Why are groups of black teenagers so loud?

In My Humble Opinion
61

I propose nothing. This isn’t my topic, and I’m not the least bit interested in it. I’m sure we could come up with a few valid approaches to acquire actual, valid data if we really wanted to.

I’m not sure what your snark is aimed at, exactly. I’m simply attempting to point out the difficulty and danger in making broad generalizations from a handful of eyewitness accounts - hardly a new or controversial idea. By all means, if people want to discuss the topic, discuss it. Let’s just not pretend that there’s any reason to believe that our personal impressions are any sort of valid reflection of reality.

62

When I worked at the mall, it was rare to see groups of white teenagers acting loud and unruly. Come to think of it, I don’t think I *ever *saw it. (And there were *many *white teenagers at the mall.) By contrast, it was *very *common to see groups of black teenagers acting loud and unruly. It occurred on an almost daily basis.

The problem with discussions like these is that the PC police come out of the woodwork and immediately assume observations such as mine are due to deep seated racism, bigotry, etc. It’s difficult to have a rational discussion when the PC police are in full force.

63

Yeah Crafter man… Chris Rock had a stand up piece about the mall that White People use to go to…
The sub analogy to the topic about crossing the street is pretty funny. I told my kids (13 and 11) about several months ago that they crossed the street (Major urban city) like white kids. I thought this was very funny… they having attended school with majority of whites their entire lives didn’t get the joke. White kids cross the street with a strong sense of entitlement. Black kids cross the street knowing that 1) someone will run your ass over…and 2) I’ve seen growing up in Chicago someone get out of a car after hitting a pedestrian and try and kick said pedestrian’s ass for denting their front bumper.

As for black kids being loud… yeah … by and large groups of black kids are going to probably be louder than probably a group of white kids. The only caveat i would maintain would be upper class black kids… they have had it beaten like a pulp into them to not embarrass themselves or their kin in public.
As for graduations… yeah…my lower socio or economic peeps are gonna let you know that Marcus or Vanessa just graduated… its something we’ve had to grit or teeth and ignore for years.

64

Here’s the Parental Involvement Program rules. They don’t have anyone show ID at the doors, but they will approach kids and ask for ID’s. At school let-out time, extra officers are stationed near the escalator to the RTA to move kids along down to the Rapid Transit. We have had kids sneak into the store to buy something (especially around Mother’s Day) and be peeking over their shoulders out the door to make sure security doesn’t see them in there! I’ve never heard anyone object to being stopped, but I have had many, many customers say they haven’t been downtown in years to shop until this program started…it just makes it more comfortable for them. And from a retail standpoint, we don’t want hordes of bored, broke teenagers hanging around…we want adults with money.

65

That’s funny, the number one Google autocomplete on “why are white people” is “so racist”.

66

“OK, you four each throw in $5 and I’ll be your legal guardian for an hour”:smiley:

67

Well, that’s just your personal experience. :stuck_out_tongue:

68

What a coincidence. At the mall that I go to I’ve see any number of loud unruly white teenagers, some of whom I’ve even seen being kicked out of the building. But of all the black teenagers I’ve seen at the mall, I’ve never seen any of them being overly loud or unruly.

So fine. My anecdote completely cancels yours and we get back to wondering why the blacks dance so good now.

69

I will always treasure this thread for the suggestion that Google autocomplete is a persuasive citation.

70

It’s really about the immediate assumption that a person’s observation is invalid because it was not part of a peer reviewed, double blind study.

71

The question is not whether the observation is invalid, but whether any conclusion based on that observation is valid enough to support a discussion on why that conclusion is true.

72

If people are in need of white teenagers walking in front of cars, they can go to my area of France, the teens there seem to have perfected the “crossing the street very very slowly” and the “walking very very slowly in the middle of the street” trick with the “perfectly ignoring your car even though they’re at 30cm from it” style. I can throw in it a couple of “sneaking sideways glances at you and sneakering among them while they’re in front of the car” behaviors too.

73

Kids? What’s the matter with kids today?? :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

As for the O.P., it’s a corrosive reply. I’ll give it a shot. I do not agree with this mindset, it is not how I live my life. I offer it based on life experiences first-hand, not heresay.

I used to live in a town that was immediately adjacent to a Satmar Sect village of Hasidic Orthodox Jews.

There was relentless rudeness, arrogance, cruelty, haughtiness and just plain uncivil poor manners. Non-Satmar did not exist. Non-Satmar did not need to be recognized, spoken to or regarded as alive. They were to be cut off while driving, ignored or disrespected in the stores and derided in the few comments made in English and not Yiddish.
I rode on the local ambulance corps for 6 years, 3 of them as an EMT. When coming upon a car accident or emergency in public involving a Satmar Hasid, we were told- unless the person was literally about to die- never to touch the patient, but to wait until the local Hasidic village ambulance corps arrived.

We are dirty; unclean. We are not to touch a Hasid. We cannot hand money to a Hasid. We are to place it on the counter, and it is then picked up by a Hasid store owner. A broad brush? Yes. After 16 years living day to day with thousands of them in close proximity? Accurate and first-hand in veracity.

