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?"
This is laughably false. People put their feet on the seats on MTA transit all the time. Do you even ride these trains?
(Personally, I have a very negative opinion of people who take up excessive space on the trains, but I would never call the police over it, nor rat them out to the authorities.)
You gotta zoom out a little to see the racism. The racism isn’t in the rules about sitting. The racism is in how the rules are unevenly applied.
You leave your feet up when a conductor is telling you to put them down. You’re off.
It’s like no one is hearing the basics here.
You’re missing or refusing to see the point that the conductor is likely policing certain people’s behavior more
So yes, if the conductor or the police tell you to do something and you refuse you’re probably going to have a bad time. But more importantly, that situation is far more likely to occur in the first place if you’re a minority. It’s likely there was a white guy on that train sitting “badly” and no one policed him.
Zoom out more.