“Busing It” in the City: Black Youth, Performance, and Public Transit

In the years following the Civil Rights movement, the specter of racialized, specifically black, youth as thugs became a symbol of postindustrial anxiety and disappointment. Much of the activity of the young on mass transportation, which is interpreted as expressions of delinquency, is actually a performative engagement with adults' anxieties and with the cultural trope of urban, racialized youth as deviant.