Beyond the Bus

"From executive offices, to equality in position and pay, to sports ownership, we can't be satisfied with just being able to vote and to sit where we want to on the bus," he adds. He wants his 2-year-old daughter, dressed against the autumn chill in a peppermint pink snowsuit, to know her parents brought her to see Rosa Parks. That her own future hinges on the history she cannot yet comprehend.

"Now," says her father, "we've got to be focused on being totally equal."

Lauren Green waits, too. The 34-year-old District television producer starts to say something about everyday racism being "subtle, hard to gauge," but the friend standing with her jumps in with a laugh.

"Subtle for you, maybe, because you're a black woman, not a black man," he scoffs. Armand Hill is 28, two weeks away from law school graduation. He's used to women clutching their purses tighter, or white strangers walking faster, when they see a tall young black man behind them. "Click," he says when asked about crosswalks.

Hill usually doesn't bother addressing the offensive behavior. If someone is that ignorant, he feels, "it's not my job, not my obligation, to educate you."

"I have a different point of view," Green politely argues. "In some cases, if people come to me from a place of naivete, or ignorance, I'm willing to give them a little leeway." Certain things can set her off, she allows. "Random hair-touching!" Casual acquaintances, even co-workers, feel somehow entitled to grasp one of Green's ringlets and offer commentary, "like, 'Oh, it's soft!' "

Being treated like someone's anthropology field study gets on Hill's nerves, too. "Stop telling me I speak so well!" he longs to shout at all the white people who thought they were paying him a compliment.

"Oh, yes! That one!" Green agrees. "Of course I can speak. What am I, a monkey?"

How, or even whether, to respond to a racial affront is a decision that often has to be made in an instant. Karlyn Dixon, a 42-year-old casino worker from Delaware, was out shopping with three white girlfriends in Sterling when a car with black men inside drove slowly past them in the mall parking lot.

"Oh, they could've just snatched us!" Dixon remembers one of her white friends blurting out. Dixon laughs at her own initial response, the assumption she made that "us" did not include her. "I'm thinking, 'What, am I not worthy of being snatched?' " The men were driving slowly, it seemed obvious to her, "because we're crossing the street and they're trying not to hit us." The incident nagged at her, but she decided not to say anything to her friend.

"I just chalked it up to her being goofy."

Letting it slide, rising above it, even pretending nothing really happened is a common response, clinical psychologist William Byrd finds, and a potentially dangerous one. "Like bricks on your shoulder, you can only bear so much and one day you'll explode," he cautions.