There is a maddening sense of entitlement. It ranges from political muscle-flexing to the behaviors outlined above. It boils down to this: " You don’t let us do what we want, that makes you a Jew-hating racist fuck Nazi and we will out you as such publicly. " Such is the power as a political block that this village yields.

So. A group of loud and disruptive white kids are being loud and disruptive and are called on it by other whites on a level playing field of communication and attitude. A group of loud and disruptive black kids are called on it by a white adult and there’s nothing in the air except racism. They are allowed to behave as they wish because to call them on it or try in some way to control an out of control group is automatically equated with racism and hatred of blacks and putting them down, etc.

Sad. But true. Do I ascribe to that belief system? I do not. Do I readily confirm the existence of that kind of belief system? Without a doubt. I lived it with the Hasidim for so very long. And- a week ago- a group of 15-20 teenage boys- all black- were heading from High School onto the stairs going up to the NYC subway. ( Best not to ask why an elevated train is called a subway…). They were so incredibly loud in their words, shouting out, cursing, laughing, etc. Now I get the testosterone-fueled manic playing around of ANY group of 20 teenage boys. Had I been walking down that side of the stairs instead of the ones across the street and had I tried to shush them a bit, there would have been nothing in the air but racial tension.

Which sucks. But which would have been the reality in the moment.

My two cents…

74

It’s not invalid - it’s simply one data point. But it should be obvious to everyone that no conclusions can be drawn on one data point, particularly when it was acquired through nonrandom means. Statistically, that piece of data, on its own is meaningless. I’m a scientist, or at least working toward being one, and if I tried to publish, or even suggest, a conclusion based on that amount of evidence, I’d be laughed out of the field. That’s the point of what I was saying above: we humans have a massive mental bias toward believing ourselves, and it takes a whole lot of serious and careful work to eliminate that bias and make sure we actually know what the truth is.

75

It’s not one data point, at least I hope* it’s not one data point. It’s one person’s collected observations.

As a scientist, if you observe particular behavior from your 50 “test subjects” it doesn’t matter if those 50 subjects are all together in one lab at the same time, or spread out over years and locations, it’s still 50 observations of behavior. You take your 50 observations, and put it in a paper it doesn’t suddenly become one meaningless data point because it’s just you doing the observing.

Add in other folks with similar collected observations, and others with dissimilar collected observations, and you’ve got a data set to work with. Or, we can dismiss it by saying each person is just a meaningless data point.

*Hoping that the OP is not basing his entire conclusion on one group of black teenagers being loud one time. THAT is one data point
edited to add: these collected observations are informally gathered, and should be treated with a bit more grains of salt than a formally structured experiment

76

Well, now we’re getting into “inference space”, or what kind of scope your conclusions can have, which is based on study design. Let’s pretend for the moment that the OP is accurately describing his experiences with black teenagers (which he almost certainly isn’t - studies have repeatedly shown the unreliability of human memory). That still means that any conclusions we can draw will apply ONLY to the black teenagers in the OP’s immediate sphere - the people he comes into contact with in his life. It tells us nothing about teenagers in the next state, or the next city, or next year. This is just basic statistics.

First of all, yes it certainly does matter if they’re in the same place or spread out, because that has a huge impact on the conclusions you can draw. And whether we define “one data point” as one observation done by that person or the general impression of one individual is rather a moot point. My objections still stand. You cannot draw conclusions about a large group of subjects, be they people or lab animals, without a random sample large enough to be statistically significant. More accurately, large enough so that your margin of error is small enough to make your results more reliable than flipping a coin. Anecdotes from one, or even a small handful of self-selected people are nowhere near significant enough for us to draw conclusions about a group as large as “black teenage American boys”.

Honestly, this should be obvious. I don’t know why it’s turning into an argument.

77

Because your first post was argumentative, and based on a common pet peeve of at least one poster. And that no one who actually wants to discuss the topic really cares that this isn’t a scientifically accurate conversation.

In fact, I suspect that the only reason this thread is going the way it is is because it is about a such contentious topic as race. I doubt someone who asked, say, “Why do cats knead” would be told that they must conduct a scientific study before asking the question.

I can understand why this might annoy some people?

78

Snark fail. Argent didn’t attest that black people are loud, just that apparently a large number of Google users think they are, and, thus, a large number of people think black people are loud. The question assumes that this is true.

The proper analysis would be that white people are more often thought to be racist, a statement I find hard to argue with. How many times have I seen people surprised when a non-white turns out to be racist? And why wouldn’t minorities be more likely to understand what another minority is going through?

79

This morning I was waiting for the train and there was a group of 4 young black teens waiting for the train too. They were being silly and pushing each other and laughing so I was a little nervous about being in the train with them. I even chose a seat a little bit further away from them than my normal seat because I was afraid they would continue to jostle one another and someone would fall on me. The four of them didn’t make a sound the whole trip. They were perfectly quiet and well behaved the entire ride and I felt horrible about my judging them previously. It just goes to show that you can judge a book by the cover but that doesn’t mean you are going to be right about the content.

80

I like this summary.