Why are black people so LOUD?

The BBQ Pit
61

[QUOTE=elmwood]
The OP should know better than to ask a “Why do black people X” question. Really, they’re guaranteed to end bad here. I know from first-hand experience. I’m surprised pizzabrat hasn’t shown up; if I should so much as mention race in a post, I can rely on an immediate response.

[/QUOTE]

Until you came along Elmwood, the only loud person in this thread was me, a black person. Now you’ve gone and ruined VC03’s solid fact opinion that black people are louder than white people. I hope you’re happy.

62

[QUOTE=susan_foster]
Wait a minute…I’m black? But I’m soft-spoken! Now I’m racially confused.
[/QUOTE]

Well, I’m white, and I walk like this. (shows off smooth flowing strut) Call me confused, too.

63

Vinyl Turnip, you do acknowledge that your generalizations could be used to describe randomly grabs various cultures Italians, or poor white folks from various states too, don’t you? ETA: Not to mention some New Yorkers. My SIL (who is of Puerto Rican descent) and her family can be very boisterous. I love them, they are free spirits and know how to have fun.

64

[QUOTE=justrob]
Oh stewardess, I speak jive.
[/QUOTE]

Back off Momma , I dug her rap!

65

It’s all Cuba Gooding Jr.'s fault. Black people used to be quieter, but then that Jerry McGuire movie came out, and Cuba Gooding Jr. kept shouting “SHOW ME THE MONEY!”, and since Cuba Gooding Jr. is a role model for blacks, now they shout all the time.

Another part of the reason is due to evolution. You need to understand that black people come from Africa. Now, you see, there are a lot of lions in Africa, and lions are dangerous, so Africans always had to watch out for lions. So the African tribes that had people who were able to shout really loud when they saw a lion survived, while the tribes of quieter people all were wiped out.

There’s another reason, which really answers the question, “Why do Europeans speak so softly?” (You see how I turned that around there?) Back in ancient times and the middle ages, there was a group in Scandanavia called the Vikings. If you’ve ever read Hagar the Horrible, I’m sure you heard of them. Anyway, the Vikings were great seafarers, and they were also famous as pirates and raiders. One of the things that gives you an advantage as a raider is to be quiet and sneaky. If somebody on a raid is really loud when he’s trying to raid a village, he loses the element of surprise, the village is ready for the raiders, and that’s bad for the raiders. So, the Vikings made sure to stay quiet, and, they of course, settled all throughout northern Europe. That also explains why northern Europeans, like the English, tend to be quiet and reserved, and Southern Europeans, like the Italians, are loud and talk with their hands a lot. The English just have a lot more Viking blood in them than the Italians.

66

To the OP: Have you even tried talking to a Black person outside the movie theater?

I think you’ll find they’re not so loud after all.
(What? Don’t look at me that way. 63 replies and not a single movie theater response? You KNEW it was comming)

:smiley:

67

[QUOTE=Zabali_Clawbane]
Vinyl Turnip, you do acknowledge that your generalizations could be used to describe randomly grabs various cultures Italians, or poor white folks from various states too, don’t you? ETA: Not to mention some New Yorkers. My SIL (who is of Puerto Rican descent) and her family can be very boisterous. I love them, they are free spirits and know how to have fun.
[/QUOTE]

Sure, but I don’t live around a lot of Italians or New Yorkers or Puerto Ricans, so I was commenting on what I’ve experienced personally.

I have met a lot of Brazilians, however, and they can also be quite loud and rowdy (which I think most of them, including my wife, would admit to), regardless of their skin color. Which supports the idea of a cultural basis, IMO.

68

[QUOTE=Zebra]
In Africa, they had to be quiet so Lions wouldn’t hear them and eat them.
[/QUOTE]

Boy, now I’m really confused. How do I avoid getting eaten by a lion – by being loud or being quiet?
Or do I just need to run faster than the black guy?

69

[QUOTE=Vinyl Turnip]
Sure, but I don’t live around a lot of Italians or New Yorkers or Puerto Ricans, so I was commenting on what I’ve experienced personally.

I have met a lot of Brazilians, however, and they can also be quite loud and rowdy (which I think most of them, including my wife, would admit to), regardless of their skin color. Which supports the idea of a cultural basis, IMO.
[/QUOTE]

Well, given that the OP is asserting that it is only black people, I’d say we just shot his theory full of holes.

70

[QUOTE=panache45]
I mean, you couldn’t have one heaven for everyone, cuz it’d be hell for all the quiet white folk.
[/QUOTE]

You wanna hold down the volume on your paeans, please? Some of us are trying to lip-sync “Rock of Ages” over here.

71

[QUOTE=John Mace]
Maybe because they’ve had 400 years of White people not listening to them. When it’s only Black folks together, they just whisper to each other. :slight_smile:
[/quote]

Heh. When I was in the Navy and stationed in Monterey, a few of the Filipino employees would talk in Tagalog among themselves. As with any other language, Tagalog has a number of loan-words. The loan-words from English are easy to spot, of course, for a native English speaker. One day, a young Seaman asked why there were so many English words among the Tagalog ones. Before any of the Filipinos could answer, I said, “They’re not really loan-words. As a matter of fact, they have absolutely nothing to do with the actual topic. They’re just inserted in there randomly to confuse us non-Filipinos.” It really cracked up one lady.

