White dude is full of shit, the black guy is telling the truth. Watch the AC transit video again and listen to what Tom says in the beginning, "how much you charge for spit-shinning my shoes", said it twice, and as a black guy who knows the history of course you'd be offended.
Bullshit. The white guy was talking to his friend about borrowing a pair of shoes and wanting them spit shined. The black guy misheard him, and asked why a black guy "gotta shine your shoes." The (admittedly crazy) white guy then misheard the black guy, thinking that the black guy was offering to shine his shoes. From the black guy's perspective, it was a racist attack. From the white guy's perspective, it was somebody overhearing a conversation, offering assistance, then being offended for no reason at all. My question is, would the black guy have stopped punching the white guy once he covered his head and had obviously had enough?
Yeah I was gonna say (maybe not to that extent), that before the "How much?" conversation, there was still conversation going on before that.
the whole shining shoes thing was clearly just a misunderstanding. but yes, the white guy is completely crazy and the black guy doesn't seem completely crazy.
Bullshit. The white guy does cocaine, other drugs and is a criminal, first the white guy says he was borrowing money, then he says his money was stolen, first he says he's going to funeral, then says his mother died 2 or 3 days later, he is a nut case guys, see on the interview with the radio guy, he goes berserk when the radio dude tells him that the black guy would kick his ass, he starts cussing, screaming, etc. He is a racist motherfucker. No other way to say it. Black guy was drunk, yes he overreacted but the white guy kept instigating him more and more, saying he's not scared, I beat the shit of people like you, etc etc. Plus when he threw the first two or three punches and the black guy was down, the white old guy kept punching and punching until some other guy kind of pulled him off a bit.
Exactly, white guy is a nut case, shouldn't be out in streets. (doing drugs and beating up people, with a i am motherfucker shirt)
the white guy is crazy, but not for any of the reasons you state. he said he was borrowing money and then his money got stolen. how does that not make sense? the money he was borrowing got stolen. seems simple enough. he's going to his mom's funeral. he did say his mom died 2 or 3 days later, but i didn't take that to be 2 or 3 days after the fight. in reality, he probably meant 2 or 3 days earlier and just mixed up his words. and no, nothing about the interview suggested that he was racist. is he crazy? clearly. is he unstable? obviously. is it possible that it's dangerous to others for him to be out on the streets? i'd say so. but i didn't see anything racist.
Just saw it, I'm obviously late to the party. Only saw it once too so might not have all the details right but... The white guy is clearly a racist asshat. If I were ever fucking insane enough to tell a black man to shine my shoes in any context I would fully expect the black guy to beat the piss out of me. If I was black and some guy was joking about me shining his shoes I wouldn't have been as tolerant as the black guy in this video. Even if he isn't "prejudiced" and was purely joking he knows what the implications could be. The way I saw it the black guy didn't punch him but I could definitely be wrong. He did put his hand on him though so, again, he can't be surprised that the white dude went ape shit. Hate to be race-centric but, once more, if I was a black man I would be very careful about punching a white guy on a bus. If there's a court case where a black guy punches a white man 20 years older than him on a bus how do you think that ends? That being said the black guy doesn't handle the situation well either. And as far as breaking up fights go, I'd say its proper to try and break up fights in general but bus people are fucking nuts. I hear all you guys saying race is brought up too much but you can't ignore it in this video IMO.
Maybe if someone is black and hears something about shining shoes and then decides to butt in, that person should expect to get the piss beaten out of THEM? Being sensitive to shining shoes is weak sauce. There's no dramatic racial or cultural history associated with shining shoes... we're talking about a few decades, at most. Some African American offered to shine my shoes in a casino the other day... the only reason I even thought about his race is because of this thread. Many, many white people aren't willing to walk on eggshells about something as trivial as shoe-shining. Ed O.
