My second day in New York saw Shaun and i getting a bit more touristy, as we decided to go up the Empire State Building, despite it taking almost an hour to get to the top (there are also sorts of secret hidden ques inside the building, so that when you think you are nearly at the top you round the corner and find that no, you are in fact at the back of another line). Pictures below.
First however it’s time for my first reflections-proper on what i’ve seen of America. There are three things that have especially come to my attention so far, although i’m not sure any of them qualify as ‘Paradoxes’ (i.e. what my project is supposed to be on): race, 9/11, and disability.
Considering race first, this is something which I guess many foreigners would associate with the USA from the outset: the attempt to achieve racial tolerance and harmony in the fabled ‘melting pot’, and the relative successes and failures thereof. From my so far very short experience, it is clear to me that race matters and awful lot in New York, and i’m so-far presuming, the rest of the USA too. A couple of examples spring to mind; the other night Saz and I were standing outside a bar and a guy on a bike had to swerve to avoid being hit by a car. He was Hispanic, and his angry reaction was an unambiguous cry of ‘fucking blacks!’. A more positive experience came from the ‘Positive Brothers’, a team of street-dancers who ply their trade down at the ferry-ports of the Hudson river, where tourists gather to take (overpriced) Ferries to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. All 4 of the guys in the dance crew are black, and in many ways they conform heavily to what i would see as ‘black stereotypes’; they breakdance, and their interaction with the crowd (jokes cracked, use of expressions and different voices for comic effect) are clearly ‘black’ ways of acting – or at least, so you would believe if you watch MTV for more than 3 seconds. However, an integral part of their performance was race: most of their jokes had good-hearted racial connotations (white people don’t give much to street-performers, except for Canadians, etc), but they had a very clear message. On at least 4 occasions they all intoned in unison that “there is only one race: the human race”. Clearly this meant a lot to these guys; they weren’t just street performers earning a living, they saw themselves as carrying an important message about race. This made for an interesting blend of entertainment and politics, either side of tricks like this:
The other aspect of race which I have noticed – although i’m drawing from limited examples, so am probably importing more expectation than observation – is connected to class and social position. Two examples spring to mind. Whilst Saz has described to me the honestly quite abhorrent treatment that the homeless in New York sometimes receive – people verbally abusing them without provocation in Central Park, for example – I saw a quite heartwarming example. A young black teenager was taking part in a youth scheme frequent throughout the city, which involves selling packets of sweets to raise money for projects in deprived areas, whilst simultaneously getting the kids to take part in community activities. This young man gave away a couple of packets of sweets to a black homeless guy, which clearly he wasn’t supposed to do. What was interesting was that both parties kept it very low profile; the homeless man looked positively embarrassed to receive the aid, whilst the teenager was keen to make the exchange as quickly and discreetly as possible. Now i’m not sure the extent to which race really played a part here, but my gut reaction is that if the homeless man had been white or Hispanic, that would not have happened. My second example was witnessed on Canal Street, where there are a lot of street traders. A young black mother was explaining to a black stall-holder selling hats that her little boy, about 5 or 6, didn’t want to go to school. The stall-holder’s reaction was instructive: he turned to the boy and said “hey kid, how about I go to school, and you sit here all day and sell hats?”. The kid knew straight away that this was not a good deal and vigorously asserted that actually he wanted to go to school. The message was clear and the boy picked up on it no problem: if you are poor and black education matters, because you don’t want to spend your life selling hats. This is an interesting contrast to the ‘bling’ culture that the media would suggest pervades black culture. Then again, if the youth had been 17, the story might have been very different.
The second thing that i have noticed about New York pertains to disability. On the one hand, if you are blind in New York life must be a nightmare. The traffic is insane, and crossings give pedestrians only ‘right of way’, not absolute traffic-stopping priority. So at a crossing, you wait for the white man to be lit up, and pray the guy coming around the corner in a cab stops. There is no audio indication that it is (relatively) safe to cross, and no physical indicator on the floor etc for the blind to know that they are at a crossing. Indeed, i haven’t seen a single blind person in nearly 12 hours of walking around New York. At first my reaction to this was quite negative: it seemed indicative of the American ‘rugged individualism’ attitude whereby individuals must help themselves and not rely on the state, no matter how unfortunate they are, and it reminded me of a comment made by an American undergraduate at Balliol, herself a self-professed, Democrat-voting liberal, who asked why in Britain we build ramps for disabled people outside public buildings, after all, “they haven’t done anything to deserve them”. This shocked myself and many other Brits in Balliol.
