3am this morning, after a Girls night in, my younger sister and I walk her girlfriend down to the next major intersection so that she can take a 10min bus ride home. Several other Black females are also waiting for the 24hr bus.
Across the street is this woman who could possibly be prostituting herself. I say possibly, because she is visibly drunk, by herself and wearing some skimpy clothing while standing at the side of the road. As we’re standing there trying to figure out what this chick was doing, this guy appears from somewhere walks up to her and they start drunkenly going at each other. They decide to venture out into the middle of the road several times just to rub up on eachother some more. Now, they didn’t appear to know each other, just enjoying eachother’s drunk company on a busy street. One of the times they were groping each other in the middle of the road, a car comes close to hitting them so they decide to take it up on the median.
So, we’re all standing there watching these two, I say to my sister, we’re going to see these two on CP24 tomorrow morning (a 24 hr Toronto newstation) and start doing a mini newscast and at that, we all start laughing loudly.
Guy decides he didn’t like us laughing and come running from the median with the woman in tow almost getting hit by the arriving bus. He starts yelling something, but we couldn’t really make it out. Next thing you know, he in my face yelling “YOU FAT NIGGER BITCH!!! YOU FAT NIGGER BITCH!!!” At this point, all the people were lining up to get on the bus. He runs over to the line, which happen to all be Black women, yelling “FAT NIGGER BITCHESS!!!”
All of us stood there dumbfounded. Later, we figured it was the shock of having someone call you a nigger bitch for no good reason. The bus driver waves the lineup unto the bus, but my sister and I aren’t getting on the bus, so the guy runs back to me and starts screaming in my face “nigger bitch, yea! i called you a nigger bitch!” At this point I’ve backed up a couple of steps threatening to drop kick his ass.
But then, common sense got the better of me and realized that this was a drunken fool. That it wasn’t even worth shouting insults at. But then he was all up in my face again, waving his cigerette in my face calling me all kinds of names ending in Nigger Bitch.
At that point, my sister is holding me back, the whole bus is watching me to see if I’m going to really take this fool down. After getting hit with a pop bottle from a person on the bus, and a big Latino dude asking him to take him on, my sister pulls me away.
I was furious. Beyond furious. But at the same time, I was laughing but the guy was drunk. But the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. That guy didn’t just call me a bitch, he didn’t just call me fat, he called me a fat nigger bitch. And it made me think, all the thoughts going thru my head at the time were , asshole, jackass, dumbass drunkard, but not once did I think, fucking cracker. not once.
On the walk home, my sister and I talked about how much it hurt to be called a nigger bitch. how it seemed like in fight or nasty argument we got into as kids, teenagers, if it was against white people, the first thing that flew from their mouth was the word nigger.
As a grown woman in Canada, I didn’t think I’d ever hear that name in reference to me. I remember back in high school in Hamilton , this guy who was known to be part of a mafia family (and he is now serving time for murders he did while he was in high school) had written nigger on my locker because he didn’t like how i didn’t bow down to him and his crew…
But I’m a grown woman now. And it hurts just as much, probably even more now because I didn’t think that it was ‘outloud’ like that. Sure, I get the occasional undercover biased comments, but I got used to those. Its the obvious ones that throw me off. Then I rememeber that I’m in Canada where the racism is opposite of the ones experinced in the States, which is sometimes blatant and obvious, meanwhile in Canada, they just keep to themselves and hurl them at the appropriate times.
In the end, it makes me wonder what I prefer…the sometimes in your face racism of the United States or the blindside you racism of Canada…