On Conversations About Racism: Or, Why I Love NYC -- Reason #435

This morning I was riding a #4 express train downtown from Grand Central to Bowling Green. At 14th Street, a mid-50s, reasonably well-dressed black woman got on the train along with lots of other folks. The next stop, City Hall, takes about 4 minutes to reach. As soon as the doors closed, the woman started loudly complaining about two local trains passing this so-called express. Everyone else on the train put on headphones if they had them, raised their books or magazines a bit higher, or else just put on the closed-off face that New Yorkers have ready for these situations.

Our Street Preacher ("SP") soon moved on to the ills of our city, our government, etc. SP gradually raised her volume and tone to fire-and-brimstone preacher mode, and switched over to the subject of race. Calling herself a captive African, saying no African is truly a citizen of this country, and so on.

Nothing new or noteworthy until our SP mentioned that she was taking this train downtown to see her father(?) at the Zimbabwe mission about getting out of this so-called democracy. That drew a polite, European-accented question from the white man standing next to her, who asked "have you ever been to Zimbabwe? I have." SP turned on him and shouted "of course you were, we still have some land and gold left for you to steal!" He replied, calmly, "actually, I was there with Medecins Sans Frontieres." SP responded with "oh, great, another white man's drug company there to sell cures that don't work for diseases you created!"

At which point the young black woman sitting next to me put her book down and said, in a voice loud enough to interrupt SP's screed, "NO, they're a group of doctors who help the poorest people in the world for free. The English translation of their name is Doctors Without Borders, and Africa needs them a hell of a lot more than it needs yet another loud-mouthed know-it all like Robert Mugabe or YOU."

SP was about to get started with her retort when an older hispanic man followed a second later with "besides, Zimbabwe's mission is up in the east 50s -- you're on the wrong train anyway." As though on cue, the doors opened at City Hall, and SP exited the train to laughter and clapping.

Everyone was smiling and happy with the entertainment, except the young woman who had spoken up. She seemed upset or maybe embarrassed, and buried her head back into her statistics textbook. I left her alone until I was getting off three stops later, when I just wished her a nice day, to which she smiled slightly at me above her book, showing a full mouth of braces. I freakin' love New York.