Jordan Neely Was Hungry. Did No One Offer Him Something to Eat?

Re “A Black man desperate for help instead finds death on N.Y. subway”: Renée Graham’s May 5 Opinion column rightly calls what happened to Jordan Neely, who died after being grabbed in a choke hold by a fellow passenger, a “failure of humanity.” The story of his death isn’t about the so-called mentally ill – a convenient diversionary reframing that allows people to keep a safe distance from this type of horror and heartbreak. Neely grew up victimized by traumatic violence and, like many other trauma survivors, had his life trajectory sequentially and tragically derailed early on. Like his mother (a murder victim), he died in his 30s, completing a cycle of intergenerational transmission of victimization.

As a psychologist, I view Neely’s agitated pleas as a desperate cry for help rather than an aggressive threat to harm others. That much seems obvious to me. He said he was thirsty, hungry, and “fed up.” Why didn’t anyone on that subway car have the instinct to hand him a bottle of water or a snack?

The aggressive reflexes of some members of the group played out while the conscience and humanity of those who witnessed in silence may have been invisible but, I believe, palpable nonetheless. The phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance is when people define an ambiguous situation based on the overt reactions of others, with everyone falsely concluding that they are the only one who feels differently, so no one speaks up.