Every once in awhile I get blown away by someone. In this case it was not a good thing.
I went over to Eastern Washington for a friends wedding. At
one point I stopped at a grocery store in this sleepy town of around 30,000
residents so that I could pick up some allergy medicine. While I was paying at
the register, a punk high school kid walked out of the store, clearly not
paying for the items in his hands. The cashier rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah,
they do that all the time. Those gangbangers
just take whatever they feel like.”
I gave her one of my “are you serious” looks at that point, hoping
that she was joking. She was, after all,
only about 16 or 17 years old herself. Maybe she was just being a sarcastic
high school student.
Unfortunately, she continued, “I’m just waiting for them to
come in here some day and shoot everyone. I know that one day I’m going to get
shot.”
While this would normally result in little more than an eye
roll from me, she directed that last sentence at the guy behind me in
line. The Mexican guy. This little white high school girl seriously
looked at the only Mexican guy in line to buy his groceries (in this case those
groceries were some dish soap and a soda) and talked about how she thinks gangbangers
are going to shoot her.
What. The. Hell.
I was so stunned that I could not think of anything to say
to this little princess. Looking back on
this situation, I’m livid that I didn’t use the opportunity to stand up for the
poor guy behind me. He did nothing to earn that kind of negative
attention. There was nothing to set him
apart from any of us in line other than the tone of his skin.
It’s incredible that people think that racism is no longer a
problem in the US. If something like this ever happens around me again, I hope
that I have the wherewithal to respond and tell the person speaking that they
shouldn’t be making assumptions like that about people.
Wow.
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