72

[QUOTE=Colibri]
Living where I do, I would not agree with this (taking ethnicity to mean culture rather than race). There are certainly definite cultural differences in how people perceive noise and whether or not they are being loud.
[/QUOTE]

Not only that, but the cultural difference in how close you should stand to someone while talking to him. Want to have some fun? Have a Brazilian talk to a Japanese person. The Japanese person will keep backing away to create more space, and the Brazilian guy will keep trying to get closer. (Those two cultures tend to be at opposite extremes.)

73

[QUOTE=KayElCee]
It’s because we don’t drink coffee :rolleyes:
[/QUOTE]

I wish my attention had been drawn to this before I reopened the thread. I’ll remember for next time. VC03, take this as an official statement. DO NOT start any further threads of this sort in IMHO.

It’s not so much the questions, as other posters have also phrased such questions. It is instead your particularly graceless and provocative way of adding editorial comment to such questions.

74

[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
There’s another reason, which really answers the question, “Why do Europeans speak so softly?” (You see how I turned that around there?) Back in ancient times and the middle ages, there was a group in Scandanavia called the Vikings. If you’ve ever read Hagar the Horrible, I’m sure you heard of them. Anyway, the Vikings were great seafarers, and they were also famous as pirates and raiders. One of the things that gives you an advantage as a raider is to be quiet and sneaky. If somebody on a raid is really loud when he’s trying to raid a village, he loses the element of surprise, the village is ready for the raiders, and that’s bad for the raiders. So, the Vikings made sure to stay quiet, and, they of course, settled all throughout northern Europe. That also explains why northern Europeans, like the English, tend to be quiet and reserved, and Southern Europeans, like the Italians, are loud and talk with their hands a lot. The English just have a lot more Viking blood in them than the Italians.
[/QUOTE]

It’s also a result of living around mountain ranges like the Alps. We all know how loud sounds can trigger avalanches. Well, there used to be loud Europeans, but obviously they all got buried beneath avalanches, before they had a chance to reproduce. Obviously, there aren’t as many snow-packed mountain ranges in Africa. Plus, your voice has to rise above all those jungle sounds. That’s why Tarzan had to yell a lot, even though he was white.

75

[QUOTE=John Mace]
Not only that, but the cultural difference in how close you should stand to someone while talking to him. Want to have some fun? Have a Brazilian talk to a Japanese person. The Japanese person will keep backing away to create more space, and the Brazilian guy will keep trying to get closer. (Those two cultures tend to be at opposite extremes.)
[/QUOTE]

It would be an interesting experiement to have two people of such different habits in the same room, with the furniture either too close, or too far away (depending on viewpoint) and bolted to the floor. Heh…

76

[QUOTE=John Mace]
Not only that, but the cultural difference in how close you should stand to someone while talking to him. Want to have some fun? Have a Brazilian talk to a Japanese person. The Japanese person will keep backing away to create more space, and the Brazilian guy will keep trying to get closer. (Those two cultures tend to be at opposite extremes.)
[/QUOTE]
Yes, this is why Og created oceans.

77

[QUOTE=Vinyl Turnip]
I’m hesitant to say this, because it seems that nobody in the thread so far is interested in doing anything but making cracks and/or implying (or outright stating) that the OP is a bigot, but in my own personal experience there is some truth to what he’s said (despite it being a can-of-worms subject that he should’ve known was a can-of worms, like the “black people don’t tip” meme).

To be more specific (and hopefully use enough parenthetical qualifiers), I have noticed for a long time that many (not all) black people out in public places often (not always) tend to be noticeably louder than white people (in general) when talking with others of the same race. In the train station or on the train, for example, it’s pretty common for me to hear two or more blacks who seem to be basically shouting at each other, or attempting to converse by screaming back and forth across a fairly large distance, which doesn’t seem to occur as often between whites, Hispanics, etc. Every once in a while I hear what sounds to me at first like the yelling that indicates an fight is about to take place, but which turns out to just be a loud, friendly conversation.

I also noticed, when I worked as a waiter, that groups of black people (whether male, female, or mixed) were often pretty loud and boisterous when eating out together, seemingly more frequently than non-blacks. Groups of black schoolkids in the train station or at the museum, etc., typically seem (to me) to generate a lot more noise than comparable crowds of white kids.

I guess I understand the motivation to attack any sorts of generalizations of this kind, and I’ll probably be excoriated for making them. I’m not suggesting it’s an ironclad rule with no exceptions, or that there’s any sort of cause other than cultural for the phenomenon. (My black co-workers don’t shout at me, or each other, inside the office building, for example.) It is a generalization, but it’s something I’ve observed so frequently over the years, at least where I’ve lived, that I’m surprised it would be that controversial.
[/QUOTE]

My coworker (who is an extremely quiet black woman, I mean church mouse) says that black women are really loud. YMMV

So, uh, go ahead and make me look bad too I guess. I have never really noticed one way or the other, but then again I am partially deaf so there you go.

78

Want to know what’s loud? Drunk men on a bus, subway, or train in Korea. And, apparently, even louder is someone whispering English. No kidding. There can be the Korean version of a Death Metal band playing at the other end of the car, but if I’m having a quiet conversation with someone in English, I get, “Hey, American! Don’t be rude! You’re talking to loud!”

79

[QUOTE=elmwood]
The OP should know better than to ask a “Why do black people X” question. Really, they’re guaranteed to end bad here. I know from first-hand experience.
[/QUOTE]

I have no recollection of moving any of your similar threads to the Pit. Am I wrong?

80

Well, you know, I’m a white person, and I have a very quiet voice, so I’d say that absolutely proves the OP’s theory.

Where is the OP, anyway? Didn’t he want to discuss this, not just drop a load and run?