A black attorney in Arizona had a package mistakenly delivered to his home by UPS last week. Although the package is addressed to someone who lives just on the next block, he is waiting for UPS to come get the package and take it to the right house instead of taking it to his neighbor himself, and he has a good reason why.
In a Facebook post on Friday, Sean Carter said that neither he nor his teenage sons would be taking the package to the neighbor. Why?
“The answer is because we’re black,” Carter wrote. “And it’s extremely unsafe to send our boys to the home of any family that we don’t know in this predominantly white neighborhood.”
Carter explained that there is “a realistic chance” that one of his neighbors would see his son as a threat and call the police on him—or, worse yet, pull a gun.
Carter then cited the example of 14-year-old Brennan Walker, who nearly lost his life earlier this month after attempting to ask for directions at a home in Rochester Hills, Mich. The homeowner, thinking that Walker was attempting to rob her in broad daylight by knocking on her door, summoned her husband—who opened fire on Walker.
“THAT is why this fucking package will be sitting on my porch until UPS retrieves it. Because I can’t trust that my white neighbors won’t see me, a Harvard-educated lawyer (or my 14 yo honor student son) as a roaming homicidal maniac,” Carter wrote.
“THIS is what it’s like to be black in “post-racial” America,” he added.
Not surprisingly, Carter’s post—which was public on Facebook—received a lot of feedback, including from white people who just couldn’t understand why he should be afraid at all.
It’s like these people don’t watch the news or don’t believe the news they see, hear and read, or something.
Carter wrote in a follow-up post that white people had shown up in his comments and in his inbox calling him everything from a “racist” to an “asshole” to a “pussy,” all because he didn’t want to put himself or his son in danger by showing up unannounced on some unsuspecting white person’s doorstep.
I seriously encourage you to click on both of the links, read some of the insane comments people have left him and watch how whiteness works.
Then, when you have had your fill of white tears, white fragility and white privilege, ask yourself: Can you blame him?