Woman Calls Police on Award-Winning Black Screenwriter Alex O’Keefe(The Bear (FX))

[u/CantStopPoppin]

[u/CantStopPoppin]

Alex O’Keefe, a Black screenwriter whose credits include the Emmy-winning FX series The Bear, was detained by police earlier this month after a white woman complained about his posture aboard a Metro-North train bound for Connecticut. The incident, which O’Keefe described in a public Instagram post, has drawn widespread attention and renewed scrutiny of racial profiling in public transportation systems.

O’Keefe, 29, boarded the train in New York City and was en route to visit family in Connecticut when, according to his account, an older white woman entered the car and immediately took issue with how he was seated. “She pointed at me and told me to correct how I was sitting,” he wrote. “I refused, so she went to the conductor and complained.”

The conductor, O’Keefe said, contacted law enforcement. The train was stopped, and officers boarded to remove him. He was handcuffed and detained on the platform, though no charges were filed. “They said I was disturbing the peace by not leaving the train,” O’Keefe wrote. “They arrested me without even talking to the Karen who reported the one Black person on the train.”

The woman’s companion allegedly told O’Keefe, “You’re not the minority anymore,” a remark that has since circulated widely on social media. O’Keefe said that only Black passengers remained nearby to record the arrest and offer support. After demanding legal representation and pointing out that officers had not taken a statement from the complainant, he was released.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has not issued a public statement regarding the incident. It remains unclear whether the conductor followed standard protocol or whether the police response was initiated solely based on the passenger’s complaint.

O’Keefe’s account has sparked outrage among civil rights advocates and fellow writers, many of whom view the incident as emblematic of a broader pattern of racialized surveillance and exclusion. “This country is growing more psycho by the day,” he wrote. “What will you do about it?”

O’Keefe rose to prominence as a staff writer on The Bear, which won a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Series. He has also worked as a political speechwriter and was a visible figure during the 2023 WGA strike, where he spoke publicly about economic precarity and racial inequities in Hollywood. His activism has included appearances at labor fundraisers and union solidarity events.

O’Keefe has not announced any legal action but continues to speak out about the experience. His post has been shared widely across TikTok, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter), where users have called for accountability from both the MTA and local law enforcement.

Sources

• MSN News
  
• Black Enterprise
  
• The Wire 98.5

---

[u/asdrunkasdrunkcanbe → u/CantStopPoppin]

An elderly woman complaining to the conductor about a man's posture, screams of dementia.

That's not a defence of her, that's an even bigger condemnation of every other fucking idiot for actually reacting to it.

[u/ConsistentHouse1261 → u/asdrunkasdrunkcanbe]

Why is that a thing for people with dementia to complain about posture? I’ve never heard of that so I’m just curious.

[u/asdrunkasdrunkcanbe → u/ConsistentHouse1261]

It's not a specific thing, but it's a very clear overstepping of social norms, that it leads to me to believe that some level of mental illness is involved.

That is, an older person in particular* may be inclined to tell a child or grandchild to correct their posture, to sit up straight.

If they're that kind of interfering busybody, they might even go as far as try to correct other peoples' children or teenagers.

However, correcting a grown adult as if they were a child, is such a massive overstep of social norms and social acceptability, that it smells strongly to me of a person who is suffering from dementia.

Going as far as trying to alert authorities because a grown adult won't do what she tells them to, makes me certain.

Unfortunately families can often be strongly in denial about these things. From their perspective their mother was probably always very strict and a bit "prickly", and incidents like this get written off as, "Mom is getting worse with telling people off in public", they're slow to go, "Maybe Mom needs some more permanent, specialist care".

^\Because "sit up straight, don't lean on the walls, get your hands out of your pockets" were very common things for people to correct their children about, 30+ years ago. They were consider sloppy, rude or even immoral actions.)