Seattle DOT tries to exclude whites in free ORCA program

First Hill Tram. (Photo: SDOT Flickr)

The Seattle Department of Transportation is giving away free ORCA cards through a racist program that tries to exclude as many whites as possible.

The ORCA Recovery Card program allows up to 2,000 recipients unlimited use of the transit card by the end of the year. However, to be eligible for the giveaway, you must work in the neighborhoods selected by SDOT. Your criteria? Run.

SDOT does not directly discriminate against whites. That would be illegal. Instead, they have set up their program in such a way that very few whites register. They don’t hide the strategy either.

Race-obsessed Seattle’s newest program

This specific program comes as Seattle hopes to kickstart the post-COVID economy. It is designed to get employees to their workplaces for free while they “continue to work towards a just and equitable transportation network”.

“As part of this effort, we are targeting our transportation investments where there are high numbers of Black, Indigenous and Colored (BIPOC) -owned businesses and neighborhoods hardest hit by COVID-19. Little Saigon, Chinatown-International District (CID), Japantown and Pioneer Square are just a few of these areas, ”SDOT stated in a blog post.

Although activists claim that asking for ID is racist, SDOT requires you to collect your ORCA unlimited card.

An SDOT spokesperson told the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH that the department selected the neighborhoods based in part on the Race and Social Justice Index.

This tool uses resident race (“priority population”) to find neighborhoods it considers marginalized. Although the data takes into account criteria such as income level, it gives additional points to neighborhoods with colored, non-English speakers, and foreign-born populations.

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The SDOT’s racist program makes little sense

This race-based program makes little sense.

It doesn’t really make sense to pick these neighborhoods based on business location if the goal is to help employees.

These neighborhoods may have more minority-owned businesses than Downtown, Lake City, or Beacon Hill, for example. But where do these employees live? While the International District has a high percentage of its employees living in the neighborhood, the most diverse and densely populated parts of Seattle are further south.

Shouldn’t these communities get the free ORCA cards for their work trips downtown? And if a white company in West Seattle or Northgate has a high percentage of minority employees, why should the city shut them out?

Beyond the logic of the program, it is designed in a racist manner.

It’s not fair

Low-income people, regardless of race, have been overwhelmed by COVID.

The pandemic has harmed businesses run by a black person, as well as a business owned by a white person. Rather than helping the first 2,000 who ask for income instead of skin color, SDOT is excluding as many low-income white people as possible.

Although their so-called white privilege has not helped them escape poverty, the SDOT regards white Seattle supporters as unworthy of ORCA aid. If SDOT really seeks justice, it should treat low-income whites in the same way as it does low-income minorities.

SDOT takes the same racially obsessed approach as the other city departments. They claim to be focused on justice and treat people differently depending on their race. They assume that all ethnic minorities are disadvantaged and that all whites have privileges. It’s the kind of racist stereotype that society used to loathe. Now it brings you social currency and you develop traffic programs around it.

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