Some things are getting a little distorted …
He was shaking the stick at the cars while griping about them coming too close, etc… NOT striking at them or trying to hit them.
Details are scattered in the post, some can be combined with others to yield pertinent information or explain why some details were omitted (why I wasn’t able to notice some things and recognizing a limitation of knowledge that may be important). For instance, "Of another race" and "never seen him before" can be combined to explain why no information about his pallor was included. "Paleness"(according to conversations I’ve had with black friends) is at least sometimes hard for black people to detect in whites that they don’t know. The reverse is also true of whites noticing "redness" or "paleness" in blacks that they don’t know(at least it’s true in my case). Most people are simply more familiar with the wide variations of natural skin tone and sub-variations (which give clues to the person’s health) within their own race because of greater experience with those of their own race. (sigh … If we don’t grow up about this stuff, we’ll lose the ground that’s been gained here.)
The other way race was relevant was from his perspective and didn’t become apparent until after the initial exchange of words. IMO, the most valid reason for race to be a consideration in situations like this is that if the person appears mentally impaired in some way, interacting with a person "of another race" is more likely to affect his comfort level. Any way you are different from them can become a liability .. the way you are dressed, how you speak (or how they expect you to speak), the way you carry yourself, etc… This very much includes the most obvious observable differences such as race. This turned out to be a factor later, though I was a little surprised at the specifics.
A few details can be inferred by looking outside the body of the post and narrow probabilities to explain what might have been going on. For instance, I stated the time and that this actually happened to me. Thus, not only the time and date may be relevant, but other stuff such as my location listed in the sidebar. I threw this curve ball in for fun to see if people would be "situationally aware", since so much is made of awareness on this board… and to represent things which are so obvious they are often unnoticed … one of which I failed to fully consider in real life.
All that said, the post isn’t a logic puzzle as it has no set solution, only a narrowing of probabilities. Just a slice of life that happened the other day ... a judgment call, imo.
If you want to think of me or the post as racist because I admit ignorance to various nuances of black people’s skin color, fine. That’s also your judgment call.