Nothing Happens on a Subway
At the October 21, 2013 Bible conference: “To the Ends of the Earth: Models of Mission in the 21st Century,” I presented a car on the IRT subway as an image of multiculturalism. The ridership of subway cars represents a diversity of culture or ethnicity (although the percentage is definitely influenced by the neighborhood above). Seldom do subway riders attack one another because of race, sex or sexual persuasion, and seldom do they engage one another in speech. Passengers need not be empathetic with one another in order to arrive safely at their destinations, they need only be tolerant. The contact between passengers is usually along the lines of shared ethnic and cultural markers.
The fact that individuals share space does not imply anything about their capacity to engage one another. Little communication and much avoidance take place between strangers on a subway ride. The subway car demographics are not predetermined, but could hardly be considered inclusive, as the riders entering and leaving the train reflect the segregated communities above it. But there is also an overlap between stops that always insures the possibility of multicultural presence that, according to Patricia Wood, “tests the relationships between members of society.”1 Rather than reflections of present social structures, shared, multicultural spaces test the future possibilities of relationships. The subway experience constantly “tests” assumption of inclusion and exclusion imposed by society, with the constant flow of ever different forms of human life in a single closed public space. It is often startling to realize that a world of relationships exists right above the subway tunnel, and those relationships may be totally different from those within the car.2 At this point we are confronted by the social/political/religious understanding of how we are capable of being.
Public spaces such as bridges or subways allow the creation of unacceptable relations and their potential danger, both individually and socially. For this reason they are heavily policed to discourage disorder and the inclusion of defined “types.” Public squares are the places of public protest and subways and bridges provide access to these places of danger and protest. This requires a delicate balance between personal safety and personal freedom. Ironically, it is the perception of and reaction to the uncertain safety and the possibility of violence that has become an important marker of my personal development.
One of my earliest experiences of the subway was being robbed at knifepoint by two black men. Having just arrived at the city, and carrying two weeks wages in cash, I took the dangerous tunnel between express and local trains at the 42nd Street station. My gut told me that the black guy at the steps looked suspicious and that I should wait; my head told me that I was stereotyping (I would later learn that word) and should go forward (both were probably correct). So I crossed at the wrong place at the wrong time and was subsequently held up at knife point. After that experience it was difficult for me to encounter a black male on the subway without a desire to run. The subways became a dangerous bridge from work to home.
Still, New York and trains were the only way that I could afford to get from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan, so I continued using them, slowly becoming more comfortable with my new surroundings and a little smarter about how to avoid possible encounters with knives. Decades later I found myself on the 2 train from my house to a class I was teaching at NYTS. Because I was reading, I missed my stop at 96th, where most people who look like me change for the 1 local to Columbia. With each stop, the train moved into ever darker Harlem (times have changed). Occasionally, I would look up from my book, get a feel of where I was and continue reading. After missing a number of stops, I realized my mistake, and wondered why I felt so comfortable in a subway car filled almost totally with blacks and Hispanics, filled with young men who would once have frightened me. Suddenly I realized that they all looked like my students, and I was safe. I had changed the identity of black man=thug to black man=potential student. The expansion of identity allowed me to connect with the identity of the others on the train.
On the subway, negotiation of identity begins with presence without expectation of meaningful contact; one expects to be packed closely together, but not to interact with one another. It could be argued, however, that the very act of motion creates the possibility for meaning. In the Gospel of Mark, the recipients of Jesus’ miracles literally walk out of the narrative. We do not know where they go or what they do, for Mark is interested only in the fulfillment of the conversion from a static to a mobile state, from standing to going forward, from sitting, standing or lying down to walking. Motion represents the change of status from the other to the one like us. Walking; riding a train; or crossing a bridge as means of going forward represent the possibility of expanded identity.
When I was in college I decided to hitchhike across the country. I remember standing on Highway 80 in the middle of Iowa for two days, a land not given to picking up young men with long hair and a certain runaway look. So I was excited when I saw a car approach in the distance. I enthusiastically put out my thumb until I made out the car and the driver: a large sedan driven by a middle-aged woman. I sadly dropped my thumb as experience had taught me that middle aged ladies with means never stop. Going some distance by me, I was surprised to see her slow down and pull to the side of the road and amazed when the passenger door opened. I ran to the car and got in before she could come to her senses. She turned to me as if to show that she was in control and said, “I have never done this before,” and then, “When did you eat last?” When I told her the length of time she took me to a large diner and fed me two meals.
Before we parted, I asked her why she had stopped for me, as it was rather unusual. She smiled sadly and told me that her son was also hitchhiking somewhere and she wanted to believe that another mother was giving him a meal as well. At that moment her primary identity was that of a mom and mine of a son. This interaction in a public space defied my limitation of possible social relations. Middle-aged ladies like my mother (then) do not pick up strangers on the road, for it is dangerous to one’s physical being. But sometimes, the need to connect justifies the risk. Sometimes, according to Sen, “a person with plural identities has to decide, in case of conflict, on the relative importance of the different identities for the particular decision in question.”3 Identification need not be profound and seldom is, but like the miracles in Mark they require motion: feet, cars, subways, bridges are all means of motion within and across identities. Motion across barriers requires bridges and tunnels; they do not insure contact, but without them, contact is not possible.
I often tell my Greek students that the rise of Christianity was dependent upon a shared language and the Roman road system. Using a safe system of roads and bridges, traders from around the empire (and beyond) exchanged ideas as well as goods, and were provided hospitality in Roman homes. This sharing of space is reflected in the Roman interest in other foods, and a compilation of those recipes was produced in the 4th CE. The interest in the cultures requires communication. Roads, the subways of the 1st Century, made possible the distribution of ideas as well as goods, made possible transactions that would not otherwise be possible. Ideas move across public modes of transportation. The bridge becomes the means by which communications are made possible for individuals who are separated by a river of unshared resources or a chasm of neglect. Bridges and later trains, make possible the realization of shared identity across dangerous differences.
Notes
1. Patricia K. Wood and Liette Gilbert, “Multiculturalism in Canada: Accidental Discourse, Alternative Vision, Urban Practice International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29, no. 3 (2005):679–691
2. The subway conductor Ted Nugent gave a running account of #1 subway ride like an emcee on a tourist bus; see Lisa W. Foderaro, “End of the One-Liners on the IRT; Subway Conductor and His Underground Travelogues Are Heading for Retirement,” The New York Times, 27 August 1993.
3. Amartya Kumar Sen. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), 30.
