On the Way Home on 14 April, 2011

On the way home today I was minding my own business on a train, and through my iPod earphones I heard someone shouting. Out of bystander curiosity, I subtly yanked one of my earphones out and listened in.

She was a young Indigenous woman, probably in her 20s by the look of her, and she was speaking very loudly to the people around her. Various swear words were used and she did not appear to be addressing any one person in particular. Even now I cannot figure out what prompted this, but the words “buncha white c**ts” were definitely said. I hesitate to assume she was intoxicated, but it would not have surprised me were this the case.

Most people around me seemed to find this most amusing. There were lots of knowing looks exchanged between strangers, a few chuckles, a few smirks. Plenty of others simply tried to ignore this tirade of verbal abuse. A few were offended by it and made no effort to hide or mask this.

Some way through this an old white guy started talking to her, asking her how she was doing. She answered his questions, though her defensiveness was immediately evident. At some point, he asked her what her name was. She responded by demanding why he was asking. He said he was just asking. She continued to demand what her name had to do with anything.

From here, the conversation escalated into a shouting match between the guy and the young woman. So instead of one person shouting, we had two people shouting. (At this point I had abandoned all pretense of subtlety and had removed my earphones entirely.) Their words were largely drowned by each other’s shouting, but there was a lot of swearing.

Eventually, we came to a train station and apparently someone had alerted transport authorities because two security guards were waiting outside the carriage door and escorted her off the train and gave her a talking to.

I wondered: would that scenario had been different if she were not Indigenous? If so, how? If not, why not?

Would someone have spoken up sooner if she were not Indigenous? Would someone have spoken to her more politely, with less confrontation, if she were not Indigenous?

Surely someone would say, if she wasn’t Indigenous, she would never have behaved like that in the first place. Why? What makes that a legitimate claim?

Is it because Indigenous people feel like non-Indigenous people don’t expect much from them, and therefore don’t care how they behave in public because, well, it would surprise no one if they behaved poorly? A self-fulfilling expectation, perhaps?

I remember deciding not to say or do anything because anything that was said or done would ultimately be futile. Timing and rationality were both factors in this. But was this the same excuse everyone else was using when we were so determined to just react privately, to not take any action and just let it happen? Was there anything that could have been done that would have helped?