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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.
Those anti-social underclass whites exist in America too, but they're not as anti-social per capita as blacks of the same class. For pretty much every class, education, income level, blacks commit more crimes. Infamously, low income whites have lower murder rates than high income blacks. There really does seem to be a general ancestry effect independent of other social factors.
Of course, this does not mean there are not sensible policies that could not reduce these discrepencies, including reversing counterproductive progressive attempts to solve the problem.
However, it seems to me that parity between whites and blacks in anti-social behavior could only be achieved under circumstances where blacks were significantly less free than whites. I value freedom highly, so I am disinclined to take that trade-off. But that means accepting large discrepancies that fuel racial prejudice and discrimination and make it difficult for diverse cultural groups to coexist and share the same public and political institutions.
I see no solutions to this quandary except perhaps widespread use of advanced genetic engineering or embryo screening to breed out these differences over a few generations.
Beyond general freedom as an argument - if you start restricting the rights of individuals based on their genetic predispositions, why stop at black vs white?
The crime rate difference between whites and asians is even greater than between whites and blacks. Left handed people are more likely to be criminals as well. And of course, the crime rate difference between men and women is gigantic.
Despite that, I highly doubt @ArjinFerman and the other race realists here are sexist against men and racist against all ethnicities other than East Asian.
Obviously yes, I agree that we shouldn’t get into DNA screening people and preemptively punishing them. However when it comes to men I actually do favor some sexist restrictions against men. For example I think men should have probably have more firearm purchase restrictions than women. Maybe even requiring 2 adult women to testify to a man’s good character to purchase a firearm seems reasonable, while such a restriction on women would be unnecessary
Then when a woman purchases the firearms that are used in a capital crime due to this restriction we can give them honorary doctorates.
You joke, but firearms purchases by gangsters girlfriends are already a major problem that democrats won't address because it isn't posturing at lawful gun owners and republicans won't address because it admits gun violence is a problem.
I've seen Republican congressmen go after multiple DOJ officials including FBI directors for not going after the straw purchasers. The fact is that the DOJ and FBI are all filled with strivers (and more and more left of center strivers these days) that don't care about cases that won't get them in the news. They would rather spend 22 months building a shaky case against a state senator for taking a $5k gift from a friend who is also a donor who also might have benefited from some legislation the state senator was going to vote for based on ideology anyways than spend 2 months rolling up a crew of armed robbers who hit 7/11s in 5 states. Plus the arresting black women thing is a problem for many ideologically.
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