There was a 1979 movie called Starting Overwhere Burt Reynolds and Jill Clayburgh are being set up on a blind date. They get off the bus at the same stop and walk in the same direction. Clayburgh freaks out, turns and verbally assaults Reynolds with shouting and foul language. Later, when they’re formally introduced, she apologizes that she was doing what her self-defense class taught.
So perhaps the woman was simply trying to create a romantic comedy.
Well, it doesn’t have to be recent either, nor does it have to be assault. Assault can stick with you for years/the rest of your life. And street harassment is a regular thing women have to deal with, too. We have no way of knowing which cat-caller is just an ass showing off to his friends, and which one will be more aggressive than that if the opportunity presents itself. So we have to guard against presenting that “opportunity.”
It almost certainly had more to do with (in rough order of relevance):
1> you were following her (as far as she could tell)
2> you were larger than her (we regularly have to make mental assessments like ‘can I outrun him?’ and ‘do I stand a chance of fighting him off?’ in our on-going evaluations of our environment)
3> you were a man (statistics weigh against you here)
There’s no way to tell from what you’ve described if race played a part at all, because those three things take top priority in evaluating our safety, regardless of race. Maybe she did have a stronger reaction than she would have otherwise, but I can about guarantee she would have had a similar reaction to anyone were those three things all true.
This is pretty clear sexism. Of a variety I find unoffensive. I doubt your race played into it.
I know you’ve got a rep to maintain, so I’ll just drop it. 
After the Zimmerman trial I read a number of stories by black men describing how hard they work to look unassuming in public, and your story reminded me of that. Just as I think many men would be shocked to know how often women encounter sexism, and how many steps women take to avoid being victimized, I think many white people would be shocked at how often black people have to humble themselves to avoid being seen as criminal or threatening. Maybe this isn’t something you do; I certainly don’t think you should have to. I guess I just assumed it was a factor.
Yes, but it’s a self-imposed obligation. Legally, you certainly didn’t have to. And even morally, I think it’s understandable for you to think “fuck it” and just go on about your business. You didn’t though, and I think that’s commendable.
Yeah, I think I have to amend my post and add that it could be either racism and/or sexism.
To everyone saying it was “just” sexism, do we (as a society) just accept that this type of sexism is ok? Why? Doesn’t Skald have the right to walk in his neighborhood without being treated like a criminal?
I really think there’s an interesting discussion here. Why is it “ok” to judge men as a group, but not black people? If we found out later somehow that she was afraid because he was black, would she be wrong to have run away? What if we also found out that there was a black serial rapist at large in the area? How do we balance these disparate rights?
Look at it this way: do you think that she would have reacted that way if you’d been a black woman? It’s possible but pretty unlikely. I think that at minimum, most of that reaction is because you’re a large man, and quite possibly her reaction is entirely not racist. There isn’t enough information in this example to really know.
As a white guy who frequently walks home after work, which can be midnight or later, I’m quite aware that women walking alone at that hour are skeptical of me. I wouldn’t assume that she’s necessarily racist based on that encounter.
I would not call her reaction necessarily racist. I suspect she may have felt threatened by any male in that scenario. Am a little surprised that the suit didn’t defuse it though. In my experience, suits are semi-magical, especially in areas where they are not very common. If I stop at a gas station, fast food, drug store, whatever on my way to or from Court (ie, wearing a suit), there is a very noticeable difference in the way people react. I get treated better, served faster, and otherwise shown respect/deference in subtle ways.
Just came in to say TIL I am even more accidentally racist than I thought, because I had you pegged as a scrappy elderly white guy with a beard.
Doesn’t Skald have the right to walk in his neighborhood without being treated like a criminal?
Doesn’t the woman have a right to be wary of strangers at night when she’s alone?
This probably expresses a good deal of ignorance on my part, but I don’t think I’d ever realized that other people were as self-conscious about it as I tend to be. I have definitely crossed the street or rushed past a woman in order to minimize the likelihood of being mistaken as a threat. I also tend to be very conscious about not passing (if I can help it all) on the side a woman might be carrying her purse. Those attempts to reassure her, though, definitely have selfish motivation. It can be demoralizing (albeit understandable) to have a woman notice you and then deliberately shift her purse to the other shoulder.
As to the question posed in the OP, I don’t think her actions were unreasonable, and I think it’s impossible to say whether or not race was a factor.
One thing that strikes me as odd about this discussion is that nobody’s mentioned the first girl in the story–the redhead who always made a point to sit beside me on the bus. Because she was a white girl who’d been harassed as a bus rider at least once (standing at the bus stop rather than on the bus itself, but still). Both her experience and my own observations as a bus rider would seem to indicate that, at least in certain neighborhoods of the city, a young white woman might expect to get some grief from young black men, more than a young black woman would have.
