Sad Reality: Racism Is Everywhere. Including Here.

I got off Skytrain in Richmond on Friday night around 9 pm and walked to my bus stop to go home. At the stop was a very fit man in gym gear, in his early 30s, about 6 feet tall, who was calmly but firmly saying to two Indo-Canadian teenage girls, "What language are you speaking?" "Where are you from? You should go back there." "I'm from Canada and I speak English." "I was born here, you weren't, you need to speak English." "I can't understand what language you are speaking." The g...irls were silently staring at their phones. There were other people at the bus stop who were all looking at the ground and pretending they couldn't hear him. When the girls wouldn't respond, the man would loudly shout "HEY!" to get their attention, and start his diatribe again. He was completely focused on them. Other than "Hey," he never raised his voice. It was chilling.

After five minutes of watching this disgusting behaviour I yelled at him. "HEY! Leave them alone." Everyone looked up. Racist guy - who was scary because of how calm and direct he was - lasered in on me. "But I don't know what language they're even speaking!" I replied, "You don't need to know, they're not talking to you, now stop it." One of the girls said, "Yeah dude, we're not talking to you." Racist guy stared at me for a minute, then came and stood directly behind me, too close for comfort. He stood there while I texted transit police. He stood there while a man came out from beneath the bus shelter and deliberately stood beside me, while talking on his cell phone in Chinese, occasionally making eye contact with me to make sure I was OK. Racist guy did not like this either, and announced to the whole bus stop that he "didn't like any of these languages," and walked away. The girls got on a bus safely.

This guy was not your typical transit crazy. He may have been drunk, but not *that* drunk. He knew what he was saying and liked saying it. And that scares me to death.

Transit police came and took my statement. They told me I was brave but shouldn't have engaged him. I don't know how I can do anything *but* engage people who spew hate in front of me. Trump and his ilk have given these people permission to come out of the shadows and I am determined to put them back in the darkness, forever.

I posted this update on my Facebook and it went viral.  It's been shared hundreds of times in just under a week. I didn't post it to get kudos for shouting at the scary guy. I posted it so there can be no more smugness that "at least we live in Canada," no more pretending that racism doesn't exist here. BE VIGILANT.  We must be better than this.