Sometimes it's best to just let things slide.
On the morning of December 14, 2004, I walked to the bus stop on Washington Avenue and Lincoln Road on South Beach and boarded downtown-bound Miami-Dade Transit Bus 9930, then serving Route #51. Shortly after we arrived and departed from the Omni Station, a shabbily dressed Hispanic man of about fifty years of age boarded the bus without paying his fare.
After nodding to the amiable African-American driver, who nodded right back, the man proceeded to panhandle the passengers. Several passengers did not need to be asked; they seemed to know him, pulling money from their pockets and purses before he approached them. Greetings were exchanged in Spanish. Only one passenger, a little old Hispanic lady, was annoyed: the man tried to reach into her purse as she stretched her arm out to give him some small change.
I was obviously witnessing a regular routine on the route. Despite the irritation of the elderly lady, the routine seemed to be an expression of community solidarity, something often wanting in our competitive age of gilded individualism, the American Way purportedly established by white Anglo-saxon protestants who landed in North America to see what they could get. When I expressed some astonishment to a fellow passenger, he said, "They''re Cubans."
But not to worry - ethnic solidarity is no threat to the American Way. Immigrants of a feather flock together for personal safety at first, but the ties that bind and set groups against one another are eventually loosened in the land of opportunity, until each individual is mostly interested in Number One, perhaps in the name of the one-god.
Ordinarily I barely notice the ethnic qualities and colors of city folk, let alone try to sort out the distinguishing characteristics of the various types. Sorting them out in scrambled-eggs Miami would take years, culminating perhaps in a prodigious tome on multiculturalism. Yet such distinctions are indeed important to many residents of Miami. For instance, to Cuban Americans, who reputedly run Miami and other chunks of South Florida, and to African Americans, who allegedly lost out to waves of Cuban immigrants. Miami Dade Transit is supposedly a political football - the black home team has had possession for some time now.
You see, one day a Miami Dade Transit bus driver, Senora ''Perez'', a Cuban American whose identify I will not reveal for reasons that might occur to the reader, told me she had been passed by for promotions on several occasions and was otherwise poorly treated over a decade on the job.
"But why?" I asked her. "You'' re a Cuban American. Cubans run Miami."
"Blacks run Transit," she replied. "The Cubans let the blacks have Transit so black leaders will not make trouble in other places. I got nothing against black people, but that is how it is - unfair. I am more qualified and have more years but blacks get better jobs."
I never saw Senora Perez again on her regular route after that conversation, and I wonder if she was fired or got the job she wanted with a police department. But what she had said came to mind from time to time while I rode the Miami Dade Transit system. Just as I had often noticed that a girlfriend''s legs were bowed after she told me she was bowlegged, I noticed that most bus drivers and other transit employees in Miami are black.
Not that a permanent suntan detracts from character or the performance of duties: I have traversed many bus lines, and, for the most part, black Miami Dade bus drivers have been more than helpful. Yes, there are a few bad apples, no matter what their color, in every basket. Unless passengers are overly friendly types themselves, and try to engage bus drivers in pleasantries, they are not surprised that drivers can be gruff given the character of some of the public with whom everyone must deal. Of course we encounter downright rude and mean and irresponsible bus drivers in Miami, drivers who should be fired.
Well, I mused, maybe part of the deal made for the Miami Dade Transit turf includes permissive attitudes toward Cuban American panhandlers. When I stepped off bus 9930 at Government Center at about 0800, I took up the subject with a transit employee who was standing on the curb noting times on a clipboard. I assumed he was monitoring traffic.
The man identified himself as a "terminal supervisor". He was, by the way, a friendly and remarkably intelligent black man. Or should I say, "an affable and intelligent African American"? Membership in an ethnic (foreign) grouping takes precedence over citizenship, nowadays. I myself am a yanqui immigrant in Miami; to wit, a Gringo American, or gringo (foreigner) in my own country. On the other hand, if professor Cheikh Anta Diop, the "pharoah of Black Studies", was right - if Africa is the crade of mankind and if Black Africans inspired Western civilization via the foundation of Egypt - I have a right to call myself an African American too.
"Is it okay for that man to panhandle on the bus?" I asked, pointing at the panhandler getting off the bus. "That is what he''s doing. The bus driver let him pass without paying a fare, and, by the looks of things, the panhandler works this bus every morning. Is it all right for the bus driver to allow him to panhandle?"
"No," answered the terminal supervisor, with a broad, knowing smile, as if he had answered the question many times before. "No one should ride without first paying the fare, and panhandling on the bus is prohibited," he recited the rules. "However," he took an exception, "each situation must be assessed to see if the passengers on the whole would be subjected to an even greater inconvenience by calling the supervisor and interrupting the transit to deal with the situation. If so, the driver should let it slide."
"Is that so."
"Yes," he said, and continued in a gentle, understanding tone of voice as bus 9930 pulled away from the curb. "In the situation you described, the supervisor, if called, would probably advise the driver to continue on rather than inconvenience a busload of passengers. Riders might call in and complain if the trip had been delayed for that reason. "Drivers are sensitive to the many false accusations made against them" in connection with incidents, giving them further reason to let incidents slide."
"But aggressive public panhandling can be very annoying to paying customers. Can''t something be done by the police?" I asked.
"No, nothing can be done, there is no room in jail for panhandlers," he explained. "Many of them would like to get arrested just to get shelter and food."
It became increasingly obvious to me, as the terminal supervisor smoothed things over, that things were going as well as could be at Miami Dade Transit. His public relations approach reminded me of an administrator at the downtown Miami Dade Public Library: she too is affable and courteous, and she maintains a helpful attitude at all times; but one soon learns that positive suggestions go in one ear and out the other, and that negative criticism falls on a teflon facade. One must "let things slide." One administrator at the Library went so far to say, "Suggestions are not welcome here."
I returned to South Beach on the S bus that afternoon. Some sort of red substance, perhaps oily water, was dripping from the ceiling, where a loose panel was flapping back and forth. After being jolted up and down on the hard seat with a crash-bang several times, I exclaimed to the passenger next to me: "Damn, the wheels on this bus must be square or some potholes need fixing awfully bad!"
"He''s drunk," said the man, and we got to talking. Coincidentally, he was a bus driver from New Jersey . I noted well that he was a black man - maybe the Cubans or the like made a transit deal in Jersey. He knew our driver was driving erratically, he said, and taking bad turns over curbs. I told him my little story about the panhandler and what the terminal supervisor had said.
"The supervisor is right. Sometimes it''s best for everyone concerned to just let things slide rather than make a big commotion over them. Life is like that. But this drunk should be turned in. He''s endangering lives."
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