Apparently, I’m scary. The way a person of color scares a white supremacist. I was sitting in the bus a couple of days ago, minding my own business, when a mother with her child sat down opposite of me. Immediately, mom started inspecting me, meanwhile not listening to whatever boring story her daughter was telling. Mommy’s eyes wandered from my shoes to the top of my head, then to her daughter and what she said was “let’s go sit somewhere else.” Yeah, thanks. If I had worn a t-shirt with “I want to kill you” printed all over it, I would’ve understood her reaction, but since I hadn’t, I didn’t.
Not that I have a problem if someone thinks my black clothes equal evil (though, I pity people who roll that way), but I didn’t just appear out of nowhere, I was sitting there before she sat down and, well, she saw me sitting there. So instead of going someplace else right then, she sat down and decided (?) to be a bitch.
I did not give this incident much thought, but started wondering after a while: how unconsciously discriminating are we? People who say that they are so tolerant, they never discriminate against anybody are simply denying what they really feel. I think we do discriminate. Constantly. So, are there no tolerant people out there? Can’t we simply not discriminate people around us?
I think there are many, many tolerant people out there and I like to think of myself as one of them. Tolerant, of course, as in I really don’t mind what people do or how they live as long as they don’t shove it in my face (Hello, we would like to talk to about God). I’m not really talking about ethnicity or alternative lifestyles as anyone who dislikes somebody for color of the skin or sexual orientation is retarded anyway, but I’m talking about how people actually behave – how they are, or pretend to be in public. However, who can really deny that when we meet someone for the first time, we instantly have this like/dislike feeling. Either totally cool or a total dufus or indifferent (which is kinda negative, too, don’t you think?). So maybe her reaction was a delayed response to her initial sentiment toward me, or indifference turned into disliking. Naturally, I cannot blame her for not liking me, but whatever the reason: I can blame her for acting like a jerk, which is what really bugged me.
Is discrimination necessarily bad, though? Isn’t it sometimes more like a big eye rolling. Last week, as I saw this guy, prancing around with his fancy cell phone headset thing in his ear, chatting, my first thought was “how incredibly stupid some people are,” and even though this sounds quite hypocritical – I enjoy being that way. If people practically invite me not to like them, I accept, not caring if they are red, green or purple. If I think some gal looks like a hooker, I have no problem with pointing that out to a friend. After all, being mean is kinda fun. However, I, at least, have the basic human decency not to make people feel like shit (not that I felt like shit, I was merely stunned by mom’s behavior).
Going back to my initial question ‘how unconsciously discriminating are we?’ I come to the conclusion that it’s simply how we are. At least how I am. Even though, I (and I assume others as well) usually suppress my initial judgments, they are still there and I can’t help it. Nevertheless, I want to wear the tolerance hat and who really wants to take that away from me? After all, we are all in the same boat.
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