Brown, Female, and on the Bus: A Personal Journey into Policy

How Racism, Sexism, and Poverty led me to the Transportation Field

There’s a joke in DC that the first thing anyone asks a stranger is “so, what do you do?” When I first moved to DC, I didn’t understand why that question was deemed negative; what you do reveals at least some information about what you care about, what your values are. Those values may just be “I make money doing x, so I can do y,” but on some level, we all care about our work…right? While I quickly learned that the question was loaded in DC- it was a coded way of asking “who do you know and how important are you?” — the connection between what someone does for work and what their values are stuck in my head, and continues to guide me almost 10 years later. Back in California now, I am more often asked why I do the work I do. And my answer is…complicated.

I got my first passport at 6 months old. Not to take a luxurious holiday with my jetsetting family, but to move back to a country on the brink of war, right after a democratic revolution that quickly — almost immediately — turned into a dictatorship. At age 5, after various failed attempts to flee Iran, I boarded a flight from Istanbul to Los Angeles by myself. Before I started school, transportation had already served to move me both into and out of opportunity in very real ways.

Shifting language, culture, and environment at such a young age is difficult for anyone. While kids are resilient, they are also sponges, absorbing trauma and joy equally as they learn to process the world around and inside them. Moving into mostly white, low income communities in the Sacramento suburbs in 1985, as a non-English speaking brown child, created an additional level of complexity. My family, Kurdish and Persian with traditional tendencies and nationalist pride, pushed against our assimilation. In a desperate attempt to retain our cultural identities and pride in our 3000 year history, we were not allowed to speak English at home, participate in extracurricular activities, or have too much interaction with other kids. I spent many years being angry with my parents for their strict adherence to these rules. But I also understand them, and have learned to feel gratitude for their aims, regardless of their methods.

Like many immigrants, my identity is complicated. First, I am not technically an immigrant. I was born in Berkeley, California. I was 6 months old when my family moved back to Iran, and for the first 5 years of my life, I was physically stuck there. Even after we finally made it back to the US, I was raised in such strictly traditional surroundings, we may as well have been in my grandparents’ village in Iran, just without the bombs and threats from the government (at least, not at that point). My family struggled to gain legal status in the US, and I was shaped by my personal experiences as well as theirs.

Immigrants in the US are not a monolith, but there are shared experiences and understandings that transcend culture or national origin. I have a large circle of friends, but only a small group of folks that I share stories of my childhood with; and they are all immigrants. This is because the experience of not belonging, of being a stranger across cultures, of finding an identity between worlds, is unique to immigrant children. As a child in Iran, I was proud of my “American” status. But in the US, I was never quite American enough. And as an adult, when I traveled back to Iran, I was never Persian enough. The judgment that came with that difference — from both of my worlds — was always challenging. From the kids in elementary school asking me if I was eating vomit when I packed my amazing Persian stews for lunch (prompting me to eat nothing but bologna sandwiches for years, to be more “American”), to my parents’ friends commenting on how I was too “Americanized” as a teenager, to my white friends still looking at me sideways when I make the occasional comment about my past, I was always an outsider. Eventually, I learned to embrace it- to see it as a gift that I was given, to glean the best parts of all the cultures and traditions I was raised with, and dismiss the parts that felt toxic. I was able to create an identity that transcended multiple worlds, as long as I accepted the lack of acceptance that brought with it.

I remember a few years ago talking to a roommate and telling her how there was a point in my life when I just wanted to be white. Not one of the pretty or popular girls, not a particular celebrity or fictional character, just “white.” Growing up in the shadow of a media culture that only ever showed blonde haired, blue eyed white women as beautiful, successful, interesting, or powerful, I learned that was what I should strive for. The exportation of western aesthetics has been well documented and understood, but the depth of its integration even into cultures that reject Westernism is hard to explain. I begged my parents to let me change my name to Marsha as a child. Marsha! Mostly, it was because I could never find my name on any small license plates or pencils, and because my all white teachers and classmates were constantly confused about my name. But it was also some internal belief that being closer to a white identity made me more valuable. Assimilation, not integration, was the goal in the 80s.

