Nice–Nastiness and Other Raced Social Interactions on Public Transport Systems

Research on public transportation systems has often focused on racialized and institutionalized dynamics that result in poor and ethno–racial minority neighborhoods being underserved. Few scholars have studied raced social interactions on the buses and trains themselves. In this article, I explore how legacies of racism are reproduced through raced social interactions on public buses and trains in Chicago. Drawing on over 3 years of ethnographic field work and interviews, this article demonstrates how ethno–racial minorities, particularly Blacks, experience racial hostilities that are often masked as nice–nastiness. Nice–nastiness is a type of individual expression that combines expressions of politeness with disdain and distancing. Nice–nastiness can be expressed as (1) pretending the “other” does not exist; (2) whispering and lowering one's voice; (3) standing instead of taking a seat; (4) letting others have space for auditory expression; and (5) pseudo–swagger. I locate nice–nastiness on the racial microaggressions and color–blindness continuum and show that this expressive tool is shaped, at least in part, by the closeness, confinement and mobility of public transportation, where escape is not possible, unlike in wide–open spaces. I use public transportation as a space to examine how raced behaviors are enacted in everyday life, and shaped by confinement and motion.