Generally speaking, I’m not the quiet sort.
Want an opinion? Sure, I can give you one. Just need to argue a topic? I’m always game. I love words and conversation.
However, there are times when I should truly think before I open my mouth and let the sentences roll out. Let me know what you think of this story.
My friend and I were leaving a hotel after attending a conference. It was a nice hotel, a Marriott if you want to know. The kind where taxis are always waiting out front to pick up departing guests. Since the hotel employee exchanged words with the taxi driver about golfing, they must have some rapport, right?
I figured we were in good hands.
Wrong.
All my friend did was ask if he liked sports. The rambling tangent began about not being from the city we were in, but from another although he left there when he was eight and moved here and on and on and on. Then the trouble began. He started to talk about African Americans being rare where he lived as a child. He was at least polite enough to use the term “black.” Being a pale white, Celtic-heritage person, I don’t think the color-word we use to describe each other is necessarily a bad thing.
However, the story was starting to go down a path that caused both of us to tense up and stare straight ahead.
My heart was pounding with anger and my brain was racing thinking: Does this idiot think just because we are Caucasian women that this is an appropriate tale for us? As the thought was finishing, he voiced an inflammatory racial slur and that was it. I told him he had to be quiet, that I couldn’t hear anything else he had to say, that those aren’t words I want in my world.
Dead silence. Good.
Until we finally got to the airport and were sitting down to lunch and my friend commented on how strange and scary that all was. That’s when I realized that we were in the desert and he could have kept driving us right by the airport and deep into the far, far away arid land and killed us simply because I told him to shut up.
Since we’re alive, I’m ecstatic that I spoke up. Do I think I made a difference in his life? Probably a slim chance of that. Might he think twice of using that language with another fare? Maybe for a short time, but I doubt if it will stick very long.
Will I think twice about speaking up again? Yes; if I’m in a situation where safety could be a consideration. Not if I’m in a safe setting, though. Given good circumstances, I’ll continue flapping my gums and letting what comes out, come out.
**
I think that’s a valid point about safety vs speaking up. Often you have to make a snap decision about whether or not it’s safe to speak up. And maybe that’s why a lot of us keep quiet when we want to say something. It’s a very sad reality. But sometimes we do have to keep our mouths shut to stay safe. Kind of a catch-22 though. Because problems like this don’t get better unless we face them head-on. Sad conundrum.
It’s a huge conundrum, Erica, and since the current administration got in office, I think it’s even more important that we stand up for our beliefs. But oh yes, it’s awfully hard to know what that balance is. On Medium, I just came across a writer, Baratunde, who is a black gent. He writes about being on a train in England with his white girlfriend and her dad. And beside them is a blatant racist talking to the dad all about how he wants to meet the KKK. Boggles my mind how that can happen. In 2017. Rose-colored world, but… Read more »
I am glad that you let him know it was not okay to speak the way he was speaking. He might have a “right” to say whatever he wanted to say but you also had the right to not hear it. Maybe it will make him think twice the next time. But, please be safe…
I think we all have the right to say what is on our mind except when it is fundamentally detrimental to another person. So, we can all argue politics, religion, veganism…whatever. BUT we can’t attack each other for the colors we are or other physical traits. It’s just wrong. I was in a store a few years ago at the height of summer when all my freckles are super dark. There was a couple from India standing behind me with an adorable daughter maybe four or five. She couldn’t take her eyes off me. She finally said, “You have a… Read more »
I love that you spoke up!!!!!!!!! And love that you’re safe. “Those aren’t words I want in my world.” Wonderful. Yes, it is scary when you’re in a “trapped” situation like that, but your goodness over-rode your safety concerns – at least in that moment. In hindsight, was there any gut indication as to what you were getting into before you got into the taxi?
No gut indication other than that he had both snuff and Scope in the console. I thought that was just weird.