But that is another essay.

Persian families are notoriously political and apolitical simultaneously. While my family does not fit the typical stereotype of Persians in the US, especially California (we were not wealthy, educated, connected, or moving to LA), we still spent every shared moment talking (yelling, really) about politics. I used to joke that I was the only 8 year old who watched the Oliver North hearings, and knew what they were about. The reality of being raised in a country of people that fought so hard for their freedom, only to be hoodwinked into extreme oppression, created a generation of Iranian immigrants around the world that understood politics but feared political involvement. In America, politics was for the wealthy, white, male oligarchs. Our role was to scrape what we could out of the promised American dream, not dare to engage in the shaping of that dream.

When I started becoming politically active, in my early teens, my parents were not pleased. In their eyes, politics was either for fools or power-hungry men. The idea of affecting change through advocacy or — even worse — internal to the system — was ludicrous. Hadn’t I learned anything from our history? Politics was for them (wealthy white men), not us (everyone else).

But how could I stay silent? Every day, I witnessed overt racism and sexism in my life. Every day, the systems that had been built to protect white male status did just that, teaching me, even as a child, that the ultimate level of success was never attainable for me. Not until later did I question that version of success- the masculine, “do one thing” and ignore all others (which can only be ignored if someone else is taking care of every other need) version of success. The “pull yourself up” and ignore all the systemic forces pushing against you version of success. The “get out and never look back” rather than help raise up your community version of success. Even though I knew money and prestige was not my goal from an early age, it took many years for me to understand why and how those beliefs dominated.

But again, a whole different essay.

When we first moved to the US, we were very poor. We lived in apartments around Sacramento, moving every 6 months or so as my parents chased elusive opportunities and odd jobs. Both of my parents worked at various burger joints, and my sister and I took the public bus to school, keys tied around our necks, sometimes upwards of 40 minutes each way. My dad had worked as a mechanic at some point, and used his knowledge to buy, fix, and sell old cars as one of his many side hustles. My parents didn’t believe in babysitters, or couldn’t afford them, so we often bussed to their jobs after school, and sat eating French fries or reading books while they worked. I remember one of the places they worked had arcade games, and even though I wasn’t allowed to play video games, my mom would sneak some free plays for me with the key whenever my dad wasn’t around. At one restaurant, I would sit outside in the parking lot, building tiny villages in the dirt at the center dividers with bits of broken twigs and rocks I collected. I was a lonely child, but I learned to be ok with being alone, and in retrospect-especially in 2020- that was a gift.

The last burger place my parents worked at in the Sacramento area, Classic Burger, was next to a Mazda dealership. The bus I took to get from school to their job dropped me off across the street from the dealership, and I walked through it to get to them. In 1989, Mazda came out with the Miata, originally only available in red, white, and blue in the US. It was the first time I’d ever cared about a car. Walking by those shiny, tiny cars as I went to sit in the greasy air of the burger shop gave 9-year-old me my first taste of material want, the first time consumerism infiltrated my psyche as a child. In school, I fantasized that I could learn skills to woo my classmates; to become clever or artistic or sporty enough that they would no longer question my hair, skin, language, or lack of wealth. But here, here was a way for me to buy my way into their world. I was enchanted by the car not as a mode for gaining access or opportunity, but as a means to gain status. And that understanding never left me.

By the time I was old enough to drive, my family had moved out of Sacramento and into northern Sonoma County. My parents had moved up the ladder and now owned their own little burger shop, were able to buy their first house, and we’d been living in a middle class community for some time. My political psyche had also formed more. I was involved in groups and actions, I had already joined boards and commissions for youth, and I’d organized various petitions and rallies in school. I’d been given a used bike in my early teens, and rode it around the developing landscape of wine country as my only physical escape from my home. I took the school bus to school, and the county bus to the local community college, in the neighboring town, for classes I couldn’t take at our underfunded high school. Active and shared transportation was my lifeline, and I could not imagine sheltering myself in a private car — even a little Miata, removed from the experience of transportation, despite all the problems such a luxury would have alleviated. In Iran, taxis and mini-buses charged for space rather than users; and the wealthy paid extra for empty bus seats or “closed door” taxis that did not pick up other strangers. Riding the bus in the US and not smooshing into a stranger still felt luxurious despite the inconveniences and delays, until the harassment began.

