Last night, a young guy gets on the train with his earphones in and starts rapping loudly. No one could have conversations and people couldn't do work and it was all very frustrating and annoying. I understood people's frustration and annoyance but what I didn't understand was their response to that. Others on the train were grumbling and then two guys start talking about knocking him onto the platform and "showing him what's what." At which point I stood up, walked over to the guy, touched him on the shoulder, motioned for him to take his earphones out and said quietly, "I don't know if you know this, but everyone can hear you." He apologized and stopped.
It wasn't hard, and yet several people said things as I sat back down suggesting I'd been brave. I wasn't. I was showing him respect and expecting it in return. I almost whispered because the purpose wasn't to embarrass him but to call to his attention that he was being disruptive and annoying for other customers with an expectation he would understand that means he should stop and that the train was perhaps not the most appropriate place for loudly rapping songs with the f- and n- words. I don't think he was intending to be rude. I think his music was on so loudly (I could hear it even though I was the furthest seat away from him in my direction) that he didn't even realize that when he was rapping to himself it was actually loud enough for the entire carriage to hear him.
This is about the fourth or fifth time something like this has happened to me on a train and I don't understand it. People are being rude - usually unintentionally so - and instead of just pointing it out or taking control of the situation in a respectful manner, everyone grumbles to themselves until they've worked themselves up into a frenzy and then feel the need to yell or punch someone.
One time, it was a group of children returning home in their school uniforms. About 20 of them entered a half-full carriage, stood in the aisles, and made a bunch of noise, sometimes bumping into other people, sometimes shouting down the carriage to talk to someone else. I kept listening to grown-up adults - sometimes in their mid-40s or -50s grumbling about the state of the world and these kids and all their noise, and why don't they just sit down, and blah blah blah. Finally, almost as annoyed with the "adults" on the train as I was with the kids, I stood up and said, "Okay, I think it's time now for everyone to sit down. Go find seats, take a friend or two with you, but you cannot continue to stand right here and act like this. It is a train, not a playground." All the students but 5 sat down. Four stood around their group's ringleader while he grumbled about how "she can't make me do nothing." That's fine. Again, I wasn't trying to make a show of it or tell him I could, in fact, make him do nothing or something or whatever that double negative is supposed to be indicating to me. I was only pointing out that their behavior was inappropriate based on social standards, expectations, and its impact on those around them. I didn't need them all to sit, but I needed enough of them to sit that the rest of us could hear ourselves think. Two of the students sat down across from me and we had a perfectly pleasant chat about their favorite classes and what they want to be when they grow up.
Another time, three boys were in the back of a carriage jumping around and three times fell into the woman closest to them. They never apologized and she didn't ask them to stop but clearly got more annoyed and upset and kept grumbling but never to them. So I told them to stop. I said they owed her an apology and that they should sit down. They looked mortified and did both things I suggested.
I raised the question this morning with some of my colleagues and students and every single person expressed shock at my reaction to the guy on the train last night. A couple joked and said "And you're still alive?" and some said it was a cultural difference that would lead me to do this. But I just don't understand why it's so difficult for people in the UK to speak up when something socially inappropriate is happening, particularly on trains. Instead, they wait until some stroppy footballer decides to beat a kid up, or they'll call the police, or somehow completely overreact to a situation that just needs a little "hey, do you understand you're being rude?" Particularly with children and young adults - they're still figuring themselves out. Most want a little boundary to show that society believes in them to be respectful and appropriate members.
Most people aren't trying to be arses, they're just (somewhat naturally) self-absorbed and don't realize the impact they have on others; and if no one ever tells them, they never will. When I was a child - which is *not* that long ago - if I was doing something socially inappropriate, any one in my neighbourhood would've felt entitled to tell me so and then report me to my parents. It was, admittedly, really freaking annoying. But it made me more aware of the social impact of my actions. And if I was in public outside of my neighbourhood, people still would've felt entitled to tell me to stop walking in the middle of the street, to stop jumping and running into people, and to stop rapping in a closed space when it is distracting and rude to the others in that closed space.
People keep talking about how parents take no responsibility anymore, but that same thing is true for the larger community. The community needs to re-establish itself as a part of the governance structure for youths. We need to take greater responsibility for reminding them when their behaviour is rude or inappropriate, and as long as we do so in a respectful manner - rather than one that is rude and inappropriate in itself - then I think we're more likely to get the type of response that I got today.
I realize that in my hometown, this standard of "correcting" younger people is no longer really viable. Some of that, I think, is probably linked to a racist fear that the young black people in my community are somehow more dangerous and more disrespectful than their white counterparts a generation ago were. The community dynamics have changed over the past 20 years, but that doesn't mean the community responsibility has. And nothing about my interaction with the younger people there has ever suggested that they are really that different from what we were: most will respond appropriately; some will be aggressive.
