Natalia Naman Temesgen: Subway journey reveals New York's diversity

I was in New York last week and the weather was bone-chilling cold.

One evening, I forgot my gloves and it was a matter of minutes before I could hardly feel my fingers. I didn't make the mistake of forgetting them after that.

Even after having lived in New York, there are things that seemed foreign on this trip. One was the experience of riding the subway. It strikes me anew every time I go. The New York City subway system is an incredible visual representation of American communities.

Take the 4 train, for instance. On one end, it begins in East New York, a neighborhood deep in Brooklyn with a high rate of violent crimes and a community in which over half live below the poverty line. It makes 16 stops through Brooklyn on its way north.

One of those stops was in Crown Heights, the neighborhood where I was crashing with a friend. Crown Heights was home to a three-day race riot in 1991 between the black and Orthodox Jewish communities. Today, it's rife with gentrification. There's a new Starbucks on the corner that wasn't there a few months ago.

Soon after the 4 train enters Manhattan, it stops through the New York University area where I used to get on and head to baby-sit a professor's daughter on the Upper East Side. The Upper East Side is one of the most affluent neighborhoods in New York City. Whereas East New York has a population that is over 90 percent minority, the Upper East Side's population is nearly 90 percent white.

Continuing north, the 4 moves through Spanish Harlem, a working-class neighborhood in which one-third of the population is Puerto Rican. Then, many stops past Yankee Stadium, the 4 ends its journey in Norwood, a working-class Bronx neighborhood that is largely composed of immigrants from all over the world.

It struck me that people from all backgrounds and walks of life must regularly have their face in a stranger's armpit as they cram into the crowded 4 train. While the disparity between these communities can be shocking on paper, it can be even more shocking to witness the visual disparity as individuals on either end of the socio-economic spectrum sit side by side.

As I rode the 4 to the airport on Thursday, the train was full of commuters. The man to my left had dirt on his worn jeans; he wore mismatched clothes and a jacket that looked second-hand. I noticed his hands more than once. They were red, chapped, dirty and dry. I considered the freezing weather outside and wondered if he had gloves.

When my stop came, I gave him mine before walking out. He thanked me and put them on immediately.

Now back home, I think how much easier it is in a city like Columbus to stay relegated to a certain racial or socioeconomic group. We don't have a city subway running south to north or east to west. But if we did, we would surely encounter the same disparities in our population. Even our bus system only hits certain parts of town.

So what's our 4 train? How do we reach each other? How do you bridge the gap?

Natalia Naman Temesgen is an independent correspondent. Contact her at nataliadian1@gmail.com or on Twitter@cafeaulazy.

This story was originally published January 10, 2015 at 10:53 PM with the headline "Natalia Naman Temesgen: Subway journey reveals New York's diversity."