March 18, 2015
Current Events
CATS (Capital Area Transit System) employs mostly African-American drivers, which Mirabito says is a problem. He believes firing black drivers and hiring white ones will make white residents feel more comfortable in traveling on the bus system.
“CATS is actually 95% African-American,” Mirabito said. “And unfortunately our demographics don’t match Baton Rouge. I would love to have a workforce that matches the demographics of Baton Rouge because I think there are some people out there who may not ride CATS buses because they don’t like the color of an operator’s skin.”
Understandably, Mirabito’s words riled city council members and citizens alike.
“If that’s his assessment of the potential ridership of Baton Rouge, then he’s an idiot and needs to be fired,” Metro Councilman John Delgado said. “It’s obscene. I find it offensive.”
Councilwoman C. Denise Marcelle, who called for Mirabito’s resignation last month for poor performance, said she is now calling on the board to fire him.
“If the board and my colleague who chairs the board sits there and allows that, we’ve got a real problem,” she said. Marcelle added that if the CATS board does not act, she will bring up the issue at Metro Council.
However, at least 1 CATS board member has come to the defense of Mirabito,
Current Events
“I don’t understand what the big uproar is about,” CATS board member Ken Perret said. “This whole racial thing gets way blown out of hand.
“As far as Denise Marcelle getting excited, she has a lot of other things she needs to be worried about,” Perret added. “She seems to get involved in everything that has some press involved with it. She’s made some statements that are completely wrong and have no facts behind them.”
Needless to say, Mirabito is now making the necessary round of apologies in light of the fallout.
“I apologize,” he said in a statement. “It was never my intention to offend anyone, and I am sorry that my comments on a recent podcast have distracted our community from our continued push to move our transit system forward. My comment, heard in its entirety, was not racially motivated, and I apologize that is the impression it has given people.”
"CATS is actually 95% African-American," Mirabito said. "And unfortunately our demographics don’t match Baton Rouge. I would love to have a workforce that matches the demographics of Baton Rouge because I think there are some people out there who may not ride CATS buses because they don’t like the color of an operator’s skin." I held off commenting on this yesterday, hoping other readers would share their thoughts. Do I see how some folks might feel that Mirabito's comments were "racist" ? Yes. However, to me his words come across as an Uncomfortable truth that unfortunately was stated very poorly. I base my opinion on the assumption that Mirabito knows his city and *His* (White) people and thus spoke from that cultural perspective. Which brings me to a question for his critics: If the majority of CATS drivers in Baton Rouge were White and Mirabito had expressed that the workforce… Read more »