Hard Looks

So I'm sitting in Union Square the other day reading a book by bell hooks and this young black girl with the Parks Dept. comes up beside me with her trash bucket and broom, she says excuse me and proceeds to make disgusted noises as she picks up the trash and because I've put down my book to blow my nose I make a face to commiserate with her. As I am blowing my nose this young black guy comes up behind her and starts telling me to throw my tissue on the ground so she'll have to pick it up and to make sure I make it nice and nasty. I sort of laughed and said that wouldn't be very nice of me as she stood there offering to let me put the tissue in her basket. I declined since I wasn't finished blowing my nose and without missing a beat the kid with her was like "what, I was only going to open it up and look at it" as he was walking away. And for a brief second I was thrown off and embarassed and felt uncomfortable because I believed I hadn't done anything to provoke that and didn't feel like I deserved being called out like that. For a split second my mind went to the book I had been reading and I told myself that if I was reading a book like that I didn't deserve that anger because I was trying to understand how to change things. But before I let my head get too filled I thought about it for a second and put the book down. I realized that regardless of what I read or who I am inside my own mind that I had no right to use the book like a shield or to even believe that I deserved a free pass from recieving anger like that, no matter what form the anger took and even if the kid was just ragging on me to impress the girl he was following around. That book should not have been something to hold up like that as some sort of absurd badge or protection. It should have been something I was learning from and so I put it away for the rest of my sit. Beyond the book though, it bothered me that I was so thrown by this kid. It bothered me that I had gotten upset at him when all he was doing was bursting the little bubble that I was sitting in that let me believe I already understood about race. Intentionally or otherwise he was putting the difference between this girl and I right in my face for me to look at and it wasn't something I should've been upset with him for. The thing is I should be made uncomfortable seeing that inequality between her and I. It isn't right that kids like her get jobs like that and that those jobs are amongst the few options that some young kids in urban areas have. It isn't right that black kids are cleaning up after white adults as nearly a standard- I mean there were no white kids on that park crew. I should see the injustice in the fact that all the kids on that crew were black and that there were just as many if not more white kids and adults sitting in that park making trash. Its ok for me to see that and be angry or upset with that. Its important for me to see and try to change. In that way it's right that that kid burst my little bubble and made me see just how unequal things can still be. Afterall no matter how equal I may believe I am in my dealings that girl is still black and I am still white and unless people do more bubble bursting and take constant action towards changing inequality I will always have some sort of advantage. I will always be anticipated to be the one sitting there making trash while some young black girl stands by to pick it up.Thats not to say I feel badly for her, because who knows what the circumstance is that brought her specifically to that job and feeling badly sets up some sort of victim ideology that deprives an individual of empowerment, its just to say that its there and until we can truly say we are at a place where race has absolutely nothing to do with position or job prospects, or whose on the other end of our broom, we cannot stop looking at it critically and realizing the implications of such a setup