DUers, Have You Ever Confronted A Stranger Face to Face About Their Racism?

[HeiressofBickworth]

36. Had a rather unusual confrontation on the train

I was traveling Amtrak from Seattle to Sacramento. My annual trip. This time, I needed to save some money so I decided to go coach instead of a sleeper. I boarded, sat down, pulled out my book, started to read. Somewhere south of Olympia, a family (two adults, two teen girls, speaking Spanish) boarded and sat behind me. I barely noticed them. There was a woman sitting across the aisle from me. When the train stops in Portland, there is about a half-hour layover. The family left the train. Now here's where it got weird: the woman across from me said (out loud!) You know they're illegals. I was shocked and said, what did you say? She repeated it. I asked her why she made that assumption. She said, "well, you saw them." Loudly and in my most condemning tone of voice, I said "You're just RUDE!" She never spoke to me again, and fortunately, when the family re-boarded the train, she said nothing to them, either.

I remain puzzled. I had exchanged a couple of pleasantries with her when I first sat down (hello, nice day), but nothing else, making no indication that I was interested in chatting. I can't imagine what made her believe a racist remark would be ok with me. Does she talk like that with everyone, everywhere? What the hell?