I was browsing this blog from a Vegas taxi driver and was very glad to see this post about all the racism surrounding NBA All Star Weekend. I was in Vegas while Mandalay Bay was hosting the NBA All Star game, in fact I was staying just next door at the Luxor, but as that was only the second time I’d ever been to the city, I didn’t really have a point of comparison for the crowds, traffic, etc. Before realizing that this event was going on, I did note that Vegas seemed a lot more diverse than I remembered it, but I never felt particularly unsafe or saw any criminal behavior or anything like that.
The next time I was in Vegas, which was about a month later, however, I heard from cab drivers, poker dealers, and hotel employees (all white) about how bad that weekend was, not just in terms of crowds, but about how it was unsafe to walk outside, people were getting shot in the street, etc. Like I said, I had been walking around the Strip that weekend without seeing any of this, but I kept hearing the same thing from so many people that I started to think maybe there was some truth to it, even though my spidey sense was telling me this was mostly just racism talking, as there were so many more black tourists that weekend than there usually are in Vegas.
Anyway, I was glad to see that at least one Vegas cab driver felt the same way I did about all this fear-mongering. He reports overwhelmingly posititive experiences from that weekend and argues that the traffic and crime were not abnormal for a three-day weekend in Vegas. Best of all, he frames his anti-racist ethic in a classically Vegas way:
“Las Vegas needs to grow up and respect all races and cultures that visit and spend money.” (emphasis added)