A Little San Quentin Kindness

Early this Sunday morning I took the 70 bus into San Francisco for the day. As it happened, most of my fellow bus riders had just been released on parole from San Quentin, and were traveling back to wherever home was for each of them. If I had been in this situation at an earlier time in my life, I might have been a lot more nervous than I actually was. I would most likely have stereotyped the barely ex-inmates as dangerous untouchables and then tried to slump into a corner and disappear from notice. However, I am not now much more experienced and knowledgeable, and when one of the men asked to sit with me, I didn’t even hesitate when I said “yes.” We actually had a very interesting conversation: his girlfriend lives in Michigan, and his child was being christened that day. When my stop arrived, all the men in gray sweats thanked me for good conversation and wished me a wonderful day. Somehow I felt I should have been the one thanking them for talking to me.
Before I worked at the needle exchange, I thought IV drug users were all scary, dirty, despicable people whom I had no reason to associate with. Now, I see them simply as fellow human beings, as people I can learn from, as people seeking conversation and warmth, as people not unlike myself. “Conversation doesn’t have to lead to consensus about anything, especially values; it’s enough that it helps people get used to one another” (Appiah 85). After my conversations thus far with drug users that come to the needle exchange, the ignorant discomfort I used to feel around these people has disappeared.
We see any stranger through the lens of stereotypes and our immediate judgments, without having any clue as to the actual reality of the stranger. The only way we can overcome these boundaries of ignorance we build between ourselves and others is through conversation. Once we recognize “the commonality of simply being human, […] we can learn from one another, or we can simply be intrigued by alternative way of thinking, feeling, and acting” (Appiah 97). Once we engage in conversation, strangers become “particular strangers” and we can always find some commonality that grants us a feeling of shared identity (Appiah 98). Most of the San Quentin men were IV drug users, and we all spoke for a while about drugs (and how to use them safely). I do not personally use drugs, and I may not have agreed with the values of these men, but I felt familiar with the subjects we discussed, and thus walked away with a feeling of “warmth [from] shared identity” that put me in a good mood for the rest of the day. I completely agree with Appiah; conversations is the most effective and necessary method for reducing ignorance and enlarging understanding.