In addition to being Middle Eastern in a region made up of mostly white and Latino populations, I was a young female who’d developed early. Before I understood the comments that men hurled at me, I knew the discomfort they caused. On the school bus, young boys grabbed me with no remorse and no consequences (other than the time I punched one of them, finally trying to assert some form of power). At the city bus stop, on a rural road with no one around, men slowed down and screamed out the window for me to get in as they drove by. This behavior continued through my 20s, in Oakland and San Francisco and much more “urban” and “progressive” places than the small town I spent my adolescence in. I still remember wondering what part of my 22 year old self, dressed in paint splattered clothes from 9 hours of working with preschoolers, screamed out for that kind of attention.

But it wasn’t me. Regardless of how I dressed or presented myself, the comments and harassment came. The man who told me at a bus stop in Fresno that “Iranians are responsible for destroying the world” (without realizing I was Persian). The man who was kicked off the bus for threatening me for being a “terrorist” as I sat quietly listening to my discman, on my way home from work. The cars that slowed down to ask if they could give me a ride, and then screamed “bitch” as they drove off. The drivers who yelled “oooh, RIDE that bike” as they almost cut me off, then sped away. These were normalized experiences of being female, brown, and a non-driver. And yet, I never sought the safe isolation of being in a car. I could not have explained why, until the age of 29, I refused to get a license. I had neither the understanding of transportation’s importance or its role in our social fabric to put words to my own stubbornness, until I sank deep into the academic study, personal stories, and history of our systems.

As a mentor once told me, there’s no way to have lived my life and come out non-political. Through migration, poverty, racism, and misogyny, I learned the purpose of hope, of struggle, of trying to make a better world than the one I had to claw through. But it could easily have gone the other way. I could just as easily have become selfish, concerned only with getting my piece of the pie and moving on. In fact, that was what the eighties taught me, that was what poor white schools taught me, and that was — in some ways — what being an immigrant taught me. We were brought here for opportunities that our parents did not have. And while I found those opportunities to be about self-awareness, growth, and community building, my parents would have preferred I aligned more closely with their vision of being a doctor, lawyer, or engineer; gaining wealth and prestige; and making a nuclear family.

When I entered grad school at Mills College in 2009, I finally decided to get a license. I realized that I could no longer afford to wait for buses that never came, and I had the luxury of being able to drive, have a vehicle, and afford my private transportation system. My childhood fantasy of buying acceptance with a fancy sports car was tempered by my adult lack of interest in prestige or status, and I gratefully accepted my mother’s used sedan, knowing how lucky I was to have access to such a resource. Being in an enclosed vehicle alone was a new experience at 29, and the safety and comfort I felt was matched only by my own sense of disconnection from the world. I’ve heard the term “windshield mentality” used for the psychology of driving, and it resonates deeply. On a train, a bus, a bike, or on foot, we are forced to interact with the world in some way. But alone, in a car, separated physically from all others, we can easily sink into an “us vs. everyone” mentality. Suddenly, the biker or pedestrian is a nuisance, not a person trying to get somewhere just like me. The stop signs and speed limits are just in my way, rather than being protections for the lives of others. No level of learning changes this basic psychology. I still must remind myself every time I drive, I am not in traffic, I AM traffic.

