Almost robbed in Chicago

I almost got robbed this week.

"Dammit ... you got 75 cents I could borrow?"

A tall black man shuffled towards me, draped in a white bed sheet. I stood frozen, clutching my open wallet in front of the subway card machine.

Before the man had approached me, I had been contemplating how much money to place on my CTA card. Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen a large black man lumber down the stairs leading from the street. Though wrapped in a bed sheet, he could not hide his height or muscular build. I instantly classified him as homeless, a drug dealer, a thug. I instantly regretted my stereotyping of him. Who was I, especially having just learned about and discussed human judgmental heuristics and biases, to judge him? I refused to fall into the category of people who perpetrated negative and naïve images of others they did not know.

"Do you got 75 cents?"

Wanting to make amends for my stereotyping, I glanced at my wallet. "Sorry, I don't have any change."

"Give me a dollar then."

I started at the man's bold request. He clutched a dollar bill in his right hand and held out his left. It cost $1.75 for one subway ride.

"No soliciting." An older black man with a graying beard and mustache stepped behind the younger man. He was the subway station manager.

"Come on, just a dollar."

One dollar is not a large sum of money. And yet, the young man's request bothered me. My fingers flipped opened the cash section of the wallet.

"Just one dollar."

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The older man's voice grew louder. "No soliciting means no soliciting. You heard me."

The station manager stood a foot shorter than the younger man. Though his girth was just as wide as the younger man's, it was made not of muscle but of soft stomach. His eyes turned firmly onto me.

"You can't give that to him."

Bewildered, I apologized to the younger man, "Sorry, I can't give you anything." I nodded towards the station manager. "He said so."

"A dollar."

The older man's voice swallowed my thoughts. "Just say no. No."

I glanced up at the younger man's outstretched hand and then back down at my wallet. "I'm sorry, no."

As the younger man persisted, my voice and resolve awakened. "No, no, no."

The younger man left in disgust. "You sorry bag of shit," he muttered to the station manager. The old man simply motioned towards me as if he heard nothing.

"Don't you ever take your wallet out here."

I nodded obediently.

"When you pull out a dollar bill to give to him, he'll knock that wallet right out of your hand. He saw that you're so small, it'd be easy."

I thanked the station manager and climbed onto the 8:47 a.m. red line. I slumped in my seat, feeling angry, sad and foolish. I had just committed the typical country bumpkin sin: waving my wallet around in the face of likely city thieves. Or had I?

Perhaps the younger man only wanted money to get through the subway gates. Maybe he was only going home.

But perhaps the younger man would have swiped my wallet had I taken out a dollar bill. His exterior appearance, persistent requests and later disgust with the older man indicated as much. I wanted to believe the former so that the younger man wouldn't fit into my cruel stereotyping, but common sense dictated otherwise.

For the remainder of the ride, I stared defiantly at all entering passengers who were young black men. Some of them didn't see me, some of them ignored me, but some of them stared back, bewildered, and quickly looked away. I wasn't angry at the man for asking me for money. That happens everywhere. I wasn't even disturbed that he had almost robbed me; I almost wished he had. Then I wouldn't have to feel bad for maybe wrongly stereotyping him. Then I wouldn't have to feel bad for wanting to subconsciously stereotype every single black man and not wanting to correct my intuitions. Anna Huang is an ORFE major from Westlake, Ohio. She can be reached at ajh@princeton.edu.