*Note: I had to post this a day late as my apartment does not have wifi yet*
A few months ago, my host mother from when I was living as an au pair in Vienna came to visit Paris with her daughter. On one of the days Petra and Annie were here, we met at Notre Dame, had a walk, and then decided to take the Line 4 up to Sacre Couer.
Petra is a no BS kind of woman. She’s down to earth, speaks her mind, and is committed to raising her two children on her own. While spending the summer with her and her family, I realized how much I admire her as a woman. She is hilarious, supports her children being individual and independent, but most of all, she’s cool. Relaxed, spontaneous, and able to take anything with a grain of salt — all qualities I struggle to find within myself. She accepted me immediately and over the course of the summer we became confidants, a relationship I did not expect.
On the Line 4, Petra lost her cool. She looked around and mouthed to me the words “we are the only white people”. She tightened her grip on Annie’s hand and asked me to hold the other. I did, and when we got off at Chateau Rouge, Petra swore she was never going to take the Paris metro again.
This evening, I took Metro Line 4 again for the first time since this situation. I was not the only white person on the metro again.
The thing about metro Line 4 is it runs right through the north of Paris, as I’ve realized over the six months I’ve lived here, is not much a place where tourists (except for the ones headed to Sacre Couer) go. The metro line 4 does not run through the 16th or the 8th or the 7th or much even the 1st. Paris home to a diverse amount of cultures, races, ethnic groups, languages, and class levels. For an expensive city like Paris, the outer arrondissements are a better option to find lower rent prices than for say, in the Latin QuarterQuarter.
Now that I live in the 18th, and took the metro Line 4 again as my metro, and once again realized I was not the only white person on the metro although there were a large number of men with darker skin than mine, I did not flinch.
There is something called a stereotype. The thing is, most of them are completely not true.
It is a misconception that I, as a young white woman, am unsafe on a metro filled with men of more recent African ancestry than I do (because I still have African ancestry).
In my life, I have never been hurt by a man of color on the metro. The only men I have been hurt by are the ones who are seemingly polite, well-dressed, European, educated, young men who my grandmother likes.
Privilege exists. Prejudices exist, even inside the best of people. Somebody’s appearance is not a reflection of their intention or their heart.
