I witnessed the aftermath of a racist incident on the bus the other day. That’s when I’d managed to pull myself out of my phone and take note of what was going on.
The bus is where all life coalesces but for the most part it’s life on the margins: immigrants, students, older people, poorer people and a mish-mash of everyone else. I don’t have a car. I’ve never had a car so the bus is my lifeline. Anyway, us passengers, we spend our time looking downwards, always downwards, scrolling, scrolling.
I should say, as this is a story about skin colour, that I’m white. The kind of white that gets sun-burned really easily. That kind of white.
It was the shouting that prompted me to look up. Some guys, brown guys from possibly a Middle-Eastern background, were shouting up to the bus driver from the bottom of the stairs or so it seemed. I couldn’t quite make it out. But my initial reaction was to hope, really, really hope that whatever was happening would just go away and we all could go back to ignoring each other.
The driver, who was white, seemed sympathetic and supportive but I couldn’t figure out why or about what. And then a young woman came down the stairs, to the accompaniment of a male voice berating her for not being from here or not belonging here or something equally edifying.
The guys from a Middle-Eastern background advised the woman to stay near the front. As did the bus driver. “Up here,” he said in a reassuring voice.
The woman stared up the stairs and shouted something in the general direction of the angry, disembodied voice. But did as advised.
She wasn’t black. She wasn’t brown. She was white in a Mediterranean or North African way. Maybe. Perhaps.
The woman sitting beside me glanced over to get my attention. She was brown and wearing a head covering. She gave me a concerned, almost frightened look. I smiled and shrugged and tried to communicate that things would settle down.
Looking back now, maybe she had recognised what was going on way before me. Maybe she had experienced something similar at another time. Regardless, she left her seat and disappeared out the door.
There were now people coming and going in the centre aisle and it was hard to figure out where the woman from the stairs had gone. And then I saw her. A woman, a young, white woman, was offering reassurance. “We’re all with you,” she said before heading down towards the back.
I got out of my seat and approached her myself. I asked if she was ok. She said she just didn’t like having to deal with ‘that’, gesturing towards the top level. “We are all with you", I found myself saying, hoping that it didn’t sound too inauthentic the second time around.
By now, the bus had come to a halt, having pulled in between stops. Some people got off. Others tried to get on but the bus driver, calmly asked them to wait.
“Not too long,” he said. And moments later, checking his mirror, he exclaimed “Ah, he’s here”.
It was a guard, in all that yellow and white Garda reflective gear. 30-ish, white, well-built.
The driver directed him upstairs. Minutes later, a character straight out of central casting descended the stairs – stocky, thuggish, possibly drunk, white and protesting - with the garda coming along behind. The man turned in the centre aisle as if to make an announcement but the garda was having none of it. He pushed him forward and out the front door. The young woman raised a middle finger as exited the bus.
The people waiting on the footpath were given the go-ahead and the bus pulled away.
And that was that except it wasn’t. The young woman and I got off at the same stop. She thanked the bus driver for his help on the way out and they exchanged kind words.
We were heading in the same direction. I wished her well.
“But you have to say something,” she said, touching my arm. “You can’t just sit there. You have to say something.”
So she was the witness. The racial abuse had been directed at those guys who’d advised her to stay up near the front. She’d defended them somehow and got caught up in the incoherent ramblings of the thug upstairs.
So, some guys on a bus were going about their business. A thirtysomething male assailed them for no reason. A young woman defended them. A calm, competent bus driver got involved and a guard came on board and got rid of the problem.
And then we all went back on our phones.
