Noise denialists resort to two frequently (and easily) refuted deflections when attempting to dismiss concerns about excessive noise: First, that “cities are noisy” — implying that municipalities and their residents cannot or should not even try to make them quieter — and that doing so is somehow “racist.”
The obvious response to the latter is that it effectively asserts that only certain racial groups make noise,1 and that the person saying it knows which ones they are — both of which are far more overt examples of racism than any efforts to reduce unhealthy noise levels.
Moreover, those wildly unsubstantiated claims are undermined by two undeniable facts:
- Excessive noise is prevalent all over the U.S. and around the world — including places without significant racial minorities, or where U.S. racial minorities actually constitute the majority.
- The human autonomic response to noise is not affected by the racial identity of the person making it or being exposed to it — excessive noise is unhealthy for everyone.2
To be clear: Providence residents awakened in the middle of the night by a vehicle with a modified muffler don’t know the race of the person driving it, and won’t be any less sleep-deprived if it’s someone whose group identity they coincidentally share or support. Do we actually have to point that out?
Billions of people around the world are exposed to excessive and unhealthy noise, in most cases by members of the same racial group they are, yet that doesn’t prevent many of them from trying to reduce it. Similarly, there is excessive noise in every U.S. city (and many towns) irrespective of how diverse or homogeneous their populations are.
Simply put, noise is not a function of race — every group can and does generate some form of it at some point somewhere — and thus neither are efforts to try to reduce it to healthier levels. Noise Project supporters do not care who is making excessive noise, we just want them to stop doing it.3
The real issue regarding noise is its broad public health effects — similar to cigarette smoke — and attempts by denialists to assert a contrived entitlement (often relying on racial identity) to continue exposing others to it, rather than acknowledging those effects and the need to address them.
As with smoking, decades of scientific research indicate that everyone exposed to excessive noise is adversely affected by it, and that racial identity can‘t alter that. And much like Big Tobacco’s efforts to deny that cigarette smoke is bad for everyone’s health, false claims that unhealthy noise is a racial privilege that has no effects — but that seeking to prevent its effects is racist — are the real injustice.
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1 The idea of separate “races” itself is a social (not scientific) construct that doesn’t actually exist as a function of human physiology — there is no objective biological basis to determine whether a person is a member of one race or another. What is often asserted as “race” is actually national or regional culture, which does not vitiate broader public-health needs.
Fireworks, modified mufflers, and audio speakers are available all over the U.S. and the world, and their purchase and use are hardly restricted to members of specific racial groups — as is easily demonstrated by sales data for those products. But why let inconvenient facts get in the way of a convenient deflection, right?
2 The primary determinant of the adverse effects of noise is how loud it is — summed up in the axiom “The dose makes the poison.” To a lesser degree, it can also matter when the noise is generated (e.g., late at night, disrupting people’s sleep) and where (e.g., near hospitals, schools, assisted-living facilities, etc).