On Thursday October 7, at 10 AM, I was crossing the street at the Robie-Coburg intersection. With the pedestrian walk sign clearly on, a grey pickup truck, driven by a white male (balding, heavy-set, round face, and clean shaven) came speeding from the left, nearly hit me, and the bastard was even generous enough to give me the finger.

Here is a question that may have a complicated answer: what does racism look like?

What is it?

- when someone talks/looks/make eye-contact with a white colleague and ignores me for an entire 10 minutes of conversation although the topic of discussion involves me as well?

-when someone speaks to me REEEAALLLY LOUDLY AND SLOOOWWWWLY AND CAREFULLY (Is it because they think "Oh she speaks with an Indian accent. Maybe she is deaf and stupid too"???)

- when a white colleague mentions Indian corruption, pollution, poverty and disease at least once in every conversation

- when someone asks me how I speak such good English and explains it by saying that I must have lived outside India a long time already?

- when my white partner and I are scrutinized from head to toe and back again, especially by older people

Well, I think I could deal with the psychopathic redneck with the beer-gut and the pickup truck - he is just the visible tip of the ugly iceberg. The special brand of middle-class, blindfolded, liberal, hypocritical polite-society racism is so very hard to digest.

Racism is alive and well in this so-called liberal multicultural paradise. The silence and political correctness here cloak it, make it a rude thing to shout and rage about. Racism lives! —Furious Person from Very Far Away