I don’t know why some of you are saying you’re black. Everyone on the SDMB is white and 30-something. Except Biggirl and David Simmons. She’s black and he’s old.
What?
Exactly. If these are serious questions, I wonder what kind of answer the OP really hopes to get for posts like this one or “why do black people love Red Lobster?” or “why do black people get tattoos?” Surely you don’t think the blacks on this board are going to share the super secret handbook of acceptable black behavior with the general public.
Anyway though, the majority of really loud people that I encounter are black (but the majority of people usually use a quieter voice, no matter what race they are). This is most likely the result of the area I live in, cultural differences between different groups, and a selection bias on my part.
FWIW I think Americans are loud. Some of my bestfriends are Americans 
You’re one of the good ones.
I wonder if maybe blacks seem louder to some whites because of their subconscious attitudes toward blacks.
Is it at all possible that some whites are more sensitive to black voices and styles of speaking? Therefore it grates on them and tends to seem louder?
I know lots of loud blacks…but I also know lots of loud Spanish people. Italian people, heck, now that I think of it, Chinese language sounds loud and sharp to my ears.
It is possible that blacks have a culture that tends to be louder…but I wonder if there is anything to the idea that maybe it is a sensitivity on the part of some whites.
I guess the more interesting question here is why does the OP think that black people are loud?
Maybe he believes so sincerely. Why would he thing that?
I can take a guess:
- Two black people walk into a redneck bar and suddenly get wide-eyed when they think they are in unfriendly territory. They are quiet and defensive and try to hide. In short they show weakness.
Drunk asshole senses weakness and fear and gives black people a hard time and starts an ugly racial incident.
2. Two black people walk into a redneck bar. They feel that they are in unfriendly territory and they know from experience that they need to show confidence and strength and they project a “don’t fuck with me presence,” and nobody fucks with them.
I would imagine that a black person in this country might find it useful to adopt such tactics.
So, I imagine that if you spent a lot of time in an environment where a black person might feel that he is a threatened minority and you didn’t have much experience with black people outside of that environment you might think “Wow, black people really are demonstrative and they sure do swagger around a lot, I wonder why.”
If you’re implying that VCO3 and kittenblue have approached this subject the same way, I would disagree with you. I don’t have a problem with kittenblue saying that in her experience, black teenaged girls are the loudest group in the malls that she frequents (or works in). I do have a problem with, as others have pointed out, the OP who basically says all blacks are loud, it’s a fact, and don’t bother arguing with me.
(Omega Glory, I thought it was just the basketball players who loved the Red Lobster. )
I’m loud and I’m white. Well, maybe. I’m Jewish. Is that a race, an ethnicity, a culture, or a religion? Can I be a white Jew for some of those? Damn it!
My neighbor was horrified a hispanic family moved in behind us. There are several loud, foul-mouthed kids and the doors and windows are usually open and they are outside a lot more than the folks that lived there before. The yard looks great, I only get random toys thrown in my yard about once a week and FOR THE LOVE OF BOG they do not have an annoying little fucking dog named BOOGIE! that they scream at, negotiate with and plead to only after it has been barking for 4 hours and I finally tell the damned dog to HUSH! (They also don’t play the freaking TUBA at 7am) so I’ll take the potty mouths and the toys.
We told the neighbor we are selling our house, she asked us in the most circumspect way possible to not sell it to anyone hispanic.
Now the hilarious thing? The house next to me just sold, to the quietest people alive. They are hispanic. The wife is Cuban and doesn’t drive. They have done a great job on the house so far and are far better neighbors to me than I am to the neighbor that always complains.
Now maybe someone should let me know if I should have had the guy thrown out the other night for standing up, throwing his fist in the air and saying rather loudly “WHITE POWER!” I couldn’t help but laugh because he is Korean. That table was the loudest, most offensive, fun table I’ve dealt to in a while, they covered racism, homophobia, misogyny, classism, profanity, but they kept it among themselves, offended no one else and had a blast. They also kept the game moving. (For the record, there was all guys, one Thai, one Korean, one possibly Filipino (they discussed the black market rates for Filipino men), one mullet sporting redneck, an old white guy, as stuffed shirt white guy that ever lived, possibly a biker and a jock who was questioning his sexuality and upcoming marriage.
I was there for 30 minutes. The best 30 minutes of my job I’ve had in a long time.
Good point. I have seen very different ways of presenting questions regarding culture or behavior and ethnicity; observational and neutral on one hand, and condescending towards the group on the other. No matter what, though, such threads usually go south – no offense to Southerners – when the subject group is African-Americans.
I think it might be impossible to expect an answer on questions like this. There’s the usual responses, like what I described earlier. Thinking about some traits associated with some other groups, I wonder if it’s really possible to determine their origins or roots. Why do Italian-Americans more so than other groups move their hands and arms expressively when they talk? Who do many Mexican immigrants have a different concept of personal space than native born non-Hispanic Americans, and stand much closer to someone when having a conversation? Why do Scandinavians from Minnesota often stand so far away from you in conversation? The origins of such behavior are probably lost to the ages.
Y’all familiar with the term “microaggression?” It was coined by Chester Pierce, and it refers to the small, almost incidental bullshit that people of color have to put up with on a daily basis. None of it is necessarily dripping with racism, but the little things tinged enough that it takes the wind out of your sails a bit.
I’m a tough guy, and I could give two shits what VC03 or whomever is giving credence to this ridiculous OP thinks. At the same time, this is the kind of shit that makes my eyes roll :rolleyes: and wonder seriously if supposedly smart people have a lick of sense. It gets me down a little.
I’ve encountered rude and obnoxious people in a lot of walks of life. In fact, I’ve noticed that groups of rude and obnoxious people can behave one way in one setting but act totally different in another. I encounter Asian, Black, White, and Latino people in my daily travails and I have never thought, “Man, those people are loud/quiet/super studious/lazy/great smelling/stinky/rich/poor/fat/skinny/adjective of your choice!” I can certain think of loud groups of Black kids, but also loud groups of White kids, and loud groups of Latino kids. Seems to me that these are easily observable behaviors within certain communities. If you live in a house with a lot of other people, you probably talk a lot louder than someone who lives with just two or three other people. And teenagers often like to mark their territory, whether it’s by huddling together in one place, writing stuff on a wall, or talking loudly. Something to make it clear that they’re there, and you aren’t going to forget them.
Hey, when I was an RA in college virtually all of the noise complaints were about White kids playing music too loud. All of the hygiene and drug issues I dealt with were White kids. I never made the jump that this is some kind of wiring with White people, well, because I know plenty of White people who don’t play their music loud, bathe, and are drug-free. 'Nuff said.
Now if the OP wants to return and explain how many Black people he’s run into, and then let us know how many of them fit the loud definition, and if they are equally loud in all settings, it might be worth pursuing. As it is I think he’s violating the rule of being a jerk, especially considering this thread has gone on for four pages without a peep from him.
I’ve always known I was switched at birth. There’s a loud black family somewhere missing their lily white, green eyed, red headed loud as fuck all the time daughter.
Somewhat off-topic, but you reminded me of something kind of funny. Somewhere around 10-15 years ago, I went to a Great White Lion Snake concert, in a bar.
Along with the couple hundred “pining for hair metal days” white 30 somethings was one black guy. Now, being an Alaskan, and we Alaskans are rash, brash, and very outspoken (ALL of us, this is a fact, just like the OP), I laughingly asked the guy “what are you doing here? you don’t look like a metalhead”.
Not to mention he spent nearly the whole concert on his cell phone (must have been a drug dealer). He said, “oh no, it’s not really, but I just wanted to be with my friends”.
Now clearly he must not have been around many shouters since he was able to hear the person on the other end of the phone despite 80 decibal rock music playing in the background. And while I could hear all of the metalheads screaming, I couldn’t hear a thing the one young black man was saying.
Oh wait, I just found another exception to the OP. Darn!
“That table” that what? Was at a Dungeons and Dragons tournement? That you served at a restaurant at which you work? That was at a party you threw at your house? Is it something you do for a living? Sorry, not being snarky, I honestly don’t know. And I’m worse than a cat when it comes to curiosity
But surely you aren’t denying that some differences between ethnic/racial/cultural groups can be measured are you? Rich/Poor is easy. I can say without a doubt that the average white person in America is richer than the average American Indian. Fat/Skinny is easy too. Hell, I could prove that Turks like Red Lobster better than Armenians. We could all but prove or disprove that the average black person is louder that the average white person in a theatre if we take a large enough sample of blacks and whites, controlling for gender, age, income, geographic local, etc. and we put both groups in a movie theatre and observed who makes the most noise.
Now this wouldn’t prove causality. I think economic experiments have shown that black people don’t tip as well as white people, but it may be due to a disparity in income (also easily measured) and not an aspect of black culture.
