What an empty seat told me

Ward Minnis

I’m on a public transit bus in Ottawa that’s full to and beyond capacity. People are standing, the bus driver is making announcements that people should move further back. Oddly enough there are two vacant seats that the standing crowd must not see.

I ask myself, ‘is it a coincidence that these two seats are next to black men?’ I happen to be one of those black men.

Of course I could be reading too much into this, and the crowd of standing white people around me and the empty seat next to the other black man, maybe they just want to stretch their legs. Thing is, I bet if I were to ask them if they had even the slightest tinge of racism in them, I bet they would say ‘no, of course not.’

Am I the racist for seeing it? Feeling it?

The empty seat next to me says otherwise.

Comments

8 responses to “What an empty seat told me”

October 20, 2007

koruja

awsome text

cheers
October 23, 2007

haitianministries

I appreciate the material you’ve been posting on this blog and the perspective you have to offer. I’ve linked this to my own blog so hopefully some of my readers will stop by and check it out.
October 24, 2007

admin

Thanks a lot guys, I appreciate the encouragement and the links. 🙂 I put up a link to baptist ministries on wardmin.org.
October 24, 2007

sheema

lol no comment..
by the way, i love the new look. keep it goin baby 🙂
November 23, 2007

tarik

your a clown, i understand what you mean, but you sound “weak” and sad because somebody didn’t want to sit next to you
November 30, 2007

main slave

@tarik. You got the point, I am sad. But what makes me sad are the possible reasons ‘why’ for the isolation in this instance and not the isolation itself. A big difference.
December 18, 2007

Jer

OK, so I am not crazy. I have seen it, experienced it and wondered ‘why’, that is, about the “empty seat.” I think that nowadays we tend to be too lackadaisical about racism, accepting it, almost. This kind of ‘voicing’ says that it a reality whether people want to acknowledge it or not, and that it is unacceptable.

But, Ward, who wouldn’t want to sit beside you?!
December 18, 2007

Jer

…I mean, so that some of the intelligence could rub off 🙂