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So I'm white and I'm riding the Staten Island ferry to St. George on the 11:00. I'm reading a book. An African American man sits down two seats away and proceeds to begin playing some game on his tablet involving a great deal of bell, whistle and zinging sounds. You can hear it a good ten feet away. A few passengers kind of roll their eyes.
I consider it a universal rule in polite society, no matter how unheeded it may be in this city, that you do not invade anyone else's sensory space with your device. (There are posters on the ferry with messages to this effect.)
So I say verbatim in the most neutral tone possible: "Sir, could you please turn down your sound?"
Silence/ignoring me.
I repeat: "Sir, could you please turn down your sound."
I am eyed over his sunglasses. "What?"
"Could you please turn down your volume?"
"You want me to what? Nobody is bothered but you. What is this? A concert? A club? This thing making you go deaf?"
He was big. I am not. He was black. I am white. And like so many daily incidents of intolerance in this city and in this country, we left it right there, with a massive moment of intolerance as lethal as any act of actual violence. I put my book away and walked off to another part of the boat.
I'm not going to say I was the loser here because that's not the point. We're all losers when something like this happens. What kind of monstrous place have we created where two humans of different races living in the same country cannot even agree on the basics of public decorum?
I'm from southern Virginia by the way. I have seen racism that puts the Eric Garner incident to freaking shame, yet I am appalled, after not having lived in New York for that long, at how little contact there is between whites and blacks in this city, how little communication. In the absence of real dialogue, the slightest interactions take on the aspect of a premeditated insult.
This is an awful, awful state of affairs and we are all diminished because of it.
Was there some other way I could have approached this situation? Something else I could have said?
Ignorance comes in all colors...what does him being black have to do with the situation? Somebody was rude and refused to turn his music down. I'm black and there's a pretty good chance he might not have turned it down for me either.
__________________
"The man who sleeps on the floor, can never fall out of bed." -Martin Lawrence
not really. either he would comply or not but at least you were
not afraid to ask, because a lot of people don't want to risk it,
so they just sit there irritated.
I guess you made this about race because you have only seen
black guys doing that, right?
Unfortunately not. You have people (regardless of what their race is) that feel self-entitled as this person did. The other unfortunate thing is that when certain actions are done and it is between two different races, if one is white and the other is black, there are usually some thoughts about the actions and if they happened simply because of the races involved. I guess you're wondering if the same thing would've happened had the person playing the loud music were white? I would say it's possible, but I haven't been in too many environments where whites are loud unless the person making the noise somehow suffers from an illness. There is a young white male that lives in my neighborhood that talks out loud to himself and makes loud noises. Everyone is annoyed with him but they soon realize that he suffers from a medical condition so they don't say anything.
For what it's worth though I honestly think that whites and blacks still live in their own neighborhoods because they just have different cultures and different ways of doing things. It could be that this individual got upset simply because he felt as if what he was doing wasn't a problem and was only a problem with you because you're a white person who simply wanted to screw around with him. To be honest, I have seen incidents of subtle racism involving whites that intentionally do things to blacks to create a problem. I'm not saying you did that here, but I have seen it happen, and the black person or persons involved were quite irritated by it and understandably so. Nowadays racism (at least here in NYC) is subtle and still occurs quite often. Looks, stares, indirect comments, clearing of the throat, etc.
So I'm white and I'm riding the Staten Island ferry to St. George on the 11:00. I'm reading a book. An African American man sits down two seats away and proceeds to begin playing some game on his tablet involving a great deal of bell, whistle and zinging sounds. You can hear it a good ten feet away. A few passengers kind of roll their eyes.
I consider it a universal rule in polite society, no matter how unheeded it may be in this city, that you do not invade anyone else's sensory space with your device. (There are posters on the ferry with messages to this effect.)
So I say verbatim in the most neutral tone possible: "Sir, could you please turn down your sound?"
Silence/ignoring me.
I repeat: "Sir, could you please turn down your sound."
I am eyed over his sunglasses. "What?"
"Could you please turn down your volume?"
"You want me to what? Nobody is bothered but you. What is this? A concert? A club? This thing making you go deaf?"
