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A new Jussie Smollet case? Another Nurse Karen versus black kids on rental bikes?
Former 'The Bear' writer handcuffed on train after alleged complaint from white woman
Alex O'Keefe is a writer for FX's The Bear and a former speechwriter for Elizabeth Warren. He's also black. On September 18 he was apparently arrested and taken off an MTA train when a white woman told him to correct his posture and he refused.
At least, that's how it's reported on Black Enterprise, which obviously has the most inflammatory version. Most other news sites, such ABC (above) and Newsweek ('The Bear' Writer Arrested on Train After Complaint From White Woman) also seem to be describing what at first glance is a pretty egregious case of "White Karen sics cops on a black man for being uppity." So egregious that I was immediately suspicious. I mean, really? A white woman just points her finger and has a black man arrested for his "posture"? In 2025, in the Bronx?
Well, reading the ABC and Newsweek articles, there are a few additional details.
So he was not actually arrested - he was cuffed and "detained," then allowed to board the next train.
Supposedly one of the woman's friends said "You’re not the minority anymore.”
There is plenty here to make this another scissors incident. I have watched enough bodycam footage on YouTube to imagine it going several ways. Maybe Karen really was being a bitch and didn't like seeing a black guy "manspreading." The cops arrive in authoritarian asshole mode, O'Keefe protests, winds up cuffed and taken off the train.
Alternatively, O'Keefe was spreading himself across two seats, the old lady wanted to sit in one of them, O'Keefe decides no white lady is going to make him move, and when the cops arrive and ask him to please move his feet, he goes into Aggrieved Asshole mode.
Or something in-between. I have seen variations of both these scenarios play out. I doubt this will blow up into a huge story since O'Keefe wasn't actually arrested, but I have definitely seen it in several places now, in some cases described as a near-lynching and something something Trump.
The woman's friend saying "You’re not the minority anymore” is one of those details that strikes me as so on the nose (remember "This is MAGA country"?) that I just don't know what to think. Is it fabricated? Did someone really decide to offer up the perfect soundbite like that? Or was it in the context of a longer exchange between her and O'Keefe (a context conveniently omitted in all reporting)?
Public transit is ground zero for race realism. I don’t understand how anyone in NYC can ride the subway without, as they say, “noticing”. I lived in New York for a few years and still visit now and then and you would have to have seriously impaired pattern recognition ability to not come out of the experience extremely racist. The guy is obviously in the wrong, I don’t even need to click the link to know. MTA allows all kinds of insanely degenerate behavior from certain groups. To actually end up cuffed he really had to be asking for it
No, race realism is also wrong, the actual reason is class/subculture for which you are using skin colour as a proxy, due to the US having a underclass primarily composed of black people. I live in a European country and there is a social class that behaves in identically disruptive ways on public transport, despite being as white as the rest of the population.
I get the historical and current issues with racism in the US, but I do think it blinds both the left and right to the possibility that culture is the biggest issue.
The underclass is not primarily black, although in NYC I guess it might be. It’s probably 40-50% black, which is a massive overrepresentation, yes, but you’re about as likely to see someone white or Hispanic behaving in similarly antisocial ways. We call some of them ‘wiggers’.
This was my biggest culture shock moving to the city. Where I grew up the working class was mostly white, the diner waitress and the customer had about equal odds of being white or black. Moving to NYC, lower end retail has entirely black employees serving mostly white customers.
The discrepancy in DC was so stark it was disconcerting. 100% of service workers were black, while the service-enjoyers were a diverse array of non-black. The only exception was hipster restaurant waitstaff, who were mostly white.
It was like visiting a plantation theme park.
It's not hard to see that (some of) the "most progressive" areas are the most segregated in the country. Or sometimes just the whitest (Portland, Boulder). It's a weird dynamic that, say, Jackson isn't known for that.
I don't know about Jackson, but as you move down I-95 (until you get to Florida) the retail employees get blacker (both proportionally and individually) but at some point there's more black customers as well.
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