My first encounter with racism

Hello, I'm Lea and I want to tell you something. A few days ago my mom and I wanted to go shopping. The mall is a little further from my home, so we dressed well because it was raining like buckets. Since we only have one car and it was being used by Papa, we had to trudge to the next bus stop.

We walked to the stop for about 10 minutes. The bus was delayed again, so we had to wait another 10 minutes. Then the big vehicle finally arrived. Before we entered it, mom and I had to put the mask on again. I didn't understand why we have to do this. Mama said we have to do this because there is a virus and we are protecting other people through it. I'm doing great! How am I supposed to infect someone when I'm healthy? At that moment I didn't care. We got into the vehicle and sat down on two vacant seats. I was very happy that we got a place, because mostly we have to stand and I thought that was really stupid. We drove and drove, from station to station. More and more people got on the bus. Soon there were no more seats. A man got on at the eighth stop. I would estimate it to be around 40 years. He looked very stressed and you could tell that he thought it was pretty stupid that he had no seat. A little further back sat a dark-skinned woman. She concentrated on her cell phone and did not notice the stressed man at all. The man stared at the woman for about five minutes. At some point she noticed and asked why he was doing it. He then yelled at her to have him sit down immediately because she was black and not from this country. The woman couldn't believe what she had just heard. Suddenly it got very noisy on the bus. Everyone yelled at the man. My mom also defended the woman. I sat confused and didn't know what to do. I suddenly heard the word racism. Actually I just wanted to ask mom what it was but we had to push our way through the crowd to get out. Then we went shopping and drove back. I completely forgot to ask what racism was. The next day at breakfast, I asked mom what that word means. She said that is when people are treated badly because of their skin color, religion, sexuality or origin, for example.

That was my story about the encounter with racism.

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