Today I took the coward’s route out and did not defend a young Muslim woman. I am ashamed.
I am a fairly average looking Caucasian woman who uses public transportation in Minneapolis/Saint Paul every day. While I mostly fly under the radar (ipod on, hood up, bag on lap) I have gotten used to dealing with uninitiated social contact. Through practice I have learned to successfully deflect people hitting on me, making rude remarks about my appearance, calling out my ‘attitude’, or crowding into my personal space. Humor balanced with defensive body posture usually works pretty well, but there are times when walking down the isle of the bus feels like a judgmental gauntlet of Dickinsonian proportions.
(the story is under the cut, thanks for reading)
The 21 bus from Minneapolis to Saint Paul was packed with teenagers sitting in groups divided by race. The busdriver had earphones in and was focusing on the dangerous afternoon traffic. At the front of the bus a middle aged African American woman sat court in a white fluffy parka. She was yelling out insults to the people paying their fares and looking for seats. I was greeted with a snide "You think you’re better than me, don’t you?!" This was a classic gambit and I took my headphones off to respond with a shrug, "I’m also riding the bus, aren’t I?"
The loud woman laughed and moved on to the next target, a heavy Asian woman with shopping bags. Each of her insults was encouraged and built upon by the groups of teenage girls. I found an open seat close to the rear door. Remembering last year’s shooting on route 21, I turned off the music, and tried to keep tabs on what was going on without looking as though I was paying close attention.
A man at the front of the bus started to argue with the woman and her jeers and his insults mingled sourly with the teenager’s laughter. With a captive audience, the performance was ramping up. A woman in front of me urgently hushed her fretful baby in low tones. The atmosphere on the bus felt dangerous: crowded, unstable, and prickly with repressed confrontation.
At the next stop a young Somali Muslim with a headscarf got on and began feeding her dollar bills into the meter. The woman yelling insults took one look at the headscarf and screamed out, "You’re in the United States now! Get that shit off your head, you don’t need it!" The teenagers broke into gales of mean laughter and started to call out comments of their own. Taken aback, the girl in the headscarf stepped back but did not speak.
Enraged by the lack of response, the screaming woman stood up and ripped the headscarf off, revealing the girl’s carefully braded hair and shocked face. Breaking into tears, she grabbed her scarf back and pushed her way off the bus.
The laughter died down and everyone looked outside to see a crying girl in the snow as the bus pulled away. The teenagers started to mumble about this not being cool, and feeling ashamed of themselves and started to glare at the woman they had previously encouraged with their laughter and attention. The tormentor called out, "I was just trying to teach her what it was like to be a black woman in America, that’s all!" but everyone else was too ashamed to speak.
My heart broke in half. I had said nothing for fear that I would become a target. What could I have said to make things better? Should I have left the bus to console the girl? Would it have helped or would she have thought that I was making fun of her? The bus continued on in deflated silence.
I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that the media and many politicians tell us that racism and religious intolerance is no longer an issue in our country. I feel that that these politicians and media pundits should ride the bus everyday. It might help.
I stayed silent and hid within the crowd instead of doing the right thing and a girl was hurt. I did not speak then, but I will speak now and I will speak up the next time. It’s not easy to face unkindness with reason and bravery, but the alternative is far scarier.
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Martin Luther King Jr.