Fortune Favors The Bold

Wired Editor Uses Yoko Ono Lyric to Compare Cyclists to Oppressed Black People (via aminatou)

On one hand, schadenfreude at privileged white liberal thinking his liberalness entitles him to flash status by using n word. Otoh, he screwed up, recognized it extremely quickly, is this really worth a Gawker post?

(via pegobry)

Ugh all around.

I just want to throw out there, though, that it’s not the first time that cyclists as a group - and yes, there are a fair amount of wealthy white males in the advocacy movement, but it is certainly a unisex, multiracial coalition - found similarities between the (racial) civil rights movement and complete streets / bicycle accessibility efforts. No, the treatment is most DEFINITELY NOT the same, not even comparable. However, the debate between the pro-bike and non-bike people has quite a few ugly, depressing similarities. There IS definitely the concept that automobile drivers are a privileged class and that cyclists are an undeserving, rights-devoid subclass. I do not intend to at all minimize what minorities have went through among European-race-based societies in the past five centuries, but I am trying to point out just how barbaric the sensibilities are among the bicycle-opposed.

And to put a fine point on it, I saw a comment on the Daily News the other day where some elderly lady was complaining about “dark-skinned” cyclists in her Queens neighborhood, and that sort of ties it all together. Some of these people support really barbaric shit just because cyclists, to them, are just one more type of sub-human pest in the neighborhood - like teenagers, welfare mothers, hippies, anyone who’s not white, people who like to go to bars, non-Catholics (or non-Jews depending on the neighborhood), anyone who’s dressed funny, etc. There’s no universe in which it’s okay to appropriate the N-word for this, but we should still approach advocacy with the appropriate tactics.

(via pegobry)