A Night of People Watching | Teen Ink

A Night of People Watching

April 24, 2017
By TimothyGreen SILVER, Wesley Chapel, Florida
TimothyGreen SILVER, Wesley Chapel, Florida
8 articles 0 photos 0 comments

I sit here at the Starbucks Café in a Barnes and Nobles in a nearby location, adjacent to my town. It's one of those places by being close to a significant population gets a large boost but it’s not big enough to be considered in the class of a major city. Yet, it’s not your typical small town. It contains no large spaces of green grass with obscenely large mutated cows. Usually, I despise places like this with no one singular identity, but for people-watching, it’s the best type of place. Large eastern cultural melting pot, seaport cities are the best places of the planet to study the nature of human beings. However, these type locations serve as the best places to people watch.  It’s small enough to contain your stereotypical southern folk with their pointy leather boots, their rugged “been through it all” button downs and their significantly larger than average body frames. However, it has enough to appeal to a 1st generation black boy who feels comfortable enough to sit there without the threat of violence.


Right now as I sit, most of the inhabitants of this café are silent. Whether it’s the near-death white woman flipping through a horoscope guide or the black man slouched in the corner with his overpriced Fiji water and appearing to be there strictly for the purpose of stealing free Wi-Fi. The rest are the usual suspects including the South Asian frolicking on his laptop or the East Asian flipping pages.


There are those not strictly adhering to the unspoken code of café edict. It’s the middle-aged woman across from me whose phone consistently goes off with a preprogrammed ringtone. Then instead of politely declining the call she picks it up and proceeds to have a substantially long conversation. Then, there’s the other black lady pinned against the wall that repeatedly speaks at her laptop. As my ears stay alerted for the blacks speaking my eyes began to fixate on the Caucasians sitting directly diagonal from me as they tense their faces with every breath, and put on an amusing face that’s cracking from the pressure of trying to hide a look of annoyance and resentment. It’s not far off from assuming that the table of white people wanted to tell the black women to lower their voices but they were in fear of the “angry black woman” retaliating with accusations of racism.


Hypothetically, if the older white woman were to actually move ahead with the thoughts in the head, the entire process would play out with the black women responding by lobbing accusations of racism back at the woman. Also, a result of this political climate the black women may also accuse the white lady of being Trump supporters (a phrase that’s risen to the level of being an epithet in some circles). From the opposing side, there might allegations of the women participating “social justice warrioring.” Actually, the elderly woman may not be aware of the existence of SJWs (Social Justice Warriors). She is more likely just to call them the n-word. However, her son sitting directly across from her would most likely jump in to defend his mom’s honor. (The son seems to like the type of guy who’s been a veteran of multiple wars against Social Justice Warriors.)


Has many may note racism is an accusation that people should not take lightly so it should not be one easily doled to against others. A quick google search can leave someone accused of racism permanently unemployable. The same level of caution should be taken before labeling someone with opinions to the left of a certain stance on social issues as Social Justice Warriors. I understand that even with events like the Berkley riots the phrase “social justice warrior” cannot conjure up memories of such vile, violent degradation of mankind that racism does. However, such a term can destroy someone’s livelihood. No, one wants to hire a person that could put them or others in a hostile work environment. SJWs create tense and uncomfortable work environments where people around the SJW is attempting not to step on their toes because one wrong word could potentially ruin a life around a SJW. People should not be readily framed as they are now as cancer to the work environment just for showing compassion.



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