Race Truce

Wading through the murky waters of racism and trying to see things pellucidly is easier said than done. What happens if race is brought into the picture, how will it skew our own judgement? Well, why don’t we find out by delving into our topic for today — Race Truce!

I love my bicycle. I have been on it ever since my feet could reach the pedal. No distance seemed far, not even to my office in downtown Toronto. Amidst the construction barricades and crawling traffic, I still found pleasure in riding my bicycle. That to me was the best part of going to the office. 

On one such days, my bicycle broke down and needed repair. I took it to the big-box store nearby in the hopes of reinstating my bicycle to its former glory, but things were about to take a sinister turn. Within a couple of minutes I was informed that the bicycle technician wasn’t available for the week and no repairs can be done. I was dismayed because my riding plans for the week had been jeopardized plus I’ll have to come another day to get the bad boy fixed.

As I was rushing through the checkout counter, I was stopped by the staff and asked a few questions mostly around verifying whether the bicycle in possession was mine, or stolen from the store. Though it irked me for being hassled out of the blue like that, but hey, I cooperated in dispelling their doubts. Later, I was asked to show the bicycle purchase receipt as proof of ownership. I didn’t have it on me but I managed to pull out my credit card statement which had the information they needed.

The staff didn’t look convinced. Standing inside the counter were two white ladies, one of whom was, apparently, giving the instructions. The staff blocking my bicycle and vicariously holding me hostage was a hefty black man. In spite of my pleas to let me go, the black man remained unperturbed. It seemed as though the staff had come to the conclusion that I had stolen the bicycle and was desperate to get out of the store. On the one hand I was feeling miserable to be detained for a misdemeanour I didn’t perpetrate and on the other, I was thinking of ways to surmount the unpleasant situation. 

“Hey, why don’t you check the CCTV footage?” I said to the staff in frustration. 

The staff obliged and once they witnessed the footage of me walking into the store entrance with the bicycle, I was allowed to go. I heaved a huge sigh of relief and left the store vowing never to set foot on it again. 

In hindsight, I’m kicking myself for not coming up with the CCTV solution sooner. That would have spared the inconvenience of putting myself at the mercy of the staff in the store. This incident, however, raises some questions for which I seek closure.

• Why didn’t the thought of checking the CCTV footage hit their head before jumping to accuse me? 
• Why weren’t they convinced at the credit card statement which had the purchase date, the price paid and the store location where the purchase was made?
• What prevented them from thinking that I could’ve just walked into the store with the bicycle? I’m certainly not the first person to do so because this big-box store is very popular and has branches all over Canada. They sell bicycles and do repair work too. So there’s nothing unusual with someone walking in, or walking out of the store with a bicycle.

Alright, there are two ways to analyze this incident, one is the non-racial angle and the other the racial angle. Let’s start with the non-racial angle.

• Firstly, the bicycle looked pretty new because it was purchased recently and that too from the same big-box store but in a different location, so that might have raised concerns.
• Secondly, I was rushing through the checkout counter without making any purchase at the store and in possession of a relatively new bicycle, which may have been misconstrued to be a steal-and-flee. 
• Thirdly, there’s a high incidence of bicycle thefts happening in the city. My spin instructor has lost about ten bicycles to thefts, and most of the friends I know have lost theirs too. So the staff are probably acting out of caution here.

Now let’s look at this incident from a racial angle. As you can see, I’m a non-white with a shaved head and french beard showing facial proclivity to being more black than brown. Would I have been treated differently if I were white? Why is the white lady at the counter not confronting me directly but letting the black man do it? If the white lady giving the instructions is to blame, then what about the black man executing her instructions? What really bothers me besides trying to decipher whether the incident had racial undertones or not, is about being mistreated and the staff not tendering an apology after knowing that I didn’t steal the bike. 

During my first year in Canada my downstairs neighbour and I never got along. Things deteriorated to the point that I had to lodge a police complaint because of the constant harassment and threats from him. Two police officers showed up at my door and after a brief interaction, they went downstairs to talk to my neighbour. I peeked through the window to see what was going on. My downstairs neighbour comes out of his apartment, and the first words out of his mouth were, “I’m black, I’m black, I’m black…” The two police officers, both white women, gave him a warning and took off. This left me wondering why is race being brought into the picture? Is it fair to use our race to cover our tracks? If my neighbour is black, I’m brown and we are both people of colour, or BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of colour) as some like to call it. Has the sensational case of O.J. Simpson set a bad precedent for us? Shouldn’t all lives matter? For the uninitiated, O.J. is a black sports celebrity who had committed double homicide, killing his ex-wife and her friend, both whites, and later acquitted from the eight-month long criminal trial. Race played a big role in the final judgment, so much that a member of O.J.’s legal team in an interview brags about having won the case by throwing the race card. If we use race as our line of defence, isn’t that racism too?

I’m by no means downplaying what happened to the Rodney Kings’ and George Floyds’ of the world. I acknowledge dreadful events have occurred in the past and though it’s natural to lose faith in the system, please keep in mind, the same system also paved way for a person of colour to take the top job at the White house, signalling things are in a state of flux. For those who still think nothing has changed and whites can only exist as racists, which whites are we talking about exactly? At the end of World War II, it’s estimated that 60 million people lost their lives. Of the 60 million, 10% were Jews, which works to about 6 million and these 6 million Jews were whites too, who on the contrary were subject to racism and gassed in concentration camps. If Hitler had succeeded in the war, he could have exterminated the Jews under the notion they are a subhuman race. For the record, no race is superior or inferior to another, and anyone thinking otherwise are modern day Nazis in my opinion.

The experience at the big box store was sort of an eye-opener for me. Maybe the white lady at the store was a tad worried about coming off as racistic and her subtle way of circumventing the situation was by deploying a person of colour to handle another person of colour, or, what if the lady happened to be a non-white, would there even be an issue here? Who knows for sure? Certainly, I don’t. When in doubt, it’s best to cut some slack and declare truce. Allowing race to cloud our judgement and by failing to see things for what it really is, spews out racism too.

Anyway, I let the bicycle incident slip out of my mind until it resurfaced again after a year, but this time in a different form. It was early evening when I parked the bicycle at my usual spot and went to the gym for my workout. As soon as I was done, I returned to the parking spot only to find out that my bicycle was missing. I informed the security guard and upon reviewing the building’s CCTV footage, she confirmed the bad news. My bicycle is now officially stolen, making it the object of a self-fulfilling prophecy!!!