He was big. I am not. He was black. I am white. And like so many daily incidents of intolerance in this city and in this country, we left it right there, with a massive moment of intolerance as lethal as any act of actual violence. I put my book away and walked off to another part of the boat.
I'm not going to say I was the loser here because that's not the point. We're all losers when something like this happens. What kind of monstrous place have we created where two humans of different races living in the same country cannot even agree on the basics of public decorum?
I'm from southern Virginia by the way. I have seen racism that puts the Eric Garner incident to freaking shame, yet I am appalled, after not having lived in New York for that long, at how little contact there is between whites and blacks in this city, how little communication. In the absence of real dialogue, the slightest interactions take on the aspect of a premeditated insult.
This is an awful, awful state of affairs and we are all diminished because of it.
Was there some other way I could have approached this situation? Something else I could have said?
I missed where the black guy said anything about your being white. Or where any of the passengers made a comment about your races.
YOU are the only one talking about racism here. And also, it stands to reason that if anyone of any race is playing a very loud game on a personal device while riding public transportation, they are already being rude, and it should be expected they are not going to respond well when you ask them to not be rude (turn it down).
I really can't figure out how your asking someone to turn down loud music turned into an incident about racism in your mind that merits a post of several paragraphs about blacks, whites, Eric Garner and "awful, awful state of affairs"!!
So I'm white and I'm riding the Staten Island ferry to St. George on the 11:00. I'm reading a book. An African American man sits down two seats away and proceeds to begin playing some game on his tablet involving a great deal of bell, whistle and zinging sounds. You can hear it a good ten feet away. A few passengers kind of roll their eyes.
I consider it a universal rule in polite society, no matter how unheeded it may be in this city, that you do not invade anyone else's sensory space with your device. (There are posters on the ferry with messages to this effect.)
So I say verbatim in the most neutral tone possible: "Sir, could you please turn down your sound?"
Silence/ignoring me.
I repeat: "Sir, could you please turn down your sound."
I am eyed over his sunglasses. "What?"
"Could you please turn down your volume?"
"You want me to what? Nobody is bothered but you. What is this? A concert? A club? This thing making you go deaf?"
He was big. I am not. He was black. I am white. And like so many daily incidents of intolerance in this city and in this country, we left it right there, with a massive moment of intolerance as lethal as any act of actual violence. I put my book away and walked off to another part of the boat.
I'm not going to say I was the loser here because that's not the point. We're all losers when something like this happens. What kind of monstrous place have we created where two humans of different races living in the same country cannot even agree on the basics of public decorum?
I'm from southern Virginia by the way. I have seen racism that puts the Eric Garner incident to freaking shame, yet I am appalled, after not having lived in New York for that long, at how little contact there is between whites and blacks in this city, how little communication. In the absence of real dialogue, the slightest interactions take on the aspect of a premeditated insult.
This is an awful, awful state of affairs and we are all diminished because of it.
Was there some other way I could have approached this situation? Something else I could have said?
It might be worth the cost of a good pair of noise cancelling ear phones for you.
People don't like to be called out on things that are rude or inappropriate by anyone and it really has nothing to do with race unless one of you makes it about race.
Yes--I'm thinking as deeply and as fairly as I can here--and I would say the blacks I encounter playing their music loudly outnumbers whites, or any other color, by a long shot. I'm thinking of the ferry, the subway, bus, all transit here.
Yes--I'm thinking as deeply and as fairly as I can here--and I would say the blacks I encounter playing their music loudly outnumbers whites, or any other color, by a long shot. I'm thinking of the ferry, the subway, bus, all transit here.
Kudos to you for actually saying what was on your mind. I don't know why people get in such a hissy about race topics. It's the main reason why racism exists because everyone wants to PRETEND that it doesn't and NOT discuss it. We should discuss our differences (we do have them) and so on. That's the way that we learn more about each other rather than going bonkers and yelling anytime someone talks about it. Some things DO happen because of race. Simple as that.
just because you're from virginia doesn't mean new yorkers have to think like you.
you might have more manners and courtesy but that won't keep the next person
from being a jerk. you will learn as time goes by to just forget about petty stuff.
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