In the caption of the Instagram post, he wrote, “An old white woman got on the train and immediately pointed at me and told me to correct how I was sitting. I refused, so she went to the conductor and complained. The conductor called the police and stopped the train,” he said.
O’Keefe also says in the caption that the friend of the woman who called the police had said to him, “You’re not the minority anymore.”
A separate video about the incident has been uploaded by the user, Nalae, on TikTok, where it has quickly gone viral, having been viewed over 160,000 times as of reporting.
They said I was disturbing the peace by not leaving the train. They pulled me off the train and arrested me without even talking to the Karen who reported the one black person on the train. On the platform, the police detained me and interrogated me. Only black folks stayed nearby and recorded the arrest. When I demanded a lawyer and reminded them they didn’t even take a statement from the woman who complained they eventually released me. This country is growing more psycho by the day. What will you do about it?"
Do you think the old lady complained more or less because the guy was black? Do you think the MTA guy has any discretion? How many other people got the police called on them for sitting “improperly”?
I feel like you don’t accept the concepts of privilege and systemic problems, and are really zoomed in on individual actions to the point of not being able to see the whole picture.
The old lady probably complained because the guy was black. The MTA conductor probably escalated for similar reasons. The victim may have reacted negatively because of decades of racially driven abuse.
I’m not really sure if you’re arguing in good faith, or have some emotional investment in disbelieving racism can be pervasive and covered by other plausible excuses.
I believe in racism AND systemic racism. But this ain’t it. This is another day on the MTA - the only difference is a “celebrity” with a tiktok following is involved. Here’s a white MTA worker dragging a white guy off a train. I bet you would call that racism if it were a black man being dragged off. But in truth beligerent customers are an everyday thing. That’s how the public are. That’s how public transport is. MTA worker punched in the face, after asking someone to get off the train… MTA worker sucker-punched at random. This is real life, you’re not the main character just because you have tiktok followers and wrote a speech for Elizabeth Warren.
I don’t believe you. I don’t think this conversation is worth continuing further.
I already laid out the case for systemic racism yesterday:
https://lemmy.world/comment/19545014
You want to disbelieve me sure… I’ll just note that you’re leaving now that other MTA cases have been shown to you. Worse ones where shit just went down without celebrity tiktokers claiming it was racism.
That’s all. Make trouble on the MTA get asked to leave. That’s how it goes down on the regular.
MTA bus driver stabbed, - . Atttacks on MTA workers on the rise… The M stands for mass by the way… As in, a massive amount of public interactions each day.