I’ve had a moment of self discovery and, guess what, I’m a punk. I have my tail tucked securely between my legs and I am flat out running from a fight (one I could probably “win”) for, what I remember being, the first time in my life … ever. Normally my commitment to my sensibilities is as solidly placed as spots on a Dalmatian but in this case I plain give up. I don’t wanna’ fight the good fight. I don’t care about justice or equality. I can’t take it anymore, life is too short, etc, etc, etc. I just don’t have the intestinal fortitude for this one. I give up. It’s not worth it to me. I’ve caved in to prejudice and changed my commute route due to racism.
Here’s my story. If I leave my office at 5:00 I can catch a bus to a train to a bus to home and the whole thing takes about 60 minutes (which by most standards is a short commute door to door). If I leave my office at 4:30 I can catch a bus to a bus to home but it takes 75 minutes. The upside of the 75 minute trip is that I get to leave the office early, the downside is I get home at pretty much the same time as if I left at 5:00 BUT if I leave at 5:00 I make points at work by staying til 5:00 …… see my dilemma? So in the interest of currying favor with my boss I left at 5:00 all of last week and did the bus to train to bus to home route. Not, repeat not, doing it anymore. Yes, it’s ME pulling the race card. Who woulda’ thunk it huh, but I can unequivocally state that the bus driver on route 56 between the light rail and my house is a racist. There’s just no other reason for him to single me out everyday. I’m not the only woman, I’m not the only older person, I’m not the only person who looks middle class or professional (hence out of place on the 56). Believe me I’ve considered it all. What I am is the only white person and I 100% believe that’s his problem with me. Everyday it was something new. Every time he saw me he had an under-the-breath comment I couldn’t quite hear, he seemed to relish snatching my transfer from my hand and scrutinizing it carefully while everyone else simply flashed their pass and walked on around me. Once, when I was already seated, he called me back up front to look at my pass again by loudly yelling out “hey furcoat!, furcoat come back here”. Which had the entire bus snickering. Furcoat? Whatever happened to ma’am? I guess it’s worth saying at this point, more to make myself feel better than anything else, that I didn’t respond to that one, and didn’t move a muscle which made him have to come to me – which probably didn’t make him like me any better but oh so what!
The final straw for me was last Friday. There was a crowd of about 6 of us at the bus stop that evening, it was drizzling and the bus was 20 minutes late. I was about the fourth person to board once the doors opened. As I stepped on the bus the bus driver bolted out of his seat (and he bolted, it’s not my imagination) and threw up his hand in my face and told me, loudly, to “get off the bus”. No explanation at all. More out of shock then resistance, I stood my ground and so he repeated himself … twice. It was at that point that I noticed a lady with a stroller trying to get off the bus by maneuvering her way down the aisle through the other people boarding the bus. Understanding dawning, I stepped off the bus simultaneously realizing that no one else was asked to get off the bus or stop. Once the lady with the stroller had disembarked he made a big show of letting me on the bus. Again, to the snickers of the other riders. Ok, I know all the wars I could wage over this. I know all the things I could have said and/or done at that moment. Usually I would have cut the man to ribbons with my verbal skills and gone after his job. But it was my only way home, I was tired, I was wet, I was hungry and I just didn’t have it in me. So what I did was hold my head up and go home with as much remaining dignity as I could muster. I will confess that all the way home I had fantasies of sic’ing Fred on the bus driver and imagining all the scenarios of that confrontation. Of course when I got home I tried to whine to Fred about it and was totally unprepared for the “well sweetie, it’s hard to be sympathetic” speech that I got. Shyt! The double whammy!! I closed myself up in the office in a snit for the rest of the night. Since then though, I’ve done a bit of reflecting on prejudice and racism and I can see Fred’s point to a degree.
When my son Chris was two he saw his first caterpillar. It was a big, chubby one, all black and orange, and it was scooting straight up our front door right at Chris’ eye level. He pointed at it and smiled up at me and I said to him “oooh Chris, what’s that?” He very carefully touched it with the tip of his tiny index finger and without a second of hesitation looked up at me and confidently proclaimed “iz a toofbrush Mommy”.
I know from Child Psych classes I took in college that as very young humans we process new experiences by comparing it to things we’ve experienced before to draw conclusions about the new thing and then categorize it accordingly. These categories are called “schemas”. To Chris the caterpillar fit his schema for toothbrush. Of course I gave Chris the additional information he needed and explained “caterpillar” and, trust me, he has yet to try to brush his teeth with one. To me this means he made the appropriate change based on the new information he was given and added yet another schema to his understanding … caterpillar.
Schemas are a part of human development and I’m thinking maybe we never really stop using them. At least I’m hard pressed to see the difference between schemas and prejudices. Is it possible that prejudices are really just schemas unchanged by new information and/or education we’ve received? I guess in my view, the mistake isn’t made in the pre-judgment, for that seems to me a natural part of being human. Rather to me the mistake is made when that pre-judgment is applied once you know better. I mean wouldn’t Chris be a hopeless idiot if he was still calling caterpillars toothbrushes?
To me racism is an offshoot of prejudice because it seems to me you can’t really have one without the other if you’re the offending party. I’ve felt prejudice all my life … people make assumptions based on how you’re dressed, the color of your skin, the consistency of your hair, your socio-economic standing, the company you keep and a million other things but prejudice rolls right off me. Not so, racism and, lucky for me, I’ve only been a victim of racism twice – once when I was 16 and in Nebraska a gas station attendant picked me up by the belt loops of my shorts and hustled me, unceremoniously, out of a convenience store for being an “Indian” … and last week by an underpaid, self-important, overly angry, unhappy, little black man who saw me as a way to return what had probably been given to him thousands of times over. It doesn’t excuse his behavior and I won’t be giving him anymore shots at me by riding his bus but, after a great deal of thought, I understand it.
In the grand scheme of things I should count myself lucky. I can’t imagine dealing with racism everyday because I know how just those two incidences have hurt me. I can’t imagine how small a person that would make me feel I was if I had to deal with it over and over. I have a new found understanding of the depth of strength and character it would take to stand up in the face of racism everyday.
Personally, I’m looking forward to the day when we’re all like the characters in the Dr. Seuss story “The Sneetches” and we’re such a jumble of genetics that it’s impossible to tell who is what. I don’t want to think too hard on what we might hold against each other when we’re all in one big pot of DNA soup (for I’m sure we’ll find something), but in the meantime, you can catch me riding the 63!
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