Not Eloquent, But Decisive

Grocery shopping took an unexpected turn this week.

As I wandered the International food aisle (Turns out this was really ironic, as you'll see.) looking for sushi wraps, a white older male employee and a white older female customer were having a grand old party time talking about how "white people better wake up or they'll be replaced."

Douchey dude talked about the "Oriental" nurse he had for a recent surgery (Hello, racist, the 19th century would like its vocabulary back, please.), and they both yammered about the laziness of "other" people. All this while the employee was not doing his job...in the International food aisle.

I finally had enough, turned and yelled, "Are you two talking about white people being 'replaced'? You are disgusting."

After I calmed down for a few minutes, I called and talked to a manager to let her know about the conversation they were having. She apologized, but I was clear that it wasn't about me and my feelings. This talk wasn't going to hurt me, but the Hispanic woman who was in the aisle when I first got there probably had to endure it, too.

I was grateful none of my family were with me because they would have been very anxious about my actions, but they also know that white people have got to step up and let other white people know when they are over the line. Racism is a white people problem. We need to be the ones working on it.

There are ways I could have handled this better, I suppose. I let my rage dictate my words, and I'm not sorry about that. I'm not sure trying to reason with people that will talk like that, in a public grocery store aisle, is time well spent.

Letting them know what they were saying isn't okay. That was time well spent.

Here's your reminder to call your representatives. Use this if it helps: https://5calls.org/