Pregnant NYC Bike "Karen" was the victim, not the agressor

[littleripper]

Trial by social media for a pregnant woman who cried when a man tried to steal the bike she's hired is tried and hung by social media, and put on unpaid leave from her job, with no evidence or investigation:

https://www.bicycling.com/news/a43920956/pregnant-nyc-karen-on-video-trying-to-steal-a-black-mans-citi-bike/

https://news.yahoo.com/receipts-show-hospital-worker-accused-170920174.html

It turns out she had paid for the bike and he has no evidence he paid. But he is not the subject of the internets wrath, no consequences for him.

I hope she takes her employers to court and wins a massive settlement. Surreal levels of misogyny and hatred directed to a pregnant healthcare worker who did nothing wrong at all.

Will this ever be recognised for what it is?

Well this is a very interesting read indeed. Thanks for posting it

This is heart breaking. And what we, as mothers of black children have been trying to say. We know how this go. We have been there time and time again.

I can not understand how a human being who is so passionate about the rights of women, are so unable to extend that same belief for equality to race. Someone earlier posted so much more eloquently than me. This is so distressing.

You told me pretending to cry, which you think she did, is racist. Her behaviour wasn't ideal, I totally agree, but the racism has been assumed from her behaviour and the assumption has led to real life consequences for her. Neither party covered themselves in glory and I've said that more than once. They were all annoyed and each side thought they were in the right. I want to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, the young man as much as her, I think they both thought they were right and neither was trying to start all this kicking off. Her behaviour was meanspirited maybe, but meanspirited isn't what she's been villified for. I accept we are coming at this from a different starting point and I appreciate you being willing to discuss it, even if we can't agree

If I were the mother of a black male in the US I'd be very scared for his safety too, no argument there.

But what they've said in the interview doesn't change that the woman has been painted as a racist and been suspended form her job, for an argument not about race in which both parties still think they were in the right.

That interview is certainly an interesting read. From what he’s said my earlier theory about him trying to “bag” the bike is correct. I didn’t realise about the 45 min reset thing which explains why the bike was available for her to book it. By his own admission the bike was not his at the time of the video, but he was trying to prevent others from taking it as he wanted it a short while later when the time period was up. So when in the video he was saying he’d paid for it and it was his bike he knew he was lying. By his own statement he doesn’t come out of it well.

Now if what he’s saying is correct in that he was holding the bike while it was docked the whole time and told her not to scan that bikes code then she has been silly trying to take it. But even in that situation i can see why she’d be annoyed, you aren’t allowed to reserve bikes like that. Would it have been better to walk away? Probably. But she’s tired it’s the only electric bike…..I can see why she wanted it. I can see why he wanted it too.

but she says he wasn’t holding it, she scanned it and had got on it when she says they started telling her not to take it and physically pushing the bike back to redock it. I can see why she was intimidated by that. And why she felt the bike was hers both technically and morally.

I can see why he redocks the bike every 45 mins but if you’re doing that to avoid paying then the risk is someone takes it during the cool-down period and he really ought to accept that.

If she was fake crying then I agree that’s very wrong.

I think the response of society to this event is the right one and we should be pushing for a societal response to patriarchy to be similar to this one - we have a long way to go on that front.

The societal response to this event is that a white woman has been vilified as a racist and is in danger of losing her job, and a black teenage lad has been vilified as a thug and has had to take time off school.

What do you think has been gained by this approach? To me it looks like an all round trial-by-mob shitshow that has achieved nothing, but perhaps I'm missing something.

I absolutely do not want a similar societal response to patriarchy.

So according to his interview he had docked the bike and was waiting on it to release and the nurse rented it. He then told her it was his bike because he had been riding it all day and it was docked to keep the time from charging extra. So according to his interview with newsone he was not in possession of the bike as it was docked.

He had docked the bike according to his interview with newsone

No one comes out looking like a saint here. Overall, as I understand it, these city bike programs are meant to encourage environmentally friendly commuting. Based on the interview with the teenage boy, low income residents get a reduced price for 45 minute rides (possibly for free? I wasn't sure I was interpreting the receipts correctly). As described, it sounds as if the logic behind the price increasing after 45 minutes, is that the bike program allows free users to have 45 minutes of "fun" riding and then they want to encourage you to relinquish the bike so it can be used for its intended purpose of commuting. It's not exactly "in the spirit of things" to repeatedly use the low cost E-bike privilege from 5 pm to 10 pm, for what amounts to joyriding, thus preventing someone from using it to commute, especially as rush hour is going to fall right in the middle of that. I can understand, however, if he and his friends were now a 45 minute bike ride from home, that it would not be palatable, at that point, to give up the E-bike and have to ride another one home manually. And, according to his story, although he and his friends were gaming the system by physically holding the bikes until they reset, to prevent other users accessing them, and doing so multiple times per day, they weren't doing anything technically illegal or (from what I can tell) against the terms and conditions of using the bike.

On the other hand, it's also not super nice to game the system using the new E-bikes on riding for fun when there's a pregnant woman (of any race) who would like to get home after work. The bike gives you 45 minutes at a low cost for leisure, why not be happy with that? Why circumvent the reset period that was clearly designed to encourage return of the bikes to general use, so that you can extend your leisure ride to the span of hours? And, just as the teens didn't really want to ride 45 minutes home on their own steam, I doubt the pregnant woman fresh off a 12 hour shift wanted to do so either. I'm not sure about the validity of considering yourself to have "reserved" an E-bike (that is, officially, not currently rented by anyone) by physically holding on to it for 20 minutes until it resets.