With this shift in mentality taking shape, I entered a public policy program, aiming to learn about community based economic development and social equity work. I was going back to school to make a difference, and I had no idea that path would lead me to transportation. One of my early projects was a study for the local business improvement district; a parking study. As I walked around the community counting parking spaces by the hour, I dashed across roads with no stoplights, crosswalks, and wide lanes incentivizing high speeds, wondering why certain corners were so dark once the sun went down, and taking note of the infrastructure for other modes of transportation like buses and bikes. I spoke to shop owners and residents, passersby and city officials, and every conversation and observation pushed me to learn more about urban planning. Where we put things, and how we provide access to them, is the institutionalization, through infrastructure, of our values. I think of those conversations often these days, of the person who told me they won’t take the bus in the evenings, because the bus stop is next to an ATM, and there have been too many muggings there. Of the person who explained to me that the land use and transit components are decided separately, so putting a bus stop in front of a café instead, for example, had not been considered. And of our final presentation to the local Business Improvement District, where we suggested pedestrian, bike, and transit improvements to slow down traffic would benefit them, rather than more parking, and the incredulous response we received. I think of my own transportation stories; of the frustration of taking 3 busses and riding over an hour to commute to my job that was only 8 miles away. Of the kids who were on the last leg of that commute, using the county bus as their school bus every morning, and how happy their interactions made me. Of missing a ride between jobs and the anxiety I felt as I waited 30 minutes for the next option. Of my mom choosing to save her change and walk, rather than take the bus, to the shopping center so she could use it to buy me ice cream as a child. As I sit in my home office now, trying to focus on one project while every incredulous minute of 2020 swirls in my head, I think of those first moments of epiphany, of the beginning of my transportation understanding, and how I had in some ways been training my whole life to make those connections, and do this work.

In many ways, transportation and land use is the physical manifestation of patriarchy and racism. From our history of bulldozing minority neighborhoods to build freeways and refusing loans to Black families to our current decision making structures that exclude those who cannot access language, time, education, transportation, childcare, technology… all but the most resourced participants, we have reinforced systems that benefit white men at the expense of all others for decades. How do we move forward when we are burdened with so much weight, pulling at us from our past? How do we confront our own history and learn from it, to make programs, policies, investments, and structures that serve the needs of communities, especially in a world of constrained time and resources.

Recently, I gave a presentation that showed historic redlining maps lined up with current maps of disadvantaged communities, and I was surprised at the response it garnered. “Wow, they are the same,” someone said incredulously. Our past actions have long lasting consequences, and we are never starting from scratch. It still boggles my mind how that is a revelation. OF COURSE THEY ARE THE SAME. Then I remember how my experiences in transportation are framed by my experiences in life; by my gender, my ethnicity, my cultural background, my socioeconomic status, my education level, and my physical capabilities.

The child who rode the bus 40 minutes across town so she wouldn’t be alone for hours at home, the teenage girl who was harassed for having a body while she was trying to get to work, the young adult who wondered why her favorite places were so difficult to access without a private vehicle, the adult who fights for greater coordination between land use, transportation, environment, and equity; all these parts of me understand the transportation system in deeply personal ways. To truly have a system that serves the needs of diverse communities, that acknowledges and repairs the harm we have done with past planning and projects, we must have greater representation from the people who are affected by them. Our current systems, which make decisions for people without their involvement, will continue to create inequitable outcomes, however well intentioned those decisions may be. Sharing more information, education, and stories about transportation and mobility, and enabling collaboration through new models of engagement can help us move past limited community meetings and outreach into engagement and co-creation of goals. By acknowledging the importance of transportation in economic, environmental, educational, and health outcomes, those of us currently in the field can help connect the dots for the next generation of transportation planners, policy makers, and engineers, and increase diversity in representation in our field. Just as my lived experiences influenced my decision to enter transportation, and continue to color my views through every project, the experiences of those different than me, those impacted most by the mistakes of our past and present, must be included and valued as we move forward and try to do better. Meaningful representation, moving past tokenism, is critical to shifting the transportation paradigm and addressing our past harms.

I am under no illusion that transportation alone can eradicate racism, sexism, or poverty. But I am certain that the systems we’ve built reinforce many of the barriers towards affecting those issues. And I know, personally and professionally, that transportation can provide insight into our social issues and needs, and be a powerful lifeline to better opportunity, if we can only utilize that power collaboratively. Mobility creates economic, social, and environmental opportunity, and that opportunity has been distributed asymmetrically thus far. Transportation is more than technical engineering, it is more than a bus or a train or a bike; it is the potential for movement through the physical world, and the experiences and stories of accessing that movement. So when someone asks me now why I do this work, I simply tell them that it turns out I’ve been working in transportation my whole life, I just finally made it official.