An old Asian man talking on a cell phone—I think he was speaking Chinese—entered the 23 bus heading north into Center City. He sat behind a black woman.
The second his cheeks hit the seat, she half-turned, never quite looking at him, and yelled to … I don’t know, the opposite wall, maybe, “I know you ain’t gonna sit behind me yapping into that thing at me!” Her eyes were wide, her lips stern.
Unperturbed, and without a waver in his voice, the man stood up and moved to the back of the bus. She turned to face forward.
Maybe I’m oversensitive, but it seemed like a racist impulse to me. It was something in the way she said “yapping,” and the way she jumped at him instantly, without hesitation, and with an absolute moral certainty. For a moment I was amused to observe a racist action that had nothing to do with a white person.
In fact, when the black woman nodded toward a white woman in the old folks seats to seek agreement and solidarity, the white woman ignored her. (Who knows: That could have been born of racism, too.)
But maybe she wasn’t being racist at all. Cell phones on buses are annoying. (I don’t even answer the phone when I get a call during my ride.) I still don’t like the way she handled it. It didn’t win her any friends on that bus.
The Chinese man’s conversation didn’t actually bother me all that much. I can tune it out if it’s another language, but I think if he were speaking English I would have been more annoyed.
Of course I don’t know if he was offended or not. I doubt it. Maybe he took her words to heart. Maybe he didn’t even hear her words, and he was just trying to get away from a noise as annoying to him as his phone call was to us.
... but enough about me 
Sounds to me like it was pretty rude. Hard to say what her motivations were, but it seems like she has a fair amount to learn about civil discourse. With that said, the guy talking on his phone probably wouldn’t win any awards for etiquette, either.