Kara Kraus Blog 3

This past weekend I took a greyhound bus down the 5 to Southern California to see my family. On this bus I met some interesting characters, specifically, a racist African American.
I first noticed him when he pointed to me from across the room and said “that white girl is prolly going to Santa Barbara” with a stereotypical “straight outta tha ghetto” voice.
Now I let this slide since I am white and realize a lot of white girls make up the population of Santa Barbara.
As I boarded the bus for the 10 hour bus ride I hoped to maybe sleep or do some homework along the way. But apparently I have wronged the god of bus rides, since the outspoken racist decided to sit next to me.
The first thing that came out of his mouth was “Oh heyyy, where you off to girl?”
The first thing that came to my mind was “Why do you insist on behaving like a stereotype?”
But instead of saying that I answered in a low voice “Santa Ana” to which he ignored because the man across the aisle was wearing a Raiders hat.
The next four hours passed without incident – until the bus broke down.
Mr Ghetto Talk was not worried, nor annoyed by the news, but rather enraged.
He immediately ran to the bus driver and all I could hear were lots of “My brother” and “Man whatchu talkin bout?”
After 10 minutes of this the man sat down and continued to mutter Indian slurs under his breath at the Filipino bus driver.
We were stuck in the middle of nowhere for 3 hours and by the end I had learned 2 things.
1. Public transportation sucks
2. There is still racism in America, no matter how many progressive black friends you claim to have