An eye on racism

So, what's old Gimlet Eye been up to while on leave of absence, huh? The Eye--did you expect something new?--has been running for his overamped life is what.

Get this set-up. I'm atop a subway staircase, right? The 97th Street IND downtown platform is 15 or 16 steps below. I'm dressed well (for me): third best trousers, tie, tweed jacket hung over one shoulder. Off to meet the wife for dinner. But then, instinctively, I pull up short.

There's a black man lounging on the bottom step.

A presentable black man, mind you: thirty or so, just under six foot, trim, in blue track suit and store-white Adidas sneaks. But I'm from New York--a certain coyness about his lounging strikes me as overarticulated. Why has he holed up in this blind stairway niche? Still, I can't turn on him and go back now. Mr. Adidas has seen me. Going back would be an uncivil act. So I head on down. But I head down wary and I head down fast.

Bingo. As I hit the last step, Mr. A rises, uncoiling like a pit viper. This, dear reader, is sign-off time. He has a six-inch knife blade at my gut and one arm set to pin me against the stair-case wall. But not for long. Mr. A, thank Christ, has misjudged my velocity and weight.

I have momentum--besides, I half expected this. I jostle his knife hand with my elbow, shrug through, take one giant stride or so across the platform and arrivederci, sayonara, bon soir--jump down onto the goddam tracks.

Adrenaline is a focusing high. This was my first decent athletic move since maybe 1973. I leap outward, make a mid-air half-pivot, and dismount--squoosh--in turgid sludge between the rails. Well, Mr. Adidas is indignant. The guy works 9 to 5 and, hey, he doesn't need a hang-up like this. There he is, four feet above me, stroking his six-incher almost sensually. "I'm gonna come down and cut you, motherf---er, "Mr. A says. A real vaso-constrictor that, lemme tell you. I can't run: I've got sockless, sewage-filled topsiders on. I have no weapon. I'm scared bladderless, I'm dead.

What to do? What to do is let all that adrenaline replace fear with crazy jive. "You're not cutting me," I yell back. "This is New York, you get one shot, f---face. One shot. Go complain to Dinkins. You missed me. Mug somebody else." And I think: That did it, wheel the gurney in. Mr. A is flexing to hop down--then he sees the brown swill around my feet. No way is he gonna befoul his new white high-tops. I am saved by fastidiousness.

At just that moment an elderly woman appears. Afraid for her now, I shout, "Mugger! Go back!" Mr. A has begun to get antsy: as a time-labor problem this theft is inefficient. He turns. I take off for the 96th Street platform entrance, scuffing putrid bilge along. There, with no help whatever from bystanders, I haul myself up. I stumble to the token booth, and . . . and--a black arm has grabbed me around the waist from behind.

It was one of those, you know, cinematic moments. My heart woulda broke an EKG machine. But this is not Mr. A's accomplice. This is a transit cop disguised as some kind of track worker. Why does he have his bridge cable taut arm around my waist? Why has he begun frog marching me with inexorable politeness back toward 97th Street? Because, in New York, it is harder to catch the complainant than it is the perpetrator.

"Man," the cop says, "You are crazy, jumping like that. A train coulda hit you."

"Not with the lousy service we get," I say. "And you can stop dragging me, I'll go quietly."

To make a long story fit this page, Mr. A lay handcuffed and face down at 97th Street. I would've been his eighth or ninth knife-point victim on that platform. But two transit cops had the station staked out. They saw me leap trackward on a TV screen at 96th Street. During my hyper-macho shout session, one cop ran from 96th to 97th aboveground and apprehended Mr. A. The other cop apprehended me. Mr. A is doing 7 to 15. I was late for dinner with my wife.

Things BROKE real lucky that night--believe me, I know it. But there was more than blind good fortune involved. There was also racial prejudice. I discriminated against Mr. A--it would be hypocritical to pretend otherwise. If you define racism as an action taken on the basis of religion or skin color, then--for that moment, atop that staircase--I was a racist. Yes, Mr. A's coyness and his position on the lower step made me suspicious. But, had he been white, I would've gone down in my usual un-alert and leisurely manner.

Racism--I write this with sadness --is not always just an illogical, detached, and cruel attitude deriving from callous hate. Racism and hate have their genesis in fear. When that fear is irrational or unexamined--the result of Nazi propaganda against Jews, say--then a racist must be held accountable. But, if self-defense can absolve murder, then surely it can absolve racism--insofar as a person's life is at risk. I listen to my police scanner every night. I know the crime statistics. We all do. I think it is to my credit that I went down the staircase at all. I was too civil. I was, in fact, a reckless fool. Next time I won't be so polite--no matter whose feelings are hurt--because I'm fifty and too old to jump for my life any more.