Friday, July 24, 2015

The First image is a sidewalk stain in North Park.
The other pictures are of a man taking pictures of the North Park Sign from the center of the roadway.


ON THE TROLLEY THIS MORNING…

On my way to coffee with Eric, I wheeled my bike into the trolley bound for El Cajon this morning… past the rush hour time of getting to work… and it was filled with mostly people of color.  I was an old white man in a sea of black and Latino bodies with a smaller mix of Asian and Middle Eastern folks. Last night I had watched and heard Ta-Nehisi Coates discuss his book Between the World and Me, so I rode the trolley with the same information I had known other times but definitely with more insight than I had previously carried along with me when I waited for the trolley and while I sat for half-an-hour on it watching people come and go.  

At the Grossmont Transit Center I watched as people approached the trolley station.  A black boy in a hoodie came onto the platform carrying a skate board. He sat hunched with the hood covering most of his face.  Black women and girls and other darker skinned females came onto the platform, but they stood.  White people came onto the platform and most of them sat if they found an empty seat.  A White boy about the same age as the boy in hoodie came onto the platform, back straight… he walked to meet his friend, a white girl, as if the platform belonged to him.  Two men, one a good looking black man and a shorter, stockier white man came onto the platform and walked to the ticket machine at the same time.  The white man was at ease and in charge.  The black man waited until the white man had got his ticket before he put his money into the machine. 

On the way back home, it occurred to me that I am the only one of my hilltop friends who routinely rides the trolley.  

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/ta-nehisi-coates-accept-violence-african-americans-normal/


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