In addition to the dismissive canard that “cities are noisy” — and therefore residents should never do anything to make them quieter — the other recurrent shibboleth we hear from noise denialists is that reducing excessive and unhealthy noise is somehow “racist.”
The only thing this deflective assertion reveals is the desperation and / or ignorance of the people who use it, because it implies that 1) only certain “races” make noise,1 and 2) the person saying it knows which ones make noise in Providence — both of which are actual racist statements, unlike saying that excessive noise is unhealthy for everyone and we need to reduce sound levels.
It further implies that Providence residents awakened at 3:00 a.m. by a vehicle with a modified muffler driving by is able to determine the race of its owner, and how sleep-deprived and angry they are depends on whether that person is a member of group X or group Y. This is what passes for deep insight on noise.
Hundreds of millions of people around the world are exposed to excessive and unhealthy noise from people of the same ethnicity as they are, prompting the former to try to reduce it. There’s simply no factual or rational basis for denialist claims that only certain groups make noise, and thus efforts to address it are inherently “racist.”
Even if we assume they’re only referring to Providence (or RI / the U.S.) — since noise denialists are notoriously provincial, yet think their perspective is universal — there is excessive noise in cities and towns all over the country, irrespective of how diverse or homogeneous they are.
Fireworks, modified mufflers, and speakers (or their equivalents) are sold all over the U.S. and around the world. Everyone is capable of making excessive noise. And its adverse health effects aren’t based on who makes it, but how loud / frequent / sustained it is. The issue is how to reduce it for everyone’s well-being.
Moreover, this line of thinking further requires us to believe that only members of specific racial groups — and no one else — ever installs modified mufflers on their vehicles, or sets off fireworks, uses over-amplified stereos, etc. All of which are easily disproven by sales data for such products around the U.S. (and all over the world).
In reality, only a small subset of any group intentionally generates excessive noise, and broad sectarian claims to the contrary are simply an effort to deflect attention away from the real issue, which is the public health effects it has on the vast majority of residents who do not do so — in the same way that smokers and their apologists asserted a non-existent “right” to expose everyone else to carcinogens, rather than address their effect on others.
But as with smoking, long-term scientific research shows that everyone needs to limit their exposure to excessive noise, and one’s race / ethnicity / cultural identity cannot and does not change that. And just like Big Tobacco’s historical efforts to deny that cigarette smoke is bad for everyone’s health, pretending that exposing other people to unhealthy noise is some sort of sectarian entitlement — and thus that seeking to reduce it is racist — is simply a pathetic attempt to deny the truth.
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1 The very idea of so-called “race” itself is a purely social construct, and doesn’t actually exist as a function of human physiology — i.e., there is no objective biological determination of whether a person is part of one race or another.