A racey experience
(Apologies for the pun in the title…)
While on the El yesterday two black girls got on the Red Line around Argyle, heading north. They were both in their late teens/early twenties, dressed to enjoy Chicago’s at-long-last nice weather. One of them was smoking when she got on, and turned to the closed door to take one last puff and throw the cigarette to the ground, stepping on it and extinguishing it.
The two girls continued to stand in the door, chatting, when someone across from them – an older white man – got up and moved to the other end of the car. The girl who was smoking took offense to this, and started speaking loudly at his back as he walked away: “Oh, so you don’t like the smell of smoke? Well, my pussy smells better than you, you ass! Yeah, that’s right, you better walk away!”
I was playing around on my phone (oh, the joy of a phone with Internet…) but looked up at her during her little tirade. We locked eyes. And I, conciously ignoring the decorm of the El (and public places in general) held that eye contact.Well, the smoker was not happy about that: “You got a problem?”
I replied something along the lines of “I’m not thrilled you were smoking on the train.”
She started on me, saying, “Oh, well I put that cigarete out so you better not have a problem with me fucking standing here.” I continued to hold eye contact, wondering what she’d say next. “You wanna come up here and start something, you little white ass, playin’ with your cellphone on the train?”
I did not, in fact, want to start something, and said, “No, I’m good where I am.” (I continued to hold eye contact.)
“Then what’s your problem, you little faggot? Shit, I bet you like that, you got bigger tits than I do!” I should mention that I do not, in fact, have bigger tits than she did, though I suppose I should be flattered she noticed I have any tits worth mentioning.
I was back to playing with my phone by this point, and a black man in shorts and a cutoff t-shirt sitting near the door chimed in, “He’s probably calling the police. Y’all should shut up.”
The smoking girl turned on him, proclaiming, “I don’t car if he’s callin’ Jesus!”
(I couldn’t help myself, asking, “Does Jesus smoke too?” She went off on a whole new rant at that point and apparently, yes, Jesus does smoke.)
At the next station we came to the doors didn’t close: “Beepbeepbeep! Your attention please. We are experiencing equipment delays. The train will begin moving shortly.”
A conductor walked in, as the old white guy who moved to the other end of the train had apparently pushed the call button during all this. I should mention she was black, but don’t know that her race actually had any effect. She asked what was going on, and the smoking girl’s entire demeanor changed: “Ma’am, we were just standing here talking when this guy,” looking at me, “started having some sort of problem.”
I didn’t say anything, and the guy who had pushed the call button stepped forward, saying, “They were smoking when they got on the train and have been using foul language since then.”
The conductor asked what he’d like her to do about it.
“I’d like them arrested!”
“Sir, I can’t arrest them for using foul language.”
A pause. “Well, then, I’d like an appology!”
“Sir, I can’t force them to appoligize. Would you like to move to another car?”
“No, I want them to appologize!”
Finally, the conductor convinced the girls to come with her to a different car, which satisfied the man who had pushed the call button. We got moving again, but that’s when the most interesting part of all this happened. A black man in a suit had come in during this and sat down opposite the black man in shorts who had offered his opinion a couple times, in favor of the girls being able to say whatever they felt like in a public place. After the girls got off with the conductor, the man in shorts turned to the man in the suit and said, “What you think about all that?”
The black man in the suit said that he thought they’d made their point, and probably should have kept their mouth shut, but the one in shorts kept saying that it was a free country, until he finally got off the train and told the man in the suit to have a ‘good one.’
So there we were, on a train full of white people, with two black men who look like they’re in as different class and economic places as two people can be. But the one in shorts imediately finds a racial connection with the one in the suit and feels comfortable breaking the otherwise assumed code of ‘keep to yourself.’
At the core, I feel racial divisions in the US are really class devisions. That is, perceived issues of race are (in my opinion) often actually issues of economic gaps. And yet, this ‘lower class’ guy assumed that the economic gap was less important than racial unity, and was willing to draw the guy in a suit into a conversation.
I have no real conclusions, unfortunately. Just been thinking the experience over…any thoughts?
-R
Themocracy
I can’t believe this whole thing really happened. Good for you for standing your ground I probably would have avoided all interaction in this kind of debate.
I agree though that it’s interesting that the shorts guy assumed that the guy in the suit would have felt exactly the same way that he did because they’re both black.