As a white guy, I have to say the frequency of these incidents is appalling. And I realize the vast, vast majority of these are not recorded, posted and “viraled” and yet are still all too real. I have grown up and lived in the south my whole life and have never been anywhere where this kind of behavior would be considered acceptable. The fact that anyone who is non-white has to deal with this kind of treatment on a regular basis is utterly infuriating. In their position, I am not sure how I would get up the stamina to leave my house! It must be exhausting. Maybe the increasing awareness of just how prevalent these things are (and the fact that the perpetrators seem to be actually held responsible and suffer consequences for their actions) may, perhaps, decrease the number of such incidents.
Her reaction at the end - “Wow.” , as if he’s the one who’s being disrespectful, is the best. This is textbook white, Christian, elitist bullshit.
That’s the rub; even after all the backlash this woman received because of the viral video, she probably still doesn’t realize that her actions were bigoted.
It’s probably never even occurred to her to question her own motivations for stopping and questioning the man.
Yep.
“Hey you, I’m the good person here, anyone can see that!”
This. Exactly.
Well, of course she was! She was wearing a Northface vest and her UGG boots! I mean come on!!!
/s
Actually I know it wasn’t because I confronted the person a couple weeks later. I was up early to go fishing and encountered this guy in the parking garage going around checking door handles. I yelled at him and he spooked and ran away.
I told building management and offered to identify him on the security cameras. Shortly after a note went around warning of thefts. Hasn’t happened since that morning so hopefully I scared him off. Upon reflection I should have grabbed my phone and started recording.
Next time I see you I’ll have a shiny new nickel for you.
I was a bit on the fence about whether this was entirely racially motivated (it could have also been a case of “no key, no entry”) until I read here ( More detailed article on The Daily Haze ) that she called the police anyway.
And for anyone else curious, Tribeca-STL is a housing development, but not the one in the video.
And finally - her estranged husband is a man of color.
Why is that?
I ask that because the end of the video clearly shows the man going into his own apartment, having used his key.
That the woman still called the police after the fact was just her escalating the problem she had created.
Also that “her estranged husband is a person of color” is highly irrelevant; as bigots make personal exceptions for ‘the good ones’ all the time.
I was just coming on here to post that. She followed him to his door, saw him open it with the key and STILL called the cops on him. How dare a black man live in my ritzy apt building!!
I had read those additional details earlier in the day and thought “WTF bearing does that have on anything?”
None at all, as far as I’m concerned.
Having friends or loved ones who happen to be “Other” in no way negates anyone’s bigotry.
No, it really isn’t.
Oh, is that so?
Your own initial comment and the inevitable ‘whataboutism’/“devil’s advocate” comments on any given forum whenever stories like these are reported seem to very strongly indicate otherwise.
In fact, the sheer amount of denial and lax attempts at marginalization every single time the subject of racism comes up seems to show that it’s very difficult for many White people to recognize racism when they see it.
She may have ruled out that course of action because she thought he’d step through rather than letting the door close. (Which she may have thought because she’s a racist.)
This story reminds me of an awkward (though not fraught with racism) interaction I had with a fellow European-American guy. I was walking into the big building I worked in. I had a fob (or, to be precise, a Weigand key) to unlock the door, but to save myself a few seconds’ effort tried to catch the door closing behind the guy ahead of me. He caught the door to pull it closed, to force me to follow the security protocol. We wrestled briefly (it can’t have been more than two seconds, and was probably less than one, but it seemed an eternity) until the reasonable part of my brain asked me what the fuck I was doing. I let go of the door and used my Weigand key.
I hadn’t expected him to act the way he did – the vast majority of people choose politeness over correct security protocol, especially if they would have to wrest the door out of somebody’s hand. It’s a building where people work (not live), and there’s an unsecured door on another side. And the individual offices have their own locks. So the stakes were low. But, strictly speaking, he was right and I was wrong.
This happened some years ago. In the several opportunities that have since arisin, nobody has been a stickler, though I have jokingly told the various strangers, “I should show you my work ID” or “I should make you prove your ID works here”. (I have long since moved to a building secured by my work ID rather than a separate Weigand card.)
I bring up this story just to say that this kind of situation is awkward before the racism even shows up. I explicitly do not claim that the woman in the video isn’t a racist. I think she is, and there was a bad interaction between her bigotry and a not-uncommon bit of door awkwardness.
[copy edit in graph 2: changed “force myself” to “force me”. I was the object but not the subject]
[copy edit in graph 3: removed duplicated article[
The article says there was a picture of her and her estranged husband circulating on social media. I’d guess it’s mentioned so he can publicly distance himself from her, and for that I don’t blame him one bit.
Im not sure she was racist. But I am puzzled. If she thought he was not meant to be in the building then she should have stepped out of the way and called someone. If she was concerned about him being a security risk she was taking an absurd risk in challenging him and following him into the building’s common parts.
So I infer that she challenged him but didnt consider him a real threat. How did she come to the conclusion he was non-violent but still a criminal? Maybe she just didnt think it through and then was too embarrassed to back down?
Obligatory:
Well we don’t see the beginning of this encounter that is for sure. We only see what happens AFTER he hauls out his phone and starts filming so as to not get caught in the trap of some white lady claiming some black man did such n such, arrest the varlet! I think white America, in particular the cops, are not understanding that cellphone cameras are ubiquitous, even on the very cheapest of phones. So now it isn’t white claims vs black claims, it is “roll the tape”. He didn’t start filming for grins. I bet he showed her his key fob but she still wouldn’t let him in. All it takes is her calling the cops and saying he is assaulting her (or gasp, she’s afraid!) and he could end up very much dead. White folks call the cops like it is room service or something.
I’ve lived in a multi-unit building and the polite thing to do is to avoid these situations in the first place. Some guy walks up to the door just as you are about to head out? Avert and tie your shoe again for a moment. Let them buzz themselves in.
I just read a Twitter thread from a woman who got home and discovered that UPS had delivered a package to her house by mistake. So she walked over to her neighbor’s house and knocked, but there was no answer, so she left a note and went back home.
Unbeknownst to her, her husband had also tried to return the package earlier that day. Twenty minutes after her visit, cops showed up. The neighbors had been home the whole time and called the police about “suspicious people” knocking on their door. Now considering that the cops came to this woman’s door, the neighbors clearly knew exactly who was knocking.
She gave the package to the cops to return.