My parents generally cringe when I tell this story - partly because I think they're shocked I'm still alive - but when I was about 22 to 24, there was a group of about 20 young black men hanging out outside a house across the street when I came home one day. The family in that house had moved in after I left for college, so I didn't really know the kids and only knew the parents in passing. As I was getting out of my car, something caught my eye in the mirror so I turned around to watch one of these "kids" light a firecracker off in the direction of a moving car, one of our neighbors from down the street who had just pulled out. I couldn't believe the recklessness, particularly in an area of our street that has so many younger children. So I immediately marched over and asked the guy how old he was. He was confused and said, "What?" I said, "Hold old are you?" When he said he was 18, I said, "So, you're old enough to know better than to do something so reckless and stupid as to light a firecracker off at a moving vehicle. You could have gotten someone killed. You could've gotten your entire group of friends killed. It was a moving vehicle. You don't direct firecrackers at people and you don't direct them at moving vehicles or other people's property. You direct them at the sky. That's what grown-ups do and you are a grown-up. Don't do that again." He grumbled about how I couldn't tell him what to do and I said I most certainly could - as I was - but more importantly, I would make sure his mother knew what he was doing. The entire group started to walk off when one of them raised his hand in the air and shouted "Black power!" At which point I said, "Wait a minute!" and called them back over to lecture them on what black power means and how I supported black power and worked for it and black power was not the absence of morality or common sense but the throwing off of oppression and what they did was not an example of throwing off oppression, it was an example of juvenile delinquency, stupidity and disrespect. I said I never wanted to hear that any of them were using the phrase "Black power!" as an excuse for such behavior again in the future. Then I turned around and walked away.
Now, I realize that situation could have gone a hundred other ways, but it didn't. Now, if I were doing it again, I might not have been as aggressive to the group of young men, but perhaps I still would - it was over the top dangerous so it needed a serious and clear response. And if I had suddenly felt my safety in danger, I would've left earlier in the conversation. But, I didn't need to because they were 18 year old kids who knew what they did was wrong. They were trying to impress people with their bad-assness, and when it was clear it wasn't impressive, they realized it was kind of stupid. No, they weren't going to apologize because they were in a group of 20 or so young men, but they also didn't act as if they had a right to do what they did.
Kids will push to see what they can get away with. Heck - adults will, too. Because for the most part, we're all slightly inherently selfish creatures. But I don't understand people who are so afraid of offending other people that they won't take a moment to say "That's actually not okay," and instead will simply fume until someone gets up and assaults the person.
It wasn't hard, and yet several people said things as I sat back down suggesting I'd been brave. I wasn't. I was showing him respect and expecting it in return. I almost whispered because the purpose wasn't to embarrass him but to call to his attention that he was being disruptive and annoying for other customers with an expectation he would understand that means he should stop and that the train was perhaps not the most appropriate place for loudly rapping songs with the f- and n- words. I don't think he was intending to be rude. I think his music was on so loudly (I could hear it even though I was the furthest seat away from him in my direction) that he didn't even realize that when he was rapping to himself it was actually loud enough for the entire carriage to hear him.
This is about the fourth or fifth time something like this has happened to me on a train and I don't understand it. People are being rude - usually unintentionally so - and instead of just pointing it out or taking control of the situation in a respectful manner, everyone grumbles to themselves until they've worked themselves up into a frenzy and then feel the need to yell or punch someone.
One time, it was a group of children returning home in their school uniforms. About 20 of them entered a half-full carriage, stood in the aisles, and made a bunch of noise, sometimes bumping into other people, sometimes shouting down the carriage to talk to someone else. I kept listening to grown-up adults - sometimes in their mid-40s or -50s grumbling about the state of the world and these kids and all their noise, and why don't they just sit down, and blah blah blah. Finally, almost as annoyed with the "adults" on the train as I was with the kids, I stood up and said, "Okay, I think it's time now for everyone to sit down. Go find seats, take a friend or two with you, but you cannot continue to stand right here and act like this. It is a train, not a playground." All the students but 5 sat down. Four stood around their group's ringleader while he grumbled about how "she can't make me do nothing." That's fine. Again, I wasn't trying to make a show of it or tell him I could, in fact, make him do nothing or something or whatever that double negative is supposed to be indicating to me. I was only pointing out that their behavior was inappropriate based on social standards, expectations, and its impact on those around them. I didn't need them all to sit, but I needed enough of them to sit that the rest of us could hear ourselves think. Two of the students sat down across from me and we had a perfectly pleasant chat about their favorite classes and what they want to be when they grow up.
