From the ABC TV show “What Would You Do”:

What happens when a black man brings his white girlfriend into a barbershop in Harlem?

The best part? The moment the black woman/mother who openly denounced the racist barber ("you are ignorant") and defended the young white woman, explains to the host of “What Would You Do” that she did what she did because it was "just the Brooklyn in me." Why is this of any importance? Because what motivated her was not a racial ethic but an urban one.

I recall once stepping into a cab in the middle of Midtown Manhattan and requesting a ride to some place in the upper part of Lower Manhattan. The driver (a black African) thought for a minute (there was a red light ahead and traffic building behind us) and decided the money wasn't good enough and told me he didn't want to drive me there. When I stepped out of the idiot's cab, a driver in the truck behind the cab honked repeatedly and loudly at me (the light was now green and the cab was gone). I looked at him. The driver (a white male New Yorker) looked me, threw up his hands up, stuck his head out of the window and said: "What the hell are you doing? If you are in the cab, the driver has to take you where you want to go. That's rule. Don't you understand that? Those are the rules."

Despite all of their problems, New Yorkers of all colors have an usually deep sense of an urban ethic.