The New Bus Driver

URGENT!!! please help me vet my essay...need it ASAP

this is my essay: title: The New Bus Driver...

Walking on the streets of Chicago, I was shunned and cursed by the people that passed by me. I did not knew them, they were complete strangers, but I did not care. I was hated like all other people of my race, everyday, one or two of the "superior" beings would personally visit our homes, destroying our yards and whatever that came into their way. At first, I was angry. Angry by the very fact that our race, like theirs are humans. "Don't we deserve human rights?" I asked myself repeatedly. However, today, such strong feelings, such anger, have numbed. It became part of me , part of my routine, shunned, cursed, and even beaten up. I did not care.

Like any other day, I went to school on my usual route. Taking the bus that would always arrive at 10:15 am sharp. Uncle Patterson, another man from my race, was the bus driver. Many of us around this district would board his bus because he was the only man willing enough to take us to our destination.

10:15am, the usual bus arrived. I eagerly waited for the bus to come to a stop before making my way to the door. "Hi Uncle Patt..." Something cut my word. Sitting in the driver seat was not Uncle Patterson. A White! The White, was there, I was shocked. I stood there in silence under the blazing sun for a very long time, and not for a second had we met eye-to-eye; his fixed on his "superior" men and mine on the reluctant face of another black man.

At last, I decided to break the silence, rather to avoid any trouble.

"May I..."

He cut my word, "Ya Ya...Stupid Negro..." he murmured, and this time I knew that he was not talking to me.

I felt my heart fell into the acidic churning of my stomach and I could taste bile in my mouth. I was angry, yet I swallowed my pride and made my way to my usual seat.

After what seems years, the bus came to a stop. This time, a young and fit man boarded the bus. He was handsome, tall and seems like a honest lad. However, the only flaw on him was, he is a white. By this time, the bus was fully filled and he had no where to seat. He gave up on looking for one and stood next to the new bus driver.

I anticipated the bus to continue on its journey, and I dread every moment on the accursed bus. But it did not move. I wondered about the strange "phenomenon" and looked up. There he was, the new bus driver, standing in front of me. I was curious, yet surprised. "Why would the "superior" stand in front of me?" I wondered.

"Get the HELL UP! YOU FREAKING NEGRO!" Apparently, this answered my question. The new bus driver appeared angry and arrogant. When he looked at me, an unexpected tranquility manifested me. This calm feeling lasted only a heartbeat, the blink of an eye, and then, just like that, it was gone. What replaced it was a deep dark feeling of anger. I tried combating this spirit; I fought with the force of an army and with perseverance of a tyrant, but it prevailed. Anger had won, and I had lost. I was a river without water, drained and full of despair.

Many "Negroes" on the bus stood up with bloodshot eyes, and the whites, though a minority, stood up defensively. In a blink of an eye, the bus became a battlefield. A battlefield between two parties that did not match, like cats and dogs, ying and yang. The battle between blacks and whites is taking place right in front of my very eyes.

The next thing I knew, I was lying on a bed. "A bed of roses?" I thought "Am I in heaven?" Reality struck me instantaneously and I grew to realize that I was in the hospital. The new bus driver was lying beside me, unconscious and seems badly beaten. A sudden urge of pity filled me as I examined his wounds. However, deep within, a cry of happiness welled against my chest.

"The Blacks have finally prevailed!" I chuckled.

Thank you very much...

Er...this essay is set on the time where blacks and whites are having the dirty war in america...and i am writing it in a first person narrative...so shouldn't the blacks hate the white?

Its just my opinion...I am sorry if I offend anyone...

Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr you did not mention any of this earlier so I guess you expected me to just know that some how right?


^I would not know if the blacks should have hated the whites.
Frederick Douglass worked with white people. However, ignorant as it may sound, I do not know what the general black sentiment was to the general white person at the time; i am sorry.

Thank you very much for your comments, i really appreciate your help...it has helped me alot in my assignment...Thank you

So, this is a short story -- fiction -- rather than an essay, yes? And I am guessing that you are not African American. Your imagination is vivid and empathic. But your wording sounds awkward. A Black man in America at the time would not refer to the new bus driver as "a White" but, rather, "a white man." A racist white man cursing an African American would not use the term "Negro," as that was actually the polite term in use at the time.

As to your exchange with Liebe, African Americans at the time -- like members of all oppressed groups at all times -- had a variety of emotional responses to their oppression and to the members of the group that held them down. Some were, indeed, very angry all the time. Others, like Douglass, demonstrated an almost superhuman ability to transcend resentment in order to work together with white allies. Most fell somewhere in between those extremes. Of course, whether or not it was experienced every day, anger is a natural response to discrimination. Incidents such as those described in that story, where an insult brings repressed rage to the surface, certainly did occur.

It is important to note, though, that the idea of rampaging mobs of African Americans venting their rage on whites was, for the most part, a figment of the paranoid white imagination. The vast majority of race riots in American history have involved mobs of whites beating up, murdering, and or razing the houses of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latinos. This is quite well documented in the report of the Presidential Commission on riots commissioned in the 1960s.

May I ask what would a black man be called by a white at that time? Just to revise my essay...Tahnk you...

You can find a fairly comprehensive list of racial epithets here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs

Several of the terms listed are meant to be aimed specifically at black people, and most are old enough that you could work them into your story quite easily.