Public transportation fight videos: a case study in urban race relations?

If activity on YouTube is any indication, the San Francisco public transportation system seems to be a hot bed for conflict, and the fact that the city's residents are a tech-savvy crowd means that incidents are regularly caught on camera. A quick search on YouTube turns up lots of results. A new video uploaded on Tuesday already has a whopping 1.6 million views at the time of this post.

Last fall, this video of two women fighting on the Stockton route of the San Francisco MUNI (the Bay Area's bus system) went viral practically overnight. It has 870,000 views to date.

Several altercations between the police officers and passengers of the Bay Area's underground railway system, BART, have also been video taped and uploaded to YouTube. Most recently, this violent scuffle between a rowdy BART rider and a BART policeman ended in the two shattering a glass window, badly cutting themselves. Most notoriously, the fatal shooting of a young man named Oscar Grant, whose death was captured on numerous cell phone cameras, spread quickly around the web and YouTube became a virtual town hall in which users expressed their anger and pain and shared their tributes to the fallen Grant.

The video posted yesterday shows two grown men -- one white, one black -- arguing in the back of a MUNI bus in Oakland, California. Things escalate and quickly turn physical while another passenger documents the whole thing on camera. Viewer discretion is advised as some strong language is used and violence breaks out towards the end.



Racial tension appears to have played a key role in this dispute, and many believe that the Oscar Grant shooting in Oakland also revealed racial prejudice; Grant was a young black man who was unarmed and appeared to be doing nothing wrong, and the officer who shot him was white. Many of the response videos uploaded to YouTube questioned whether racism was in play. The video that shows the two women - one Chinese, one black - attacking each other over a free bus seat also makes you cringe; there's so much anger bottled up that suddenly erupts.

Those who have ridden on a public bus as it transports people through the different neighborhoods of San Francisco may have experienced the unique mixing of cultures and classes on public transportation, perhaps unlike any other social forum. We continue to watch as members of the community decide over and over again to document these conflicts and upload them to YouTube so others can watch.

In San Francisco unique in the number of incidents and/or the frequency with which they are captured on camera? How often are racial tensions to blame? Do skirmishes like these happen on public transportation systems everywhere?

We're curious to hear from you.

Update: The older white man featured in the latest MUNI bus video is apparently the same man being tasered by the police in this YouTube video at an Oakland A's baseball game, reports the San Francisco Examiner.

YouTube users respond to "Gates-Gate"

You've probably heard about the controversial arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr - an esteemed scholar of African-American history and literature at Harvard - who was taken into custody last week by Cambridge police officer, James Crowley, for "disorderly conduct." The quick backstory is that Gates had lost his keys and was trying to get into his own home, and a neighbor who did not recognize him decided to call the police and report a possible break-in attempt. Crowley was the police officer who responded to the call, and when he approached the house, he found a very angry Gates who was not happy about having to explain himself. After some allegedly heated back-and-forth (the details are still not entirely clear), Crowley ended up arresting Gates in front of his home, and Gates ended up accusing Crowley of being a racist. Though charges have been dropped, Gates is still mad, and Crowley refuses to apologize.

The incident has set the blogosphere ablaze about whether or not the color of Gates' skin had an impact on how events played out. Was it racial profiling? Was Office Crowley doing his job? Would this have happened if Gates had lighter skin? Even President Obama offered his two cents during his press conference on Wednesday, stirring up even more discussion and debate.

Members of the YouTube community are joining the national conversation, too, and posting video responses to YouTube. Check out a few below:

Xpandergt argues that what happened is not "racial profiling":

Zennie62 weighs in with his perspective about how race may have played a role:

TheArtofTheComment blames the media and public discourse for pushing "aside our efforts at critical thinking in favor of making broad partisan statements about race relations":

User joegully calls Gates a "disgrace" for using race to draw attention to himself:

A representative from ConservativeNewMedia shares his thoughts on Obama's remarks about the Gates incident: