Dear White People,
While this story of a white man in North Carolina who was arrested for intimidating a black poll worker seems like another incident of racism, I would like to use this as a teachable moment. I would like you to take note of this story and use it as an example of when it is okay to call the police on someone, because...
You’re doing it wrong.
A North Carolina man was arrested for intimidating a poll worker after he made ethnic slurs and threatened a black man volunteering at an early voting site.
Derek L. Partee told the Raleigh News and Observer that when he arrived at the Charlotte, NC voting location where he was serving as a volunteer on Wednesday afternoon, other poll workers alerted him to a group of people who had been in the parking lot taking photos all day. Partee, who is black, decided to take down the license plate number of the suspicious lurkers, because you can never tell what those people are up to. They could’ve been in there making potato salad or planning some kind of evil gentrification project.
But notice, my alabaster-skinned friends, that Derek didn’t call the police just yet.
As a retired New York homicide detective, Partee knew that the people sitting in their car making his co-workers feel uncomfortable was not a crime. So he just took down the license plate number.
When the people in the car spotted Partee watching them, they got out of the car and started making racial slurs at him.
“He said something about being a Republican. I said ‘I am a Republican,’ he said ‘Motherfucker you ain’t shit,’” Partee told the paper. “They didn’t care whether I was a Democrat or a Republican, they just cared that I was black.”
Did Partee call the police? No, he didn’t, my dear cucumber water-drinking compadres. Partee thought it was offensive, but the two men and one woman hadn’t necessarily broken the law, even when they called Partee a “nigger” and a “piece of shit.”
It was only when one of the men threatened Partee and lifted up his shirt to expose a pistol that Partee decided to call the police. (And post it on Facebook, of course. You gotta post it on the ‘book!)
The police eventually arrested Jason Donald Wayne, whose name sounds like he mostly spends his time in a dark basement sharpening knives while thinking about the girl who left him in high school. Wayne was charged with numerous offenses, including ethnic intimidation and communicating a threat, WSOC reports.
Officers determined that the gun Wayne was flashing was actually a BB gun and found that the two people who appeared with Wayne in synchronized black skull T-shirts did not break any laws besides a few fashion rules. I don’t advise judging people by their looks, but the two other people look like they were just up to shenanigans, and Jason Donald is that one friend who always takes it too far. They probably didn’t know him that well and had only seen him by the flickering light of the crystal meth torch.
This story just keeps getting more twisted, like a bizarro world inside a funhouse mirror. Remember that part about Partee saying he was a Republican? That wasn’t just the fear talking. Partee is the vice-chairman of the GOP group in his congressional district, and is looking to unseat the Democratic incumbent.
This was Wayne’s fourth arrest in two years, court records show, none of his other arrests were for bandana-related crimes. The Root could not confirm if he calls himself “J.D.” or has a “Thug Life” tattoo.
Black Republicans. White Thugs. Police arresting white people. North Carolina having an “ethnic intimidation law.” I’m getting dizzy. Dis tew much.
Lesson over.