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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, can you please describe specific attitudes and behaviors that you have observed, that made you ask the initial question? And how do they differ in whites and blacks, given your blended heritage and experience?[/quote]

OP Here. Regarding the specific attitudes and behaviors...this is a very difficult question for me to answer. I am having a hard time putting "it" into words because "it" is in most cases an intangible "vibe" that is given off.

There is one recent example that comes to mind. This example deals with a white person's response to a situation as opposed to a black person's response to a situation...

I was on the Metro, near the end of rush hour, a few weeks back and there was a young professional black lady in her late 20's early 30's sitting in a seat near me. It looked as though she was going home from work. A white guy got on the train with a bike and stood in front of the lady and had his bike angled so that his front wheel was in between her legs and every time the train stopped or he moved his bike it kept bumping into the lady's legs.

The first couple of times the lady was bumped by the wheel the lady just moved the wheel off of her and angled the wheel in another direction so that it would stop touching her but every time the guy kept angling the steering wheel back to the original angle pointing to inbetween the womans legs.

Finally, the woman got tired of the bike touching her so she asked the guy with the bike (not in the nicest tone of voice) if he could move his bike out of the way and he told her to calm down. She went off on him and said that she would not calm down and that she deserved to be able to sit on the train without his dirty bike wheel bumping into her at every stop. She said that if he did it again she was going to kick his bike.

A white person sitting in the seat across from her got up and offered to switch seats and said that its really not that big of a deal and that he would happily sit in her seat closer to the bike. There was another white man who was just about to get off to exit the train and just as he was leaving he turned to the guy with the bike and said 'nice bike man.' I happened to get off the train with the black lady and I saw this guy come up to her and he basically said in so many words 'it's not that serious look at what you are wearing anyways its not like you're all dressed up.'

From this scenario the vibe I got was that the other white men on the train that were close to the epicenter of the issue and who witnessed what happened seemed to side with the white biker over the black lady and acted like it was no big deal that the guys bike wheel was bumping into her at every stop much less invading her personal space by angling the bike wheel between her legs. Maybe this could be crossing into territory or sexism? Not sure,  but the other white people around just didnt seem to think that it was that big a deal and didnt get upset about it but just dismissed it.[/quote]

Thank you for the example, it helps me understand where you're coming from. I can view this as an example of a) rude behavior by a biker, b) public overreaction by a sitting person. I wonder, what if the sitting woman had simply asked the biker upfront, after the first incident, to be more careful with his bike, in a smiling/ laughing way? I suspect the biker would have complied, and that he would have elicited no support among other passengers had he ignored her request. Now, given your initial post is framed in terms of race, do you mean that most AA people would have reacted in the same way as the sitting (AA) lady did?[/quote]

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