talking to strangers yet again

[adrian_turtle]

I know it's rude to talk to strangers, but I was provoked. I was waiting for a trolley this afternoon. Somebody near me was either recording a short video, or facetiming with a friend, while I maintained the polite fiction that I could not hear her. I've heard lots of people object to illegal immigrants or refugees, in these parlous times, but her objections were to tech workers with H1B visas. And once she got going, she objected to student visas. When somebody is on the phone, bystanders are supposed to pretend they can't hear...but it was pretty awful.

Then she turned to an Asian man on her other side. She asked where he was from, "I mean, were you born here? were your parents born here?" He pulled away, just a little, but said, no, he was only here for a few years. He had a child with him. She challenged him to justify what he was doing here. He sounded like he was treating this as a normal social interaction, politely answering her questions about his wife's academic work. I tried to get a word in edgewise. The bully found his answers satisfactory, and said people like them deserved to come here.

Maybe he didn't need my defense? He had successfully defended himself? I still told her not to go up to people and demand to know where they were from. This was my neighborhood, my community, and what matters is that people behave decently, not where their parents were born. I didn't think to ask if she was raised in a barn or what. I felt foolish and clumsy that I only called her out for rudeness but not bigotry. And that I didn't say anything sooner. But most of it was so undirected, with no handle, no excuse for an interruption. And then when it escalated it went fast and loud but not dangerous.

When the trolley came, the man and his kid went to the far end of the car and the bully went to the opposite end. A young person I hadn't seen before nodded at me in passing and said, "Fuckin' MAGA assholes." I said, "Yeah, what can you do?" and felt better.

(ETA: What the tall young person said on the trolley was, "Fuckin' MAGA assholes, eh?" I forgot to include that last detail, and it's worth remembering.)

Comments

[mrissa]

In fucking Boston

Good job you. But I'm so sorry you had to.

[adrian_turtle]

Yeah, in Boston. We're an overwhelmingly liberal place, but that means 70% vote for Democrats. 30% isn't nothing. And some of that 70% are single-issue voters and their single issue is NOT racism. They want abortion rights or unions or environmental protection or firing bad cops and...well, they'll vote for an anti-racist if necessary in hope of getting the other stuff they want.

[evalerie]

Thank you for speaking up! In these times of people with guns, I am not sure if I would have had the courage to, even though it's the right thing to do. I am glad you did!

[adrian_turtle]

It honestly did not occur to me that there might be any kind of physical violence! That's one advantage of Boston, I suppose. Guns are pretty well restricted here, and there isn't much gun culture in this suburb. I would probably have hesitated to confront a young man that way, and I would have seriously hesitated to confront a group. But one woman in her 40s? Didn't feel that direction of scary.

I didn't think about gauging physical danger explicitly until Saturday morning. Your comment coincided with the response of somebody at shul who has less white privilege than I do. She doesn't seem like an immigrant until she opens her mouth, and she spent much of her life in cities that are much less safe than this one.

[kate_schaefer]

It's hard to be brave! You were brave! You set a good example, and your example was witnessed.

[adrian_turtle]

Thank you. I've seen "virtue signalling" used as pejorative for so long I lose track of its actual value

[pameladean]

Possibly the target of that asshole's nonsense didn't need you to speak up (and possibly he did, it's hard to say), but it sounds like the young person did. You never know who will be influenced or comforted, really. I salute you.

P.

[silveradept]

Well done for saying something about it and visibly being a person who doesn't believe in that kind of nonsense. That it wasn't the perfect thing you wanted is secondary to having done the thing at all.