Does Public Transport Combat Racism?
I wonder about this, but the masses of different races and nationalities, that use public transport have to get on.
When you swipe your card by the driver on a bus say, you often wave and say thank you and if the bus isn’t busy you’ll often get a cherry reply, whatever the race of the driver. And let’s face it, is there a race not represented amongst London bus drivers.
Often too, you’ll strike up a conversation with the person next to you, about something trivial. Sometimes this will be caused by my apologising for being clumsy because of the stroke and I can’t remember receiving a rude response.
One incident stands out. I was needing to get by a black man of my own age, as I’d rather hidden myself away on a corner seat, at the back of the bus. So I apologised before I hit him with my rucksack. He said not too bother, as he was very happy and after five years as a widower he was going to propse to his girlfriend that day. I said I was a widower too and he said that it’ll all work out. He waved me goodbye as I left the bus. Good luck to him and I hope the lady accepted his proposal.
So when you throw people together and they all get mixed up, does it take the racial tension out of living?
I think the only thing we need to ensure is that when we travel on a bus or train, that we treat everybody in the way we would like to be treated ourselves.
The Anonymous Widower 
A smile and a hello goes a long way. I have discovered that if I smile at a lady in a niqab (Muslim face veil) she smiles back – I can only see her eyes, but can tell that she is smiling back, sometimes she will say hello as well. That said – you as a man should NOT smile or say hello to a lady in a niqab.
Comment by liz | April 7, 2011 |
I was in the lift on the DLR at the weekend, with an elderly Muslim couple and I was having a conversation about the slowness of the lift with the husband. His wife smiled at me, but didn’t say anything, as I suspect she didn’t have any English. As I always do, I let them out of the lift first and he thanked me. If she had had more English would she have joined the conservation?
Comment by AnonW | April 8, 2011 |
Depends. Strictly speaking a Muslim woman should not speak to a man who is not a member of her immediate family. Quite how wide “immediate family” is interpreted varies dependning on how strict the family is. Since she smiled rather than instantly cast her eyes to the ground, they werent very very strict. But she still may have needed her husband’s permission to speak to you.
Comment by liz | April 8, 2011 |