Another time, three boys were in the back of a carriage jumping around and three times fell into the woman closest to them. They never apologized and she didn't ask them to stop but clearly got more annoyed and upset and kept grumbling but never to them. So I told them to stop. I said they owed her an apology and that they should sit down. They looked mortified and did both things I suggested.
I raised the question this morning with some of my colleagues and students and every single person expressed shock at my reaction to the guy on the train last night. A couple joked and said "And you're still alive?" and some said it was a cultural difference that would lead me to do this. But I just don't understand why it's so difficult for people in the UK to speak up when something socially inappropriate is happening, particularly on trains. Instead, they wait until some stroppy footballer decides to beat a kid up, or they'll call the police, or somehow completely overreact to a situation that just needs a little "hey, do you understand you're being rude?" Particularly with children and young adults - they're still figuring themselves out. Most want a little boundary to show that society believes in them to be respectful and appropriate members.
Most people aren't trying to be arses, they're just (somewhat naturally) self-absorbed and don't realize the impact they have on others; and if no one ever tells them, they never will. When I was a child - which is *not* that long ago - if I was doing something socially inappropriate, any one in my neighbourhood would've felt entitled to tell me so and then report me to my parents. It was, admittedly, really freaking annoying. But it made me more aware of the social impact of my actions. And if I was in public outside of my neighbourhood, people still would've felt entitled to tell me to stop walking in the middle of the street, to stop jumping and running into people, and to stop rapping in a closed space when it is distracting and rude to the others in that closed space.
People keep talking about how parents take no responsibility anymore, but that same thing is true for the larger community. The community needs to re-establish itself as a part of the governance structure for youths. We need to take greater responsibility for reminding them when their behaviour is rude or inappropriate, and as long as we do so in a respectful manner - rather than one that is rude and inappropriate in itself - then I think we're more likely to get the type of response that I got today.
I realize that in my hometown, this standard of "correcting" younger people is no longer really viable. Some of that, I think, is probably linked to a racist fear that the young black people in my community are somehow more dangerous and more disrespectful than their white counterparts a generation ago were. The community dynamics have changed over the past 20 years, but that doesn't mean the community responsibility has. And nothing about my interaction with the younger people there has ever suggested that they are really that different from what we were: most will respond appropriately; some will be aggressive.
My parents generally cringe when I tell this story - partly because I think they're shocked I'm still alive - but when I was about 22 to 24, there was a group of about 20 young black men hanging out outside a house across the street when I came home one day. The family in that house had moved in after I left for college, so I didn't really know the kids and only knew the parents in passing. As I was getting out of my car, something caught my eye in the mirror so I turned around to watch one of these "kids" light a firecracker off in the direction of a moving car, one of our neighbors from down the street who had just pulled out. I couldn't believe the recklessness, particularly in an area of our street that has so many younger children. So I immediately marched over and asked the guy how old he was. He was confused and said, "What?" I said, "Hold old are you?" When he said he was 18, I said, "So, you're old enough to know better than to do something so reckless and stupid as to light a firecracker off at a moving vehicle. You could have gotten someone killed. You could've gotten your entire group of friends killed. It was a moving vehicle. You don't direct firecrackers at people and you don't direct them at moving vehicles or other people's property. You direct them at the sky. That's what grown-ups do and you are a grown-up. Don't do that again." He grumbled about how I couldn't tell him what to do and I said I most certainly could - as I was - but more importantly, I would make sure his mother knew what he was doing. The entire group started to walk off when one of them raised his hand in the air and shouted "Black power!" At which point I said, "Wait a minute!" and called them back over to lecture them on what black power means and how I supported black power and worked for it and black power was not the absence of morality or common sense but the throwing off of oppression and what they did was not an example of throwing off oppression, it was an example of juvenile delinquency, stupidity and disrespect. I said I never wanted to hear that any of them were using the phrase "Black power!" as an excuse for such behavior again in the future. Then I turned around and walked away.
Now, I realize that situation could have gone a hundred other ways, but it didn't. Now, if I were doing it again, I might not have been as aggressive to the group of young men, but perhaps I still would - it was over the top dangerous so it needed a serious and clear response. And if I had suddenly felt my safety in danger, I would've left earlier in the conversation. But, I didn't need to because they were 18 year old kids who knew what they did was wrong. They were trying to impress people with their bad-assness, and when it was clear it wasn't impressive, they realized it was kind of stupid. No, they weren't going to apologize because they were in a group of 20 or so young men, but they also didn't act as if they had a right to do what they did.
Kids will push to see what they can get away with. Heck - adults will, too. Because for the most part, we're all slightly inherently selfish creatures. But I don't understand people who are so afraid of offending other people that they won't take a moment to say "That's actually not okay," and instead will simply fume until someone gets up and assaults the person.
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