Imagine a white man who is so committed to old-fashioned American racism that even the smallest perceived offense coming from a Black person becomes the perfect excuse to start displaying Ku Klux Klan memorabilia in an attempt at clapping back. A Black woman in Michigan doesn’t have to imagine it, because she apparently lives right next door to a white man who displayed a Klan flag in a window facing her home because she committed the egregious offense of...installing a security camera on her home.
According to Fox 2 Detroit, the conflict in Grosse Pointