How many times have you taken public transportation somewhere—a bus, a train, a plane—and talked with your seatmate about your work?
I recently overheard a corporate lawyer grilling a young undergraduate about his career, discouraging him from doing law school without a firm post-grad work plan, and giving mostly unsolicited but apparently welcome advice about internships, volunteer opportunities, languages to practice, and legal specialties. In thirty minutes, the student was able to test his assumptions against his impromptu mentor’s experience and get immediate insights into business consulting and problem-solving.
This was the kind of tacit knowledge that career coaches advise job-seekers and early career professionals to seek out in informational interviews: you don’t know what you don’t know until you find someone who knows and will tell you. And this student got that knowledge free thanks to coincidence and Amtrak.
But the advice came bundled with something much less healthy.
As much as I and other commuters learned about supply chain economics and risky professional training, I also learned more than I ever wanted about an older lawyer’s racism, cynicism, and glee over the federal election results. I learned that some people are still genuinely committed to the belief that there are three sub-species of human and 18th and 19th Century physical anthropology theories are a valid way to understand ethnicity. I learned that at least one person in America is really concerned about “identity politics”—at least other people’s identity politics—and wants national norms to reflect the reality that more than 62% of US citizens check off “non-Hispanic White” on the census. And I learned that the country is in trouble because people—i.e. other people—don’t know how to interpret facts and don’t know the history of the Electoral College. The Electoral College’s history as described by Yale historian Akhil Reed Amar was not at all what he had in mind.
I learned all of this without wanting to. I don’t want to assume that the student valued his seatmate’s mixed lessons, but he never objected to the man’s social claims. I wondered whether he felt limited by social politeness and the custom of deferring to elders, mentors, or others who’ve offered help. I also wondered whether the lawyer would have volunteered even half of his comments had he been seated next to someone like me, someone he’d classify as part of one of the other “sub-species of human.” I doubt it.
Up and down this society’s social ladder, people like this lawyer blend professional advancement on the clock with social prejudice and moral certainty off the clock. They worry about a future that’s not certain and a present that’s shifting underneath their feet. The blend is toxic, and it’s unsettling that it’s so easily to transmit.