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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported this week that Asian-Americans in the city are contesting the Rapid Transit Authority’s decision to rename a train running through the heavily-Asian Doraville neighborhood the Yellow Line.
MARTA officials were warned by an employee before the name change last October that Atlanta’s burgeoning Asian community would find the term for the line to Doraville offensive.
“Historically, it has had a derogatory intent,” said John Park, an attorney with the nonprofit Center for Pan Asian Community Services in Doraville, just down the hill from the Marta station. “It physically paints a very unattractive picture. I don’t consider myself ‘yellow.’”
Park and other Asian activists plan to meet Friday with MARTA CEO Beverly Scott. They hope MARTA will change the line’s name from yellow to gold.
It never fails to amaze how thoroughly stuffed with idiots our country’s bureaucracy is (are you asking for trouble, ya dumb masochists?), but, c’mon, it’s rather silly to get all riled up over the color coding of the subway system. Shit, Atlanta, you still Tomahawk Chop at Braves games. Come to think of it, I used to live on Boston’s Red Line in the middle of a sizable Navajo enclave and no one there had a problem.
Oh! Hold the phones! I get it now. This don’t-call-me-yellow battle cry is a cover up for a different problem, one that changing the line’s name to Gold won’t solve. Why didn’t we see this sooner? MARTA officials, if you’re reading this, the answer is clear: Change the name to the Yerrow Rine.
[via Jalopnik]
No Happy Medium 
No one would have been sensitive to the Yellow line had the creative designer switched the orientation of the color coding. Shoulda done some UI testing prior to approving the new maps :)
Doraville (and the neighboring Chamblee) are very heavily populated by Asians, but also by Central Americans, and thus is the best place to go for some authentic and cheap food. This is the only part of the A that I really miss….
Doraville? As in “Dora the Explorer”? That’s what Atlanta calls its neighborhood with a lot of Central Americans? That’s so racist.
Ha! Yerrow Rine! (Sometimes I fear you’ve abandoned your heritage to a higher calling…but I guess your lowbrow ancestry is still in there, somewhere…perhaps hidden in the silken folds of the Open Kimono by Seymore Haire).