ACUALLY DO SOMETHING?

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Today I had a rather despondent experience that made me think about the isolation and cultural separation shown in the movie Samson and Delilah, which I wrote about in my precious reflective piece. I was sitting on the bus on my way home surrounded by business men and women in suits desperate to get away for their shitty jobs, stuck in a metal sardine, can stuck in peak hour traffic when a woman hails the bus just before south terrace on our way out of the city.   The poor woman looked like she was wearing everything she owned layer upon layer even though it wasn’t cold outside. She seemed rather confused about weather or not she wanted to get on the bus.

I use public transport nearly every day so I’m fairly used to seeing people dunk out of their minds or too high to function and how they are treated, and this was different. Instead of the usual 30 seconds of grace before people yelling at them telling them to make up their minds if they want to be on the bus or that the bus driver telling them to get off, no one said anything for quite sometime. The bus driver asked the woman if she was ok, and she replied that she was fine and asked the bus driver if this was the bus to the city, to which he replied we’re in the city this bus is going out of the city the bus that goes to the city is on the other side of the road. Where in the city do you want to go? To which she said; I just want to go into the city. Why wont you take me to the city? Bus driver: we’re in the city and this bus is full of people that want to get home, please get off the bus and just walk across the road and get on one of the busses that are going the other way. Woman: (the woman at this stage is getting quite angry and leaning over the change dispenser) Why can’t you turn the bus around and take me into the city?  Bus driver: I’ve just told you, because this bus is full of people who are trying to get home… The woman cuts the bus driver off and says it’s because I’m black them starts yelling that she is a smart strong aboriginal woman, this goes on for another minuet of so. Everyone on the bus has gone from pretending the woman doesn’t exist to being extremely angry at the woman but unwilling to tell her to get off the bus like you would with any other drunk abusive person. I found it rather strange that no one said anything to her, was it because they feared her, she was after all a rather tall well built woman. Or was it that they feared that asking her to get off the bus they would be seen as racist?  If being racist is treating someone differently because of their race: isn’t not telling her to get off the bus like we would if she was white racist?  Are we all guilty because we have undoubtedly driven this poor woman to the point where she has to turn to alcoholism to deal with her problems? And if so why do we not feel so bad for a drunk white person? Why instead of making our selves feel a little better by not telling her to get of the bus do we not ACUALLY DO SOMETHING to help those aboriginal people that we chose to ignore and shun for our society? Maybe one day the woman sneering at the drunken woman over her nail as she painted them will be the one who doesn’t fit into society.  On a lighter note here is a almost completely unrelated video of how classy people are on public transport which may brighten your day.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sPKWhsBh-Zs