For Amorita Falcon, Chicago’s Transit Desert is No Mirage

I think it’s hard for many people to understand the systematic racism that triggers violence in America. It’s a bias that most of us, particularly people like me, never think about because we don’t experience it every day, week, or month.  

That’s why we at CityXones wrote the story of Amorita Falcon for the Crain’s Forum series on long-term problems facing Chicago. She’s a 24-year-old Latinx woman who spends as much — or more — time getting to her job in the Loop as colleagues who live twice as far away as the crow flies.

Why? Because Chicago’s regional transportation system represents an invisible barrier built between her house in the transit desert surrounding suburban Lansing and the good jobs further north. There are millions of others just like her.  

Amorita’s story is not on the scale of the tragic story of George Floyd, who was killed by the hands of an abusive police force in Minneapolis. But it does demonstrate the real obstacles that many hard-working people, particularly those of color, must overcome on a daily basis here and around the nation.

Amorita is an admirable woman with a lot of grit who expresses far more frustration than anger. She’s figured out ways to overcome transit obstacles. For a while, she spent more than four hours a day going to and from work as an unpaid intern until she landed her current job, one with pay and benefits. But why do these barriers exist in the first place? Indifference? Poor planning? Incompetence? Probably a mixture of all. Individually, the grievances might not seem like much. But add them up and it’s easy to see why a lot of people chalk it all up to the systematic racism that has long plagued Chicago.  

I can get from my Gold Coast apartment to my office in the South Loop in 20 minutes. I am served by three bus lines about a five-minute walk and two El stops not much further away. I can walk to my office on South Michigan Avenue faster than any bus or train can get her downtown. And I rarely feel threatened as she does waiting for a train at night.  

The city’s transportation system doesn’t make my life harder. It makes it easier. In short I don’t feel or experience systematic racism. But because Amorita shared her story in Crain's Chicago Business,  I can certainly understand it. And understanding it is a first long overdue step in dismantling a system that favors white guys like me.

—James O’Shea

Photo of Amorita Falcon by John R. Boehm