Apu & Me

So after watching the Sox destroy the Cubs, I decided to check out The Taste of Chicago, because Lauryn Hill was supposed to perform. She's awesome. Lo and behold, she didn't play, and instead LL Cool J played. Although he pandered to the mostly female audience (there were a few guys singing along too), he was high-energy. However, he represents everything I hate about pop music. The best line was him saying: "I love my community...I love my community". Which I reckon he meant, the african-american community...but this is no longer his community. He reps the multi-million dollar community now. I'll stop.

Anyways, the point of this story, is that as I was leaving, just minding my own business, some random guy starts walking beside me and says "what is it today? A food parade?" and I was like...hmm...is this guy trying to be funny: it's Taste of Chicago (a sort of food parade). Then i realized he wasn't laughing. It hit me, what he REALLY said was "what is it today? An Indian Parade?" I looked around and I didn't see any Indian people around. Then it hit me, he was TALKING ABOUT ME! What bothers me is that, I'm not Indian, but to the common person I definitely look it. So at this point I was LIVID. I pretty much run up to him and I'm like "What did you just say?" and he doesn't say anything and keeps on walking quickly...picking up speed....but I follow..."Yo, what did you just tell me?" This time he's pretty much running. Although, I didn't plan on fighting the guy, I definitely wanted to have some choice words with the loser. So he's running, I'm following and I'm getting in his face, but dude is being smart, and not looking at my face. If you've ever been to Taste of Chicago, you know it's a complete zoo/madhouse, so he weaves in and out, and within like 6 seconds I completely lose the guy in the crowd.

Despite ruining a pretty good day, there are a few things that bother me about this: 1) Why would you just go up to some random guy and start being a bigot? 2) what is the point? 3)What motivates you...what do you hope to happen?

This was perhaps the first 'racial experience' (for lack of a better term) I've had in Chicago, and the first in quite a number of years (I was once called a nigger in some hick town...which was retarded). I'm not about to call Chicago a racist city, because I know that's not the case...there will always be ignorant people everywhere.

I guess sometimes I really forget about the colour of my skin, and it takes an experience like this to remind me.