"But honey, you're racist too." "Yes, I know."

[nanila]

I have a little anecdote from yesterday that I feel nicely illustrates that racism isn't just for foaming bigots with shaven heads and small intellects. It isn't always obviously easy to disparage and avoid engaging in yourself.

I hopped onto a packed train headed to Birmingham from London. Well, I say "hopped". It was more like, "dove through through the doors being held dangerously open for me and three others by a platform attendant four seconds before it departed". The three other people started walking down the train carriages in front of me, looking for spare seats. The first person found a seat at the end of the first carriage. We went through three more carriages before encountering another that appeared empty.*

The two people in front of me went straight past it.

I stopped and asked the three men sitting quietly next to the unoccupied seat, "Excuse me, is anyone sat there?" They looked at me. (They looked surprised.) "No," one of them replied, "it's free. Take it."

This becomes a story about racism when you learn that the two people in front of me were white and the three men sitting around the empty seat were black.

I was reminded of a scene at the opening of the film Higher Learning.** It lasts about thirty seconds but it's burned onto my memory and I only saw the film once when it came out nearly twenty years ago. A young white woman gets into a lift with one other occupant. The other occupant is a young black man, also a student, who regards her with friendly curiosity, ready to say hello. She presses the button for her floor without looking at him, then stands in the opposite corner of the lift. As the doors close, she clutches her handbag to her a little more tightly, still not looking at him. He sees this and shakes his head, smiling sadly.

Racism can be subtle. It's ingrained in our subconscious and enforced by influences that we don't necessarily recognise. Those two people in front of me probably would have been horrified if confronted and asked, "Did you deliberately avoid that seat because it was surrounded by three black men?" It's hard to correct yourself for prejudice, I realise that. It falls on the person feeling the effects to point them out to you, which is damnably difficult, and for you to be strong enough to apologise, simply and succinctly, if required, and incorporate your new awareness into your future interactions. But we must try.***

* Please note also that this seat was nowhere near a smelly toilet or a person listening to loud music. Nor did it appear to have anything else wrong with it.
** I can recall very little else about the film, so can't recommend or discourage viewing.
*** I do not agree with Yoda in this instance.

Comments

[alwayswondered]

There's a scene in the latest series of Mad Men where Peggy (white) invites Don's secretary Dawn (SCDP's first black employee) to stay over because Dawn is stranded in town and will otherwise have to sleep in the office. They have a nice evening drinking beers and chatting but then Peggy gets up to go to bed and realises her handbag is on the table in the room where Dawn will be sleeping, and she hesitates. Dawn notices. Peggy deliberately leaves her bag and goes to bed, but in the morning she goes into the living room to find Dawn gone and a note left on top of the bag apologising for putting Peggy out.

I try really hard not to do this particular thing, but it makes me wonder what else I do that I don't even notice. :/

[sfred]

Thanks for writing about this.

[surexit]

I don't want to talk to people in lifts, and there's another thing at play between a woman and a man that would also feed into a reluctance to make eye contact and a wish to discourage interaction - I get very frustrated when people forget this when discussing this scenario. (I've seen this exact scenario discussed several times, but never heard of this film, so not sure if it's seeped into a lot of people's consciousness or whether there's some other pop culture reason.) (I also want to go off on one about cultural contexts, because where I come from a stranger trying to speak to you in a lift is, even if not directly threatening, weird, and definitely breaking social boundaries, and you hold your bag tighter when anybody under the age of sixty-five comes within five feet of you, but I won't because that's not relevant. It is interesting though!)

I do, of course, agree with your main point.

[nanila]

There's a lot that depends on context, I agree, which is why I tried to provide as much as possible when telling my anecdote, lest someone say, "But maybe it was because of the seat location or condition of the seat or some other potential excuse that would make this not about racism, please don't let this be about racism?" (NB: I'm not implying that you're trying to make this conversation not about racism.)

Aaanyway, I do feel that the lift scenario can be read in multiple ways on its own. There's the gender issue as well as the personal safety as solo traveler issue. The film does try to make it obvious that the intended reading is within the context of racism, and it emphasizes this by replaying the same scene at the end of the film, except that now the young white woman has been living with a young black woman and has had experiences that caused her to examine and discard some of her prejudices. (Same goes for the young black man although I can't remember the circumstances.) The interaction between them is very different. So I think this may be why this scenario gets used when discussing racial prejudice.

[nanila]

Thanks for reading it. :)

[recessional]

The gender thing was one element that popped up at me reading your scenario, since you don't disclose, as I've known women who wouldn't sit beside three men period; however, I'm assuming at least one of those people was a man.

[lark_ascends]

Thank you for sharing this.

[nanila]

Yes, one medium-height middle-aged man and one short middle-aged woman. (I mention height because someone on Twitter mentioned that leg room might have been a problem for a tall person.)

[nanila]

Thank you for reading it. ♥

[nanila]

Me too. And of course I will have no idea unless the person on whom I'm inflicting the hurt tells me so. :(