bart

A couple weeks ago I was on bart on my way to my parent’s house. I got on at Daly City and as we got closer to downtown I noticed more and more people getting on. Now this wasn’t unusual to me because it’s typical for the train to become more crowded as you head downtown but what I noticed were the people on the train. There were many tourists or people who obviously did not live in the city or simply never taken bart before judging by the way they stared at the map and by the conversations I was rudely, but couldn’t help, listening in to. “San Francisco is not what I thought”, or “Hey we should check out the pier” and the popular “When are we going to see the Golden Gate Bridge?”. Anyway, early into my travel a white man sat next me. He was accompanied with two other white guys and whatever I didn’t really care. At this time I finally found my ipod in my crowded bag and right away Im listening to my tunes. A couple minutes after the white guy got my attention and asked me if I knew where to get off for Chinese New Year. Now I knew it was Chinese New Year and I was planning on going but I had to go visit my parents so anyway I said “No, I’m sorry but unfortunately I don’t” and I was actually surprised when he came back with “Why don’t you know, you’re Chinese”. I mean foreal? I was pretty offended because this white guy is just calling me Chinese and assuming I’m on my way to Chinese New Year. First off, I’m not Chinese. Not half, not part, not even a little and what upsets me is that some people just put in all Asians into Chinese, and I have nothing wrong with Chinese people but some people tend to just throw all Asian groups into Chinese. And that guy was just profiling me which was not a good feeling. It’s just unfortunate that there are still people who are just so narrow-minded.

-ashley