Thursday, October 20, 2011

A bus carrying mostly Hasidic Jews - where men sit at the front and women sit at the back - has provoked fury from the New York City Mayor

Michael Bloomberg said that gender segregation on public buses is not permitted and called the bus in Brooklyn an outrage. From the outside the B110 might look like any other bus - but on the inside revelations about its seating arrangements are causing huge controversy. The unusual practice has only come to light after a woman told a student newspaper that other riders said she had to leave the front and sit in the back. The B110 has been operated by the Private Transportation Corporation for 38 years under a city franchise. The bus costs $2.50 to ride and it is out of action on Friday night and most of Saturday. There are 165,000 Hasidic Jews in New York, with the majority of them living in Brooklyn, and they follow strict religious rules. They are not allowed to sit with people of the opposite sex who are not their spouse.

1 comment:

Barbara said...

Can you imagine the uproar from groups like the ACLU if it was white Christians who were running this bus?