Got a call to pick up a man from a medical facility and it was noted that he was with a service animal. I picked him up and he laid a bunch of napkins on my seat upon when she placed the small service dog. He sat down, breathed out and said, “I appreciate that your car is nice and cool!”
I like my car to be nice and cool, so I keep the AC at a low temperature. If someone is too cold, and they request me to turn it off, I will happily accommodate. But he seemed to like it’s cold, and that was fine by me.
He then went on to tell me that his last rideshare driver turned the AC off, and it seemed like the driver turned it off the minute the passenger got into the car. He figured the driver was a racist and didn’t like the passenger because he was Native American. I told him I was sorry that happened.
He went on to elaborate further about the driver being racist. He told me that he gets a lot of ride share drivers who seem to be racist against his people. I smiled awkwardly and said nothing, hoping that I would not fall into this category by saying something stupid.
He complained that the car ride to the clinic had been so hot, but the driver would not turn on the AC because he told him that he was saving on gas. This infuriated him further because it shouldn’t have been about saving gas but it should be about the comfort of the customer and if he couldn’t afford the gas, he shouldn’t be driving. It was racism, simple as that.
And to top it off, the man was sure that after he got out of the car, the driver did indeed turn on the AC… because he was racist.
After this comment, he went on to say that all Africans seem to be racist. I cocked an eyebrow. African? This was the first he mentioned that the driver was of African descent. He went on further about all the African drivers he has had. That they all tend to stink. That they probably don’t care about the AC being off because they are used to that heat in Africa. That the heat here was different than that in the jungle. And that they come here to his country and treat the Native Americans like they are the outsiders.
I wasn’t sure if he meant direct immigrants from Africa or African Americans, but at the end of the day, that didn’t seem to matter . He seemed to have animosity towards anyone who might look like they were, in his mind, from Africa.
It was odd to me, his anger towards Africans. In my brain, I thought, both African-Americans, and Native Americans have both been the subject of severe persecution in the history of this country. By the Caucasian-Americans. If anything, I would think they would see common ground. I did not say any of this out loud, because I had no answers (and I was one of those Caucasian-Americans), and didn’t want to judge the racial biases of others.
As we drove on and got closer to his destination, the man said he was going to his reservation. As we pulled down the road the GPS was directing me towards, it was in an area behind one of the state’s largest casinos. I drove into the area, which was all made up of very nice houses. It was clean with paved roads better than most that I have driven over in the city.
It reminded me of the suburban community I lived in on the East Coast when I was a child. In Delaware, I lived in a place called Four Seasons, which was a little suburb of Wilmington. It was like Hill Valley in “Back to the Future”. Note: it should not be confused with the Four Seasons landscaping company that Rudy Giuliani gave a speech outside of thinking, it was a Four Seasons hotel.
I had been to a few reservations in the area and this was the nicest one I had experience. I wondered if it was because of the casino. I’m guessing so, that’s without direct knowledge. I just know that a lot of the other reservations were not as nice or as safe looking.
I dropped the man off at his house, driving past kids playing in the street. He picked up his dog and the paper towels and got out and thanked me for the ride and for having the AC on.
I was going to wish him a “Happy Indigenous Peoples Day”, but I wasn’t sure how that would come across. Would he prefer to be called Native American or was Indigenous ok? In the end, I thought it would be safest to wish him a good day, and hope that in the future he gets drivers that will run the AC…
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