Race riots and bus rides

The 14 bus picks up ethnicities in layers, especially outside of rush hours. I love this bus. Yes, I'm much less likely to feel threatened or shocked on the 6, but on the 14, I see a nice representative sample of the people who are Minneapolis and it makes me feel more like I live here.

I suppose there are people who ride other buses, or don't ride buses, and imagine that Minneapolis is pretty white; pretty much like them. And they might have to use their imagination or their stereotypes to visualize how the other folks live. I love the little surprises I get every day watching people living the way they do as they go places. Moms, teenagers, workers, crazies, all kinds, doing their shit their own way while simultaneously sharing close quarters with other kinds doing their shit their way.

On the 14 there are people who talk loudly to strangers, and strangers who answer back, and heated debates about all kinds of controversial issues. If someone talks loudly to a stranger on the 6 everyone gets a little nervous and purses their lips at the stranger. Nobody answers back.

Today, a woman with a Latino accent was holding forth on AIDS. She didn't seem to have a particular point to make except that she knew a lot of people who knew people who caught AIDS from prostitutes or women who brought it with them from various East African countries. She worried about kids being born with it. She worried about her kids catching it. She spoke in a sing-song slang that made her sound not-so-educated, but most of what she was saying was pretty educated. Except maybe the part where she talked about disinfecting her kids so they didn't catch AIDS.

Then a really loud guy who sounded Native kicked into a conspiracy-theory rant about how it wasn't monkeys that started AIDS but our C.I.A. About three other voices quietly threw out a mantra of, "Yeah." But then he added that it was the C.I.A. trying to wipe out Muslim terrorists. A black woman yelled, "You fuckin' idiot, the C.I.A. wasn't even thinking about Muslim terrorists yet when AIDS started." Then an obnoxious white voice yelled louder, "It's niggers."

"What?" The Latino woman was incredulous. The black woman added, "What? It sounded like you just said something about niggers."

"Niggers. It's the fuckin' niggers from Africa."

"You didn't just say nigger on this bus, bitch."

"I don't mean black people. I mean these God damned Africans. The Somalis and Nigerians and shit."

Suddenly lots of people were yelling all different things, and all my white ears could hear was the word "nigger" over and over again in many accents. I couldn't see the people behind me, and I didn't look back. Nobody in front of me looked back. But a number of brown male shoulders stiffened and a lot of African heads cocked.

I'm sitting here waiting for my happy little rainbow commute to turn into a race riot when the bus driver, an old black man with a fabulously deep and authoritative voice gets on the microphone and says, "Alright, alright children, that's enough with the name-callin' back there."

And everyone clears their throat and mumbles and chills.

The bus pulls over for someone's stop and the Latino woman gets off saying, "See you tomorrow." Several voices, no longer yelling, "Yeah, have a nice night."

A new voice in the back says, "Did you hear about that kid who got shot in North Minneapolis?" And civility returns.

I don't like people yelling on my bus. And I hate the n-word. But that freaky conversation scared me a lot less than the paranoid rage I see in the eyes of an SUV driver when an immigrant driver moves too slowly for the morning fuck-you commute.

I wish everyone would ride the 14 bus, just once in a while.