Off to Africa

2 April 2007

Conversation last night:

M: So I take the A train a lot and I’ve noticed – okay, first, have you noticed that hardly any white people take the A train to Brooklyn?

A: I’ve always wondered about that. Which train do the white people take to Brooklyn?

M: The F. The F goes right through Carroll Gardens to Park Slope, where all the white people live. The 7^th Avenue F stop in Park Slope is the center of white people Brooklyn.

M: Anyway. White people on the train never give money to people who ask for it.

[Long conversation about patterns of generosity, essentially that rich white people give to institutions and less-rich non-white people give to individuals and churches. A had read a study.]

(Side note: why do the white people want to live on the least reliable train ever? The F is always and forever under construction. And it comes by so seldom. I mean, it’s just silly to choose to live on the F line.)

Today I got on a Manhattan-bound A train in Brooklyn and looked around my car. It was full. There was no seat for me. I stood in a doorway and thought about last night’s conversation and checked to see who was in the car. There were two other white-ish people down at the opposite end of the car. Everyone else was, you know, not white. I stood in the doorway looking at the teenaged boy sharing his headphones with his girlfriend and the old woman nodding slowly off to sleep and I thought, “I’ve never been so thankful for Rosa Parks.”