I wasn’t a young man at that time, of course; I never saw a black guy out of his teens harass a white woman thus. But I saw enough young black men do so that it’s easy for me to believe the young woman had experienced it, just as my redheaded friend had, and consequently she might have thought my presence behind her was not merely more of the same, but escalation.
I experience that too,.
One thing, though. Thinking back on the incident, I wonder if the she even registered the suit when she saw me? It was chilly, as I said, and I was wearing a long coat. I don’t recall whether I had the coat buttoned up, but I may well have, and if I did, in her initial quick glance she’d have just seen a guy in a black cap and long dark coat behind her.
As my responses thus far may make clear, I don’t think the young woman was necessarily being racist. But I know some reasonable people in real life who disagree. My youngest sister, who’s very rational and a much nicer person than I, feels that the young woman was almost certainly being racist. And my sister is young enough that she was halfway through her 20s before she ever had the word nigger directed at her in a racist way, and it was a pretty big shock to her. Till then, I suspect, she kind of thought racism in a purely theoretical, historical sense.
You should join the beard liberation front.
Same here. White, average height, kind of flabby. I’ve also had similar experiences, women acting nervous, hearing the click of a car lock when I just happened to be close, mothers trying to subtly keep themselves between me and their child. It’s just a fear of strangers.
Yes, exactly. How do we, as a society, balance these disparate rights? Currently, I think most people default to saying a man should just “suck it up” because he’s a man, and men should be tough. But I think it’s wrong to tell men they have to bury their feelings like this, and I think it’s wrong to associate masculinity with strength. Women are not weak. Or are we? Since men (on average) are physically stronger then women, do they just have to live with a presumption of guilt?
That’s my whole point. Society is reaching a place where our rights are starting to clash into each other. How do we balance this? Can we?
I thought about mentioning the redhead, and I did understand where you were going with that, and then I just kind of forgot about her when I was typing my reply. Oops. It’s certainly a point in favor of racism. But then again, if she was being continually harassed by black guys on the bus, and she steps off and a black guy is following her, is it racist to be afraid, or just prudent? Or both? Is it ok to be racist (or sexist) in order to protect yourself? Obviously we’re talking about degrees here; most people would say it’s ok to walk faster, but not ok to spray pepper spray at the guy. Where is the line?
I don’t believe men should take it so personnal when a woman shows caution. I behave as Skald suggested, I try to leave room as to let them know I am not threatening. Most fears are a result of what is going on in society. President Obama made a statement when addressing the Zimmerman case that whites should not be judged so harshly because blacks have such a high crime rate. Usually when someone shows overly cautious behavior it has a lot to do with input she or he has gotten from somehwere.
Maybe it’s because I have a wife & baby daughter and young adult woman I call my stepdaughter and two younger sisters and so on, but I’m inclined to come down on the side of the XXs here. The young woman didn’t quite OVERREACT. She didn’t pull a gun, or mace me, or scream to security that she was being raped, or so forth. Her penultimate reaction to seeing me was to hastily remove herself from (what seemed like) a dangerous situation and run home. (Our apartment building was about a 30-second hike from the Walgreens, so even if I had been possessed of malevolent intent she would have had good odds of getting to the lobby and the security guard before I got to her.)
But you’re right, miss e; this is about clashing rights.
I may have overstated the incidence of black guy harassing white girl on Memphis buses. I’d not have called it continual–more like common enough not to be surprising, but not everyday.
And here’s something else. I don’t think I was every guilty of that sort of intimadating harassment when I was in my late teens or early 20s, but I certainly didn’t balk at hitting on pretty girls at bus stops back then. I’d always back off if the girl didn’t show interest (on the plenty of fish in the sea rule), but looking back on it, I can see how such behavior, frequently repeated, could lead to over-sensitization. A lot of guys would have kept at it longer than I did.
I have been in a situation where I was inadvertently following a couple. They were clearly distraught and very nervous, frequently turning to check and glowering. I chose to walk slower so that I increased the distance between us, but we were travelling in the same direction and there were no options for me to change my route.
Now, I am a nerdy weakling middle aged white guy who looks like I could do your taxes. We were walking on the side of a road from a beach in Hawaii to where our cars were parked on a street about a half mile away from the beach. It was broad daylight, I was wearing swim trunks, a t-shirt (my physique was easy to discern, likely not carrying weapons), and flip-flops (not gonna run very fast). There was only one of me and there were two of them. Still, they seemed quite convinced I was going to murder them both.
So, the point of my story is - people (men, women, couples) sometimes get freaked when someone (man, woman, black, white) appears to be following them. That is all.
OH - I wanted to add before I forget -
the police never did catch me…