Random Ignorance

Well, I had quite an experience on my train ride to work tonight. Something I had been expecting to happen but hoped wouldn't in my presence happened tonight. I'd been meaning to blog about my current dislike for Yankee games. Mostly Yankee fans. I live not far from Yankee stadium and I work nights, so, on my way to work I run into this zoo of fans, majority white, who live nowhere near the stadium, on the nights the Yankees play. It is highly annoying to wade through and with this mob of people who are completely oblivious to the environment in which they find themselves. The pure arrogance many of these people have would astound me if I hadn't already been witness to it before. It is not a purely white persons conceit but an american conceit that all is right with the world and nothing is going to happen. It just so happens that my current examples of this overwhelming arrogance happen to be white americans. The most glaring example of this arrogance is most of these people make their way to the stadium with absolutely no thought or plan whatsoever how to get back to where they came from. I see these people on the train trying to read the map or asking strangers about stops and directions and it baffles me. Where are these people from?! Maybe I'm just a paranoid, cynical city New Yorker but that level of stupidity and softness just bothers me. I'm a civilized human being and I'm all for helping anyone, no matter their ethnicity. I believe the world SHOULD be safe any and everywhere. But I know it's NOT! Period. It just isn't. And that's not to say that anything will happen or that the Bronx is a dangerous place, but it's not the suburbs by any stretch and shit happens. Shit can happen anywhere. And awareness of one's surroundings should be a given but it's not. Which also leads to dumb reasoning, as I witnessed tonight. Here we have a bunch of white people and a few Black people and some hispanics sprinkled here and there (this IS the Bronx). NOW, a young twenty something white dude decides to engage a slightly older Black dude, with kids, in conversation. I, being who I is, am not paying full attention to them but my environmental awareness is aware of what's going on. I couldn't give you any details of what they were talking about just that they were talking and as I was reading the pitch and tone of the conversation began to steadily rise. SO, when the Black dude begins to yell at the white dude, I am spectacularly not surprised. From what I gathered from the Black guys ramblings, the young white dude got a little too familiar in his speech, which is understandable, at least to me. My reaction would have been quite a bit less bombastic but there would have been one. Anyways, the young white guy stands there for like 6 or 7 minutes before he finally decides to walk away before it escalates to the physical, which it was really gearing up to. His companions had already moved away from the circle of confrontation, so he was really on his own, which I found rather amusing and interesting. Most non-white folks would NOT leave one of their friends by themselves in a confrontation. But that's another convo. Anyway, it was just annoying that it took that nimrod so long to decide to walk the fuck away. He obviously wasn't going to calm down this ghetto ass Black man, so, let it go. The young lady sitting right in front of me, who happened to be white, agreed with me when I mentioned he should have walked away, like, 5 minutes ago. And I refer to the Black man as ghetto, not because of the way he was dressed, but because of the manner of his speech and speech pattern. He kept referring to the young white guy he was upset with as nigga. Are you serious?! Yes. And because he was highly agitated that word among many, many others flew from his lips numerously with abandon. I have know idea what made that white boy think he could have a conversation with this Black dude from the street. Don't get me wrong. People should be able to talk to people know matter what. I get that. But our current society doesn't operate on what should be. And, yeah, the only way to effect change is to act but this was NOT the proper time to effect change. This and what follows is what I meant by dumb reasoning. Based on more of what the black guy was yelling, it seems what set him off was the white guy using the words, "I'll kill you," somewhere in the conversation. WHAT THE FUCK was this little lilly white boy thinking?! Are you serious?! Those are just words you don't use with a stranger, even in jest, or implied comedy. Especially with a Black guy, YOU DON'T KNOW, who is obviously not from your particular culture. Pure stupidity. And though the Black guy was HIGHLY annoying to everyone on the train car, those who were on that side of the train that heard the convo were obviously on his side, which did surprise me because most of them were, as mentioned in the beginning, white. But you could just tell that they ALL thought the young white guy was a fucking idiot (Though mostly I think they thought he was an idiot for even trying to have the conversation in the first place). Also, can you believe this young moron, even though he walked away and wasn't that far away, had the nerve to be talking shit and making stupid remarks to his friends, some in response to the ravings of the guy who he just upset. Now I could hear him and if that Black guy wasn't so upset and being loud HE would have heard him and that would've been a problem, 'cause that little idiot wasn't standing too far behind me. I swear I almost got up and punched him in his damn mouth on GP. But I felt the need to represent the obvious (civilized Black man). But, OH MY GOD, I wanted to hit that idiot. I felt sorry for that Black dudes kids, though. They did not need to see their father acting like a wild ass ghetto fool. Our children need to learn a better way than wild recklessness as problem solving. Oh well. A hell of a night to forget my damn ipod shuffle.