My Cab-ride Home.... a racial confrontation...

So just got home, in a cab-ride. Pretty interesting story; thought i should share. For those that don't know, I live in Boston, one of the most liberal cities in the United States...

So I'm heading home, and hit my local bar, for a last call beer. pretty common; 1:30 a.m. on a friday night. I converse with my typical bartenders, drink my beer, and continue on my journey home. Step outside the bar, hail my customary cab to take me a 5 minute ride home. A cab flashes his lights at me, and he proceeds to pull over to pick me up. At this point, I hear a " HEY, YO!!" in my direction. I proceed to turn around toward the entrance of the bar i just exited to see 2 white males yelling towards the cab that just decided to pick me up. I then intuitively turn to my completely backside to see a white female standing about 3 steps off the curb that said cab apparently bypassed to pick me up. She has a disgruntled look on her face. I look back at the white male, and he reluctantly states "I guess we'll wait for the next cab." I proceed to get into said cab and be on my way.

3 traffic lights into my homeward bound direction, i notice an odd occurrence. Another cab pulls up on our right side. Cab driver in that cab proceeds to drop his window to talk quickly with my cab driver. My driver does the same and they quickly converse in kenyan (their native language). I notice that the 2 males and 1 other in the back of the cab are rather familiar. Then i notice the female in the front passenger seat is VERY familiar, the girl standing in the street a moment earlier.

I ask MY cabbie if my window is able to go down. He resets his controls and allows me to lower my window to the lowered windows beside me. I say, "hey, how ya doin". The white male to my right says, "hey man, sorry about all that. She's from the south and all." I say to him, " hey it's all good, we all got to get to somewhere, sometime." He looks at me odd, like he's shocked I actually responded. Then I said, " i've seen you before at Charlie's so what's your excuse??" No response is rendered beyond a dirty look. As the light turns green, I say as my cab speeds away, " Hey man, get used to it... black people sometimes get cabs before white people...", and we pull away.

The rest of the cab ride, I honestly ask MY cabbie, why he picked me up before them. He states, "why not??" I agree, though i'm slightly shocked. I tell him, "I wouldn't have been surprised if you had stopped to pick up that blond chick. That would have been what I considered normal and the status quo. I didn't even realize you had bypassed her until that white dude yelled at you for doing so."

At that point I realized, I was 1 step closer to being just another person, at least in Boston, Ma.
:smt056

 

Two sets of clubbers jockeying for a cab in a big town on a Friday night at closing time. Nothing at all unusual about that. From what you described race was not even an issue until you brought it up. I don't even know why you rolled the window down to speak, it was a little like gloating.

Oh, and the woman expecting to get the cab, I see that a lot and I attribute it to some women trying to use their feminity to take advantage of male cabbies, which often works.

My 2 cents.

 

Boston?

(shudders)

 

Sir Nose, maybe it was one of those, you had to be there moments, but i clearly didn't start the issue. It started when the white guys at the bar, and the lady, were taken a-back by the odd situation they were facing which basically came down to a cab bypassing a group of white people for a solo black man.

In Boston, that simply doesn't happen. It's a very small city and last call on any night is 2 a.m.. It is a very small city and any trip outside of the city is coveted at this time of night. More often, the cab drivers aim towards the white people, particularly in groups, as it is assumed they are heading to the more affluent suburbs. My personal irony is that i live in one of said suburbs, though i have on busy evenings been bypassed time and time again till around 3:15 to 3:30 a.m., at least when i was deep downtown. So you need to realize how unusual it was for my driver to pick me up solo when multiple drops usually bring a much larger fare, and i happened to be solo tonight.

Possilbe piece of gloating, yeah, i was intoxicated, as i am as i write this. Maybe i'll read it again in the morning and feel i jumped the gun, but i've experienced this for the better part of 10 years, so i feel i know what i'm talking about.

Take again the fact that they were kinda pissed off by the situation of a black guy getting a cab before them, but when i gave the guy an eye to eye glare as i was getting into the cab, he made a very P.C. comment, seriously trying to save face and not look like a bigot. Seriously, you had to be there to see it.

I'm just curious if this occurs in all the other cities of the country. I definately don't encounter this type of shit when i'm in NYC.