He Never Knew...

In Ralph Ellison’s An Extravagance of Laughter, he experiences something he has never experienced before. He learned, while he was in New York, that buses were a very popular way of transportation. However, unlike in the South, the North didn’t really associate your racial status as to where you had to sit on the bus. Ellison describes the way it was for him in the South: “In the South you occupied the back of the bus, and nowhere but the back, or so help you God.” Then he explained the difference between the North and the South by saying:
“ So being in the North and encouraged by my anonymity, I experimented by riding all over New York buses, excluding only the driver’s seat—front end, back end, right side, left side, sitting or standing as the route and flow of passengers demanded.
Being accustomed to the South’s “rules”, Ellison was baffled by the different choices he had in which place to sit. He was used to not having a choice because he was obligated to sit in the back of the bus in the South. Ellison claims,
“ Thus having convinced myself that no questions of racial status would be raised by where I chose to ride, I asked myself whether a seat at the back of the bus wasn’t actually more desirable than one at the front. “
Ellison realized that all this time he had complained for being made to sit at the back of the bus. He claimed, “Now that I was no longer forced by law and compelled by custom to ride at the back and to surrender my seat to any white who demanded it.” I think this is a good example of why we think “grass is always greener on the other side”, but then we find out that it is really not any better. In fact, it may be worse. Ellison found it amusing that he actually preferred sitting in the back of the bus because now he wasn’t required to sit there. Now, he had a choice to make. “And in my own personal terms, what was more important—my own individual comfort, or the exercise of the democratic right to be squeezed and jostled by strangers?” he asked himself. Did he want to conform to the old ways of the South by taking a seat at the back or did he want to take the less comfortable, more prideful front seat? His history with buses in the South and realization that the back of the bus was actually better amused Ellison.