this makes me sad

(all images by Bayeté Ross Smith)

Now that I work in San Francisco I rarely get in my car to go anywhere. I like taking public transportation, even when the escalators are broken for weeks or there are too few trains for passengers so if your sitting down your face is pressed up too close to some stranger's sweaty crotch or they're late or any of the myriad of complaints one can lodge about one's municipal transit options. But I've noticed something time and again on the bus that I just have to comment upon.

Older Chinese people won't sit next to black folks.

It always (and only) happens on the bus through Chinatown. At first I thought it was the particular black folks, especially men, that older people, especially women, did not want to sit near. The first time I noticed it, the guy looked vaguely sketchy, though from my perspective he was certainly less frightening than the multitudes of yuppies I must walk among each day. I watched several elderly women get on the bus, look pointedly at him and the empty seat next to him, and opt to stand. Now, I'll readily give up my seat to an elderly person, and maybe they were all regulars on this route and they knew something about his potential behavior that I didn't, but something about the way in which each of these women looked at this man then clearly made the decision to stand made me uneasy. A week or so later I noticed it happened with a black woman. She, too, looked only vaguely sketchy; one by one older Chinese women got on the bus, looked at her and the empty seat next to her, and opted to stand. Again I thought, hmmm—trying to give these other people of color the benefit of the doubt—they sense something about that woman that just isn't right, but at the same time I'm thinking, wait a minute, I ain't stupid and this is not okay. I noticed it a few more times and then, inevitably, it happened to me, and even on my worst days I could not be construed as sketchy. Unattractive, maybe, style-challenged— but not sketchy. What's going on? I wanted to yell, we don't bite, people, and black don't rub off—what are you fucking afraid of? But, you know, in the moment you're just too shocked and disgusted to do anything.

But last night it happened again, and this time it really made me sad. There was a young black man sitting on the bus when I got on, and I sat two seats from him because the bus wasn't that crowded. Admittedly, brother smelled a little ripe, but he was quiet and respectful and minding his own. At the next stop a bunch of people got on, filling the bus, including a couple older women, and a man tried to beckon them toward us to take the available seats but the one woman didn't even want to come to that section of the bus. Seeing that they were older, I guess, that young man vacated his seat to stand (and then I could see the peace and anti-war patches on his backpack), and only then did they move (quickly) past him to occupy already-open seats near where he'd been. He was clearly attuned to the dynamic; otherwise he wouldn't have given up his seat. I wanted to cry.