NGOs and activists claim White people are ‘racist’ for complaining about too much noise, label it ‘volume racism’: “To say that speaking loudly would be the prerogative of racialized people is an intellectual manipulation,” says historian Virginie Girod

Anti-racism organizations and ethnic-group activists in France are trying to link those who complain about noise on buses, trains, and subways with racism.

The question is not just about how immigration is leading to record population levels in Western countries, which means more people in cars, buses, and on the streets and invariably increases noise pollution, but also how these different ethnic groups and cultures conduct themselves in relation to “noise,” all the way from personal conversations on a bus to how they celebrate weddings and other events.

According to the anti-racist North African interest group, NEOIFRI, those who express concerns about people speaking too loudly or making claims like “your weddings are to noisy,” are guilty of the new term “volume racism.”

Europe, which features a culture that traditionally values quiet and a respect for lower volumes in public spaces, is unlike much of the rest of the world, where noise reins supreme. The issue has led to public laws being changed in France, as Muslims and different non-European groups are known to conduct, for example, loud weddings that can cause public disturbances and feature convoys of cars honking their horns. Some of these weddings have even become dangerous, resulting in French municipalities in Seine-Saint-Denis, Alsace, and even Vaucluse and Bouches-du-Rhône establishing strict noise pollution laws to guarantee quiet for the citizens. The politicians behind the laws argue that they are necessary due to loud horns and “urban rodeos,” which involve drivers doing tricks and skidding out their vehicles in circles, which have even resulted in the death of young pedestrians.

The phenomenon of honking Muslim car convoys is not just relegated to France either; this video from Germany demonstrates it is a typical spectacle in cities across that country as well.