A Black writer for the Emmy-winning FX series The Bear has revealed what he claims was an incident of racial profiling. Writer Alex O’Keefe said he was removed from a New York commuter train and detained by police after a white passenger complained about how he was sitting on the train. O’Keefe took to social media to document his experience of “sitting while Black.”
Black writer detained after complaint from white woman on commuter train
An Instagram account attributed to O’Keefe posted about the incident earlier in September. “I was arrested on the @MTA train to Connecticut today, pulled off, handcuffed, and detained,” O’Keefe wrote at the beginning of an account of his encounter. “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.” O’Keefe detailed the racial aspect of the encounter: “While waiting for the police to arrive, the old Karen’s friend said ‘You’re not the minority anymore.’”
Once he refused police requests to leave the train by declaring that he was not doing anything wrong, O’Keefe said that police “pulled me off the train and arrested me without even talking to the Karen who reported the one black person on the train.” He noted that “on the platform, the police detained me and interrogated me,” and noted that “only black folks stayed nearby and recorded the arrest.” O’Keefe’s account is accompanied by two videos, one shot on the train from his perspective as he argues with police, who eventually remove him and accuse him of being “disorderly” and “resisting.” A second video, from the perspective of a bystander, shows O’Keefe apparently handcuffed and facing a wall as he’s questioned by four police officers who are surrounding him. The Instagram post also contains still images of the complaining passenger and her companion, who both appear to be older white individuals.
O’Keefe decries ‘sitting while Black’ incident as MTA defends actions
In a statement to Entertainment Weekly, O’Keefe said, “The last thing any Black man wants is a viral arrest video.” O’Keefe, who won a Writers Guild Awards as part of the creative team for The Bear when the show won the 2023 Best Comedy Series award, explained, “I worked my entire life in politics and culture to be taken seriously, and to make our country a better place. But my accomplishments and awards cannot protect me from the violence we’ve all normalized. American life is full of brutal irony.”
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, meanwhile, has defended the actions of its officers. In its own statement to Entertainment Weekly, the MTA said its officers “responded to a report of a disorderly passenger” and that “a conductor reported a passenger occupying two seats had refused to remove his feet from one of the seats.” According to the MTA, O’Keefe was removed after refusing to voluntarily exit the train and although handcuffed, he was not arrested. The MTA stated that O’Keefe was “issued a summons for disorderly conduct” before being allowed to board a later train. O’Keefe, meanwhile, has stated that he plans to take legal action over the incident. “Sitting while Black is not illegal,” he said in his statement to Entertainment Weekly.
The experience as described by O’Keefe matches the experiences of many other Black people across the country who have had the force of police sent against them on the complaints of white strangers. O’Keefe’s story seems to illustrate yet again how personal success or accolades do not make Black people immune from having their behavior policed in public.