Taking the subway in Toronto

The other day I was at the end of the line.

On my way to visit Rachelle at work, I was at the Kennedy subway stop making the transition to the Rapid Transit (above ground light rail) that would see me to my final destination. It was around 2:00 in the afternoon and as I stood in an elevator that was near to packed with women and their strollers, a woman stood outside trying to figure out if she should get in with us or not.

The elevator was crowded, but there was room for one more person and I expansively waved her in, “Come on, there’s room for one more!” She smiled and shook her head, deciding that she’d just as soon wait a minute or two for a less congested ride. I shrugged, looked back at the assembly of people behind me in the elevator and in an exaggerated, Homer Simpson kind of whisper said, “I don’t think she likes the way we look.” The women in the elevator gave me thin, wordless smiles and then continued along with their lives, speaking in languages I could not understand. It was at this moment that I realized the woman who didn’t get on the elevator was white and that everyone inside of it was dark skinned. At some point in their lives, perhaps even at some point during the day, they’d experienced a situation where somebody “didn’t like the way they looked.”

I was a middle-aged white guy, and I was a moron.

Trying to make things better I said, “She thinks we look tough, like a really mean gang,” and then I smiled hopefully, punching at air in an attempt to be cute. At this point, with the elevator doors now closing, I was being completely ignored.

On the car in the next train I was on, there were probably about 50 people, of which I was the only white person. This is typical on this line, but the funny thing about it is that I had never realized that was the case until that day.  Such is my sense of my entitlement and belonging that I can sit in a car full of 50 people who are not white and see them as looking different and not myself.

It was an ugly thing to realize, and I sat there concentrating on the seemingly aimless movements of a butterfly that had accidentally fluttered into our train, instead of this separateness I had never before quite perceived, but now acutely felt.