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On Race in New Jersey

 The other day, I watched an ugly exchange on the train.


NJTransit--a hotbed of constant dysfunction--had been struggling with its "app technology." Many civilians had purchased tickets via phone--and the tickets then became magically inaccessible. You thus entered a period of "ticket clemency." But then you needed to be ever-vigilant--because the ticket clemency could end at any moment. And--at the moment of termination--there might not be an announcement, or the announcement might be unintelligible. (We're talking about NJTransit here.)

A Black woman near me--being human--missed the semi-incoherent announcement. So she didn't download her ticket. The white male conductor approached her. She described her confusion. I feel almost certain that--had she been white and male--she would have won the conductor's sympathy and understanding. But alas. The male made a bitchy speech about "paying attention to instructions."

This was so, so shitty. I know that--if my shrink were on the train--he would have produced a compassionate facial expression and asked the conductor, "Are you having a bad day?" But this would require superhuman talent. The Black woman behaved as any normal person would behave. She became exasperated. She said, "Could you please just be nice right now?"

An understandable move--and a bad move. The "discussion" became more explosive; by the end, at least one combatant was audibly muttering expletives (over and over again).

Sometimes, I think it would be useful to coat myself in Teflon. I think of Inspector Rebus, in the Ian Rankin novels; when someone is inexplicably rude, Rebus chuckles and says, "Fuck YOU, too, pal!" I also think of Cary Grant. In "North by Northwest," he blithely announces to a stranger that his (fully healthy) secretary is ill and she needs to cut the taxi line. And he congratulates himself for having given the stranger a gift: "He feels good about having helped a sick lady!"

No one was assaulted on my train--at least on the day in question. Clearly, though, the aftertaste is lingering. And lingering. And lingering.
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