Racism on the ride home

Even though I worked a double shift the night before, that never stopped Leah from asking me to wake up less than four hours after I got home from the previously mention overnight double shift and pick Jon up at his new school to save her from losing work. As of next week, transport to Jon’s new program (IBI, Intense Behavioral Intervention) will not be an issue but I have to go out of my way for now. Jon started IBI last week and has been doing really well… some kids take weeks and months to adjust, but after one or two rough days, Jonathan has been making huge strides and I’m proud of the little bugger.

So the bus ride home with Jonathan wasn’t an issue. He’s always a great passenger when traveling so I’m not concerned about his transport to IBI in the future. It’s when I got back on the bus to head home and get a few more hours of sleep after I dropped Jon off with the new sitter when things got really fucked up.

Less than twenty feet away was a woman that was taking up two spots on the bus. One was for her and the other for her stuff. An old asian woman came onto the bus and sat down beside her stuff. Apparently when she took her seat, the other lady’s stuff shook and it resulted in something falling off and hitting the bus floor. I thought it was a small notepad type booklet, but turns out the item that hit the floor was an I-pad. The lady freaked out over her dropped I-pad, and proceeded to give the asian lady a strong telling off, even threatening to kick the shit out of her, that’s how heated things got.

During this exchange the asian lady no longer felt like sitting next to her and walked to another part of the bus, but I-Pad lady kept screaming, calling her a ‘chink’ and that chinks like her were rude and self centered and needed to learn some manners. Normally at this point, I would step in but this was one of those moments where my lawyer would tell me to air on the side of caution. Right now the only thing that was going on was some harsh words and thats about it. Many people on the bus were very uncomfortable with what was being said as the two kept verbally slapping one another with one insult after another. Finally, the asian lady left the bus in tears at a stop, choosing to wait for a new bus rather than remain on the bus with I-pad lady.

During the exchange, I-Pad lady had called the asian lady a chink over a dozen times, and even though the driver took one moment to look back and tell people to settle down… that was not enough in my books. Had I been the driver of that bus, I-pad lady would have been ordered to leave the bus or I would call the police. Threatening to do anything to anyone, especially ‘kicking the shit’ out of anyone is a crime in Canada, yet people toss those threats around so freely, unaware of how criminal it is.

After I got off the bus (because I-Pad lady was still on it) I proceeded to call the bus company from my cell and file a complaint. I told them that this woman (I-Pad) lady was threatening to hurt someone and tossing around racist comments, and the driver should have thrown her off for being so rude. I made my complaint very clear and if I don’t hear back from anyone I will be making a follow up all tomorrow.

I’m not naive enough to believe that racism doesn’t happen everywhere, but I was very disgusted by that persons behavior and had my son been there when this incident occurred, then I would have spoken up and told this woman off out of fear that Jonathan would have gone home and started calling his mother a chink.

Even in Canada, we have our own bigots, but there are many people who didn’t like what they saw and I hope I’m not the only one who called in to report it. I’ll post more updates when I get them, but this upset me a great deal. I’m not going to let it go until I get a resolution that meets my satisfaction.

Peter