I’ve had an interesting evening. I went to a talk by John Rose; “The fight for Palestinian liberation”. It was brilliant.
A few of us went to the pub to have a few drinks and dinner. This drunk guy decided to sit himself down next to us and try to “chat us up.”
I ignored him for the majority of the night until he started having rant about unemployed people being unemployed because they are “lazy”. We were having an interesting ‘debate’. Whenever I said something, he became agitated and annoyed.
He looks straight at me and says “no offense”
And I just thought…Here we go.
He has a massive rant about all the blacks in prison, I told him to fuck right off. My friend told him to fuck off and leave the table, she made it clear we were not putting up with any racism.
He got up, screaming at us to “watch our mouthes” and “dont fucking tell me anything about the darkies”.
“the darkies”
I couldn’t believe he actually said that. I just sat there in complete and utter shock. I know I shouldn’t be, but I am.
He threatened to “slice up” my friends on the table because they dared to call him out on his racism. He told us to watch our backs, he told us he is after us. I think he was angry that my friends were supporting me and not agreeing with him, he must have seen them as some sort of “race traitors”. He almost smashed his glass into my friends face.
I sat there, thinking to myself, this is happening and nobody is doing anything. A pub full of people stayed silent while a man threatened to violently assault several women for calling him out on his racism, sexism and xenophobia.
This happened and this will happen again and nobody will do anything because they can’t bring themselves to let go of their “post racial society” illusions. They will go home, convince themselves it was an isolated incident while I walk home completely terrified— for my life.
Welcome to the lives of POC.
I can’t believe this happened last night.
One thing that really struck me about this guy, in amidst his threats to ‘cut my face open’, and demands that I ‘shut my mouth, because you know fuck all’, was the phrase ‘this is my manor, you don’t know where your from.’
And I think that’s the crux of the problem, how dare young women tell him, on his ‘manor’, that he’s got it wrong.
For instance, he made claims about France not having free health care. (This was mid-debate, before it really all kicked off) I told him he was wrong. (He is) He immediately told me to shut my mouth, and that I know nothing. I simply replied with ‘okay’, because I’m a woman, and because of that, me telling a man that he’s factually incorrect about something will never be believed. And how dare I even think to tell him he’s wrong? He can’t be! And from what did he derive this confidence that I must be wrong and he must be right? Because I’m a woman. It grinds me down that all I could do was sit there while a man shouted in my face about my stupidity, over a fact that as it transpires, I’m correct about.
Don’t like intelligent young women? Fine, but you don’t deal with that by pretending they don’t exist.
And now at the same time, I’m genuinely terrified that one day that man’s going to be wandering down Mile End Road, and he’s going to be wrecked, and I’m going to be alone, and I really don’t know what will happen, but at the same time, if I take this further criminally I really don’t think someone so angry and let down by the world will really get much out of the criminal justice system.
And yet again, we must resign ourselves that in this world, the systems creates its own problems, and then doesn’t know what to do with them.
Added commentary to yesterdays events.
Holy shit…What a vile human being. :|
I’m glad you and your friends are okay. Wish you didn’t have to deal with that shit from assholes like him.
