Welcome to Kamloops: Now With 500% More Racism

Public transit is always an interesting thing. You never know who you are going to run into or what manner of drug induced rambling you will get to hear. Usually, I don't mind the bus. It's sometimes a little sad, often a little funny and generally kind of ho-hum. Today that changed.

Today as the bus was about to pull away from the curb at a major transit exchange, one last lady flagged it down. She ran aboard, flashed her pass and began to make her way to the back of the bus. All normal, except that, when she passed an older black man, she paused every so slightly, screwed up her face and spat out "F*cking N*****." Seriously.

I've never seen so many people have to actually pry their jaws off the floor. She said it so loudly I heard it through my headphones. Everyone, including the man it was directed at, reacted with stunned silence. When was the last time you heard that word not in the context of:
a) a rap song
b) a movie portraying racism in the southern states or
c) a movie where producers are trying to show they are "down with the lingo" of inner-cities?
I don't think I ever have. I mean, this is Canada. Sure there is racism here, but people generally go to great lengths to hide it. This hit me the same as reading about the peace protesters clashing with the white supremacists in Calgary....there are really people that think like that?

The worst part is, that's not the part of the story that made my blood boil. Q was obviously mentally unwell (stained parka in May, almost dreadlocked hair, twitchy erratic movements, random tearful outbursts). The worst part is that nothing happened.

The lady said it so loudly that for the driver to not hear he would have had to actually have his fingers in his ears and be going "LALALALALA" at the top of his lungs. But he didn't do anything. When he failed to act on his own a woman sitting behind me, let's call her A, went up, told him what had happened and asked that the woman be removed from the bus. He said that, as he hadn't heard it himself, he couldn't do anything. When the woman told him that the whole front of the bus had heard it at least five of us piped up and agreed. Still, nothing. Even Q, between telling the woman talking to the driver to get some class and shouting something about her pimp, admitted that she had said it. Nothing.

How can this be? The buses all have placards posted with the rules of transit on them. One of them is that people have the right to ride free of harassment. I don't really think that it's open for interpretation, but this driver made it that way. If nothing happens to him then the transit authority is basically telling everyone that all WHITE people have the right to ride free from harassment. I don't understand.

While I was still on the bus Q got off, threw a quick apology to A and the man she had originally insulted. He just sat there, through her hurried "I'm sorry", through people around asking if he was alright, staring at his hands. How do you react to that? This isn't Hickville, Texas. No one is on their guard to have racial slurs hurled at them here.

So that's the majority of the story. I have called the transit authority to complain. So have 6 or 7 others that were on the bus. When the answer to my complaint was "Ya, ya, I've already put a note in the managers box, ok?" I also called the newspaper and told them the whole thing. It's apparantely going to be in the next days paper. I might even be photographed for it. But I'm still feeling confused and thrown off guard. My naivety and belief in human goodness both got a bit of a shake and I think they might need some time to recuperate.

As a finishing note I'd like to throw in a quote I just found on another blog:

"Racism isn't born, folks, it's taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list."- Dennis Leary