Bahati Foundation: Rahsaan, Racing and Racism
From CyclingTips.com
“The reason I started the foundation. I just wanted to get more kids that looked like me on bikes.” — Rahsaan Bahati
Three years ago, in a VeloNews interview, African American cycling champ Rahsaan Bahati, in response to a question on confronting racial injustice in the sport, said: “It’s time for our community to support the Bahati Foundation…and all the other organizations out there. We can’t do it alone. A lot of people say, ‘I don’t see color.’ I call [that] BS. The problem is, you have to understand it. I say, ‘Let’s understand it.’ The more stories, the better.” Well, this is one more story dealing with racism in cycling, and it’s one in which Bahati, at age 40, says he is still being victimized in American bike racing.
Bahati grew up in Compton, just south of downtown Los Angeles, which is one of America’s 10 most dangerous cities and notorious for gun violence and gangsta rap. “I saw someone killed when I was 7,” Bahati has said. He was 10 in 1992 when riots broke out following the acquittal of four white LAPD officers of using excessive force, beating an unarmed Black man, Rodney King, despite a citizen’s video showing the brutality of the attack. When I asked Rahsaan’s father, Rashid Bahati, whether those riots influenced his son’s perspective on how bad things were in LA at the time, he replied, “I’m sure it increased his awareness on some level of certain things, on the social dynamic in a predominantly Black community, but we’ve never discussed that actually.”
So, I asked Rahsaan what he remembers about those riots (which saw 63 deaths, damage to more than 3,000 businesses and some 7,000 fires) and how they have affected his life. “The only thing I really remember is seeing our city one way physically and then over the next few days seeing it another way, and not really knowing why,” he said. “Also, in an unfortunate situation, my uncle was an opportunist, and he actually took me with him to go riot, which didn’t settle too well of course with my parents—because they were out working at the time. Luckily, we were both safe…but I don’t remember much. I do remember the cops beating Rodney King—but I don’t know if it has affected me, being that I was so young.”