But Saz, who has been in New York nearly a year, had a different perspective. She points out that it would be virtually impossible to have a UK-style crossing system in New York given their traffic laws and the sheer volumes of people and numbers of crossings. She then drew an interesting parallel with the physically disabled, who i had noticed must also have a tough time getting about in New York, namely that they receive an awful lot more help from ordinary passers-by than in the UK. In New York, the disabled are frequently helped around by strangers, simply on the basis of need, without needing to be asked or thanked. Saz spoke of an English wheelchair-bound friend who found that in New York there was always somebody on hand to help him, whilst in London he would go days without anybody lifting a finger to help him up some stairs or across a busy road. This interests me a lot, because of the question of causal relations in play; do the Americans make fewer provisions for the disabled because there is no need – people automatically help each other – or do they help each other because there are few state provisions? Do the English not help each other because that is ‘the State’s job’, or are they inherently less inclined to help each other? I suspect this question is pretty contentious, and how one answers it will reveal a lot about American versus British mindsets across many issues, not just the provision of state help.
Finally, 9/11 and Ground Zero. Ground Zero looks like a giant construction yard:
9/11 is still, of course, an extremely provocative issue in New York. Saz reckons, and i’m inclined to agree, that there is a quasi-perverse longing to be reminded of 9/11 permanently. I say quasi-perverse, because there is nothing in itself wrong with remembering the events of that terrible day indeed there is much positive. But it seems strange that Ground Zero is still Ground Zero, seven years on. The devastation was indeed great, but i’m not convinced it takes over 7 years to clear – think of developed cities hit by earthquakes; it doesn’t take the best part of a decade to rebuild them. The atmosphere around Ground Zero is odd; it’s packed with tourists, all taking photos. A special security man armed with a whistle shouts at people trying to climb to vantage points for better photos – a sort of ongoing battle between the forces of enforced respect, and the voyeurism of car-crash syndrome spectatorship, which is quite strange to witness. The area is surprisingly commercialised; you can readily buy souvenir magazines packed with pictures of the towers being hit and coming down. The commercialism extends beyond the immediate vicinity; on TV they advertise a limited edition ‘coin-certificate’, a metal banknote portraying the Twin Towers and downtown Manhattan, with sun-beams streaming behind them. The ‘certificate’ is legal tender with a value of $20, but the value is given by adding two numbers on each side of the bill – 9 and 11, obviously. This is touted all day on cable, and viewers are warned that a limit of 5 per person is in effect. The words “We will never forget” are proudly emblazoned – and that seems certainly true. But the kind of not forgetting at issue is an intriguing one.
Anyway, enough rambling for one day. Here are some photos, the first of which give you an idea of the vast size of New York – but only an idea, you really have to see it for yourself.
According to my friend Phil Thorne, this is ‘where the magic happens’. He never actually said that, but he would:
Notes from a Large Continent 
The race thing hit me shitloads when i was in san francisco last year. It seemed that almost every homeless person I saw (and there were WAY too many) was black.
Almost everyone who rode the greyhound bus, which is the cheap and unglamorous way of travelling between towns was black or hispanic.
Race and poverty/class are just so discomfortingly linked. Not that its massively different here. But the difference is noticeable.
On the disabilities thing, I think that more provisions for the disabled do foster an environment where people are less likely to help. But this isn’t just because people think “oh its the states job”, i think it also engenders an attitude of independence for disables people. I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable offering help to a wheelchair user (unless he or she was clearly REALLY struggling) because I would worry that the person would feel (possibly quite rightly) patronised and even insulted.
Then again, maybe they would feel pleased at the compassion shown to them by a stranger – perhaps it would depend on how you offered the help?
I think “Ste For Sure” is right on the disabilities issue. Another more general factor may be that we tend to avoid interaction with people we don’t know, at least in towns and cities. Or does New York also suffer from urban social atomism?