rights investigation, and, wouldn’t you know it, a “memorandum filed earlier this year by Commissioner Rebecca Lucero found probable cause the driver discriminated against the passengers because of their race,” the Tribune reported. Earlier this week, Davis filed a civil lawsuit against Jefferson Lines, one of the largest bus companies in the U.S., and the driver in Hennepin County District Court.
According to Lucero, the driver, who is listed as “John Doe” in the lawsuit, failed to give any non-discriminatory explanation as to why the two Black men needed to sit in the back of the bus, and, of course, he allowed white passengers to sit wherever they wanted. Lucero determined it was a racist incident “evidenced by the racially discriminatory stereotypes underlying the interaction.”
Apparently, Lucero was referring to the asinine excuses the driver gave after the fact, as the investigation was being conducted. Seriously, if you weren’t already sure this man was racist as hell, his nonsensical and brazenly stereotypical reason for forcing the Black passengers to the back of the bus should seal it for you.
From the Tribune:
Jefferson Lines policy was to board the bus on a first-come, first-serve basis, but the driver told the Black passengers that company policy was to board from the back of the bus to the front.
The driver also thought the two passengers were travelling together, even though their tickets were for different destinations, and he later stated that the passengers smelled like marijuana. After the situation became argumentative, the driver threatened to involve law enforcement.
In her memo, Lucero wrote that all of these actions by the bus driver were “rooted in discriminatory and stereotypical expectations,” including that two Black people must be traveling together and that “Black men are more likely to smoke cannabis or engage in illegal behavior.”
“Driver’s implication that he might need to involve the police was rooted in the trope that a Black man questioning Driver’s decision was somehow threatening or disruptive,” Lucero wrote. “There was no evidence that [Davis] engaged in any activity that would warrant police intervention.”
During the course of the investigation, Jefferson Lines asked the driver to complete an incident report. The driver defended his reasons for asking the Black passengers to sit in the back of the bus. He pointed to the smell of marijuana and that he preferred passengers board from the back because on different routes, he noticed passengers didn’t like when they were bumped with luggage by other passengers walking down the aisle.
So, the driver tried to pass off his own personal segregation policy as the bus company’s policy; he assumed (or pretended to assume) the two Black men knew each other despite their tickets showing they likely didn’t, and then later on, after he was made to file an incident report, he suddenly recalled the smell of marijuana, which, of course, could not possibly be proven and is exactly the kind of thing a racist would say in an attempt to justify racist behavior.
So, obviously, Jefferson Lines didn’t put up with this rogue bus driver’s bigoted behavior, right? Certainly, the company served him his walking papers and then issued some standard statement about how “there is no place for racism at Jefferson Lines,” correct?
Nah, according to the Tribune, about a month after the incident, Jefferson Lines issued the driver a verbal warning, not for the despicable racism, but for deviating from the company’s seating policy
“They just are unwilling to do the right thing,” said Davis’ attorney, Sam Savage, who reported that, since the investigation was concluded, Davis and Jefferson Lines reps had been in mediation to try and settle their dispute, but to no avail.
“Davis is seeking damages based on being denied full and equal enjoyment of public accommodations,” the Tribune reported.
What’s that they say about “the more things change?”
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