Her behavior doesn't look great either. If I were in her position and a group of teens were physically holding E-bikes that they had not, in fact, rented (just waiting for them to reset for rental), and preventing paying users from renting them, I would be pretty upset I think, but I would probably just walk away and take the subway or whatever. The details of her story and his story about how she got on the bike, are different, so I'm not sure how I would parse working out who was right or wrong there. In the video she was already on the bike, from what I could tell.

If I were the Bike rental company, I would probably change the reservation system so the same user could not rent the same bike twice in a row like that, even with the reset period. If you leave a gap in your system, people will game it, and ultimately you'll end up with a system that is not useful for commuting, which defeats the purpose.

Because it sounds to me that what you are saying via a vis racism is that you want people of colour to have the same response of society as patriarchy which is a shrug.

Nope. No idea where you're getting that from. Wanting people to not have their lives turned upside down based on 'some people believe she meant so-and-so/was fake crying' isn't the same as wanting racism and sexism to just be shrugged at.

I think the response of society to this event is the right one

Society's response has hardly been unified, has it? Certain sections have made horrifically racist comments about the lads. Other sections have been awful about the woman. Many press outlets and commentators rushed to brand her a lying, racist thief before performing a swift reverse-ferret, having to delete and apologise. I'm struggling to get enthusiastic about any of this as "the right response".

Based on standards in this thread, I could craft an argument about why the lads directly involved were sexist and part of an age-old institutional misogyny problem based on their denying the woman access to a resource she was entitled to, videoing her and releasing it to humiliate/shame her, physically restricting her movements, lying about her. But I don't know them, and it wouldn't seem fair.

Well said. I can totally see how teenagers would think it’s okay to hang on to a bike at a reduced rate for much longer than intended by the bike company. I would have probably thought the same when I was 17.
At the same time the bikes are there to share, and City Bike as a business is probably also relying on people paying the full price.
Again, I fully understand if teenagers don’t see it that way, I just think both sides were being unreasonable here.

Based on standards in this thread, I could craft an argument about why the lads directly involved were sexist and part of an age-old institutional misogyny problem based on their denying the woman access to a resource she was entitled to, videoing her and releasing it to humiliate/shame her, physically restricting her movements, lying about her. But I don't know them, and it wouldn't seem fair.

Exactly. I personally think her reaction was over the top, but her motivation might have been racist, or she might have been annoyed about perceived teenage cheek/ male entitlement. We don’t know for sure.

It is more likely they filmed her to protect themselves should the police turn up. We tell our children to immediately start filming any interaction with white adults they feel intimidated by.

That’s understandable if they filmed her to protect themselves in case the police turned up.
Posting the video online is a different matter though.

Analyse of what happened by Greg Foreman.
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Poor woman. Seems white women in the US are having an unfortunate time of it recently. But as a PP said just above, yes - when a Black boy, especially, finds himself in a situation like this - before saying/doing anything he needs to get out his smartphone and record. An interaction like that in the US would have likely got him shot and in the UK strong-armed into a van to god knows where.

The lad wasn’t renting the bike at the time. He only intended to rent it again but as it isn’t his bike, it was always going to be subject to availability. The same rules apply to a pedestrian trying to bag an empty parking space.

Technically yeah he wasn’t renting it at the time, but he did have proof he was going to after a couple of minutes…

Yeah what he did was “rude” as such, but it wasn’t against the law. Plus he was 18..would you let a kid be stranded from home 45 mins away and no way home?

It’s a difficult case.

Would you rather leave a pregnant woman who’s just finished a hospital shift with no means to get home?

Is the hardship bigger for a fit young man?

Agreed. And he wouldn’t have had no way of getting home. He could have gone to another bike hire rack and taken one from there… or taken one of the other bikes on the rack in question if there was one there. He was hardly stranded. These things must be all over the city and the onus should not have been the person, who was first in line to go elsewhere, rather on the person, who is not ready to leave.

The closest comparison I can think of is someone, who bagsy’s a spot on a supermarket check out queue, but doesn’t yet have the trolley because the person they’re with is still shopping. They then won’t let others behind past when they get to the front.

So everyone says she could have used another bike but so could he. I did email Citi bike and the sitting on a docked bike does not mean you get that bike back. If another customer wants to bike you have to give it to them.

The nurse was renting a bike that was docked and did not belong to anyone at the time. The young man said so in his interview with newsone. He said himself the bike was docked because he was waiting on it to release because he docked it to not incur charges. He said he is on government assistance and gets to ride the e-bike free 45 minutes and then has to dock it or it will charge for the ride. He and his friends do it all the time. He wanted to continue riding the bike so he docked it and was waiting on it to release to his card. The nurse in the mean time came and scanned the code so he pushed it back into the docking station so she couldn’t rent it and reserved it using his phone.

As the truth emerges some posters seem to have disappeared ...

'The truth'... She's probably in shock tbh, women like her are often used to getting their own way where Black people are concerned. When they turn on the water works and someone helpfully suggests calling the police is usually the middle stage by which these women 'win', the third and final stage is when the cops actually turn up. Tis a historically well worn tradition and it appears the woman trying to claim the bike is rather rattled that the routine didn't appear to work for her this time. Quite a shock I'd imagine.

To be honest, no one comes off good in this.

The kid was cheeky for “bagging” a bike he was going to use after a time limit, however, most people would have understood and gone for something else.

She was cheeky for trying to take it by force but she had also worked a 12 hour shift and was pregnant.

Everyone was to blame.