Why do we have to pretend that things like this can’t be measured or studied? Would it not be interesting to know that black people are louder than white people at the movies, and then examine why, or conversely, to prove that they are not as loud and then study the roots of the commonly held misconception?
I come at research from a post-positivist perspective. How you measure and ask questions has a lot to do with what findings you eventually discover. So much of this behavior is contextual. How on earth would you get an accurate, reliable, and valid measure for quietness in a theatre? Would it not depend on the film you were showing? Time of day? Age of the audience? Who was in the audience (in other words, what if the audience is composed primarily of your friends from school vs. strangers)? How would a research design control for the all the variables you mentioned? And so forth.
Then the question becomes: what do these findings mean? I can’t think of many large scale studies by race that say anything positive or advantageous about people of color compared to Whites. Statistical studies are frequently misinterpreted. I can easily see some jackass manager banning youths of color from the theatre based on a correlation.
I’d like to propose some research questions and see how White people respond to them. Are Whites worse dancers than African Americans? Are White men more prone to domestic violence than Latino men? I imagine on some level these questions might sound stupid, and then downright annoying and borderline racist. Of course this is a thought exercise. Nobody spends a great deal of time pathologizing the behavior of middle class Whites, but if you’re not in that group, it seems to usually end up that way.
I work in educational research, and I can assure you that many researchers look at educational disparity as problems with kids and communities rather than the schooling system itself - and then claim that the work is neutral and objective. Bullshit. Likewise, there are contextual factors that might contribute to outcomes, but the tendency is to say the issue lies within people. That allows inequitable systems to persist free from critique.
Scene
Fort Benning, Georgia. Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, Alpha Company Barracks common room. 1982.
Players
Monty - SP4 (remember this is 1982), male
S - PFC, female
Dialog
S: You do know there are only two races, don’t you?
Monty: Excuse me? That’s an interesting assertion. What might they be?
S: Why, White and Black, of course!
Monty: That’s odd. So which one are you? After all, you’re Korean, aren’t you?
S: Koreans are part of the White race, obviously. We’re not {derisively} Black.
Stage Direction
Monty departs the scene quickly before his brain could explode after hearing such stupidity.
Disclaimer
This really happened.
I don’t think anyone is asserting that differences between cultural groups don’t exist. Nor is anyone really saying that those differences can’t be talked about intelligently, and perhaps even measured, as in the examples you give above. But because measuring such things requires the sort of thoroughness and methodological rigor that you mention (sampling, controls, etc.), posts like the OP—based as they are on nothing more than unwarranted extrapolation from personal experience—are simply stupid pot-stirring.
In the time i’ve lived in America, i’ve observed that blacks are often louder in public than whites, on average. But i’m under no illusion that my experience of black people (or white people, for that matter) is necessarily representative of America more generally.
I live in a city that about two thirds black, so even if blacks and whites are loud in exactly the same proportion, i’ll probably encounter about twice as many loud blacks as loud whites. And, because i don’t have an internal counter that records the race of every loud person i run across, the simple demographics of Baltimore probably lead me to notice and remember more loud blacks than loud whites. Also, the whites i encounter in my neighborhood tend to be college educated, middle class professionals, while the black neighborhood where i spend the most time is rather poor and working class. If the blacks i encounter are louder, on average, than the whites, it’s possibly due to these socio-economic factors as much as it is to race. And so on.
Well, there’s also the question of whether you can separate income from culture at all. While some cultural habits and practices might be almost universal across some races and ethnic groups, i’d be willing to bet that there are also substantial cultural differences within racial and ethnic groups, based on things like income, employment, etc.
On the issue of tipping, if you want to read some very interesting studies on differences in tipping among racial and ethnic groups, check out this page.
We don’t have to “pretend that things like this can’t be measured or studied.” But we should wait until the studies, or at least something more than anecdotes, are in before rushing off to draw weeping conclusions. Personally, i think the person most guilty of lacking perspective on this issue is the OP. He marched in here and acted as if all the evidence were already in, that the measuring and studying had already been done, and all we had to do was work out why those pesky blacks are so goddammed loud.
I don’t think of myself as white. I think of myself as Twinkie. Or a banana. Or a lemon cream pie. YMMV. 
I don’t know which made me cringe more - you trying to lend credence to the OP’s dreadful stereotyping, or you using the term “blacks”. “Black people” doesn’t bother me, but “blacks” makes me shudder.
The blacks, they’re so darn loud.
Someone please put this thread out of its misery.