In a recent New York Times article titled “The Seat Not Taken,” John Edgar Wideman, an African American author and professor at Brown University, writes about his unsettling experience riding the Acela Amtrak line to work. The problem, he explains, is that “almost invariably, after I have hustled aboard early and occupied one half of a vacant double seat in the usually crowded quiet car, the empty place next to me will remain empty for the entire trip (Wideman 1).” Wideman attributes this recurring seat-shunning phenomenon to the fact that he is an African American: “Unless the car is nearly full, color will determine, even if it doesn’t exactly clarify, why 9 times out of 10 people will shun a free seat if it means sitting beside me (Wideman).”
In trying to determine why travelers leave his neighboring seat empty, Wideman touches on the issue of performance, drawn from Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity. Applied to race, particular stylizations of the body and enactments, performed on a consistent basis, come to represent a “natural” self that “conforms to an historical idea” of what it means to be “black” (Butler, 519, 522). Wideman points out that he is not displaying signifiers of race such as hip-hop clothing, or any other generally undesirable traits such as body odor. He concludes that the reason people do not sit next to him is based on perceptions of his skin color alone (Wideman).
Wideman’s experience seems to reflect what Bonilla-Silva identified as the “white habitus,” “a racialized, uninterrupted socialization process that conditions and creates whites’ racial taste, perceptions, feelings, and emotions and their views on racial matters (Bonilla-Silva 104).” Perhaps just as in other areas of the social world that reflect isolation between blacks and whites, such as personal friendships and neighborhood segregation, white train patrons have learned to isolate themselves from blacks, choosing to sit elsewhere unless conditions require otherwise. Echoing Bonilla-Silva’s data on limited socialization between blacks and whites, Wideman’s experience is a real-life example of the “extreme racial isolation…regardless of blacks’ level of assimilation,” that prevents meaningful relationships between blacks and whites (Bonilla-Silva 124).
However discouraging Wideman’s experience on the train, he uses his observation of the way his skin color usually leaves him neighbor-less to point out that race still matters. Contrary to the idea of colorblindness, which posits that discrimination “is no longer a central factor affecting minorities’ life chances,” his experience demonstrates that prejudice and discrimination still occur and play a role in everyday life, whether on a personal or institutional level (Bonilla-Silva 29). As he asserts, “still, in the year 2010, with an African-descended, brown president in the White House and a nation confidently asserting its passage into a postracial era, it strikes me as odd to ride beside a vacant seat, just about every time I embark on a three-hour journey each way, from home to work and back (Wideman).”
Wideman also points out the benefits of an empty seat, such as having a place for his briefcase and snacks. However, he notes that any benefits also “cast a shadow, because I can’t accept the bounty of an extra seat without remembering why it’s empty, without wondering if its emptiness isn’t something quite sad (Wideman). In writing about his experience for a broad audience, Wideman does us all a favor in working to make others more aware of their actions and to fight against such unsettling social isolation.
Publishers, Inc., Print: 29, 104, 124.
Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and
Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal. 40.4 (1988): Print: 519-522).
Wideman, John Edgar. "The Seat Not Taken." New York Times 06 Oct 2010:Web.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/opinion/07Wideman.html?ref=race>.
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