Black Woman Cries Racism Because White Man Sits Next To Her On A Train
By Brian Anderson, December 17, 2014.
There’s still a couple of weeks left in 2014, but this may go down as the most insane racism rant of the year. Basically, a black woman is freaking out over the “racism” of a white man sitting next to her on a train. She is infuriated by this white man’s sense of entitlement to take a seat in her proximity on a public mode of transportation.
Brittney Cooper teaches Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers so we already know she’s full of crap. She unleashed her racial tirade on Salon today. I’m going to let her start the story to erase any doubt of exaggeration on my part:
On Friday, I was on the train to New York to do a teach-in on Ferguson at NYU. Beats headphones on, lost in thought, peering out the window, I suddenly saw a white hand shoving my work carry-on toward me. Startled, I looked up to see the hand belonged to a white guy, who was haphazardly handling my open bag, with my laptop perched just inside to make space for himself on the seat next to me.
That he wanted the seat on the now full train was not the problem. That he assumed the prerogative to place his hands on my bag, grab it, shove it at me, all while my computer was unsecured and peaking out, infuriated me. I said to him, “Never put your hands on my property.”
His reply: “Well, you should listen when I talk to you.” That line there, the command that when he, whoever he was, spoke, I should automatically listen encapsulates the breadth of the battle against racism we have to fight in this country.
Did you get all that? This woman had her headphones on, wasn’t paying attention, and was occupying more than one seat with her stuff on a busy commuter train. When the white man couldn’t get her attention, he moved her stuff so he could sit down. It’s not a big deal other than this woman was being kind of rude, but check this out:
Buoyed by his own entitlement, his own sense of white male somebodiness, this passenger never even considered that he might simply try harder to get my attention before putting his hands on my stuff. His own need to control space, his own sense of entitlement to move anything in his way even if it held something of value to another person, his belief that he had the right to do whatever he needed to do to make the environment conform to his will are all hallmarks of white privilege.
That’s two “entitlements” one “white privilege” and a “white male somebodiness” just because this guy wanted to sit down on a train. If you are laughing right now, you should be. The comedy keeps coming as Cooper plays the “what if” game:
In the reverse scenario, a black man would never get on the train, snatch up a white woman’s bag, and shove it in her face. But then black women are rarely entitled to the courtesies proffered to white women, and black people never presume they are entitled to occupy interracial spaces so aggressively.
Yeah, because black men never “snatch up” white women’s bags, right? I guess she’s technically correct. A black man wouldn’t do this to get a seat on a train; he’d do it because many black men feel “entitled” to other people’s stuff.
I don’t have enough space to cover it all, but Cooper goes off on this “racist” white guy for another couple thousand words. She compares herself to Rosa Parks and likens the incident to the civil rights struggle of the 1960’s. While I don’t see any racism in what happened on the train, I found plenty of it in this rant:
As I fought back the urge to pummel this man, it occurred to me that far too many white people really don’t get how short black America’s collective fuse is in this moment.
And:
So despite my clarity on the cancer that is white supremacy, much of my endless patience with white people and simultaneous lack of patience with white people is rooted in a foundational belief that they can do better.
To understand how racist these statements are, just play Cooper’s “what if” game. What if a white person said they were fighting back the urge to pummel a black person? What if a white person said they had no patience for black people? See, isn’t that a fun game?
If this is the freak-out we get because a white man wanted to sit down next to her on a train, imagine the rant when a white guy politely asks her to move because she’s blocking the aisle at the grocery store.
For some reason I think this is a result of Al Sharpton’s Action Network handing out training guides to black activists titled: How To Find Racism Where None Exists.
http://downtrend.com/71superb/black-woman-cries-racism-because-white-man-sits-next-to-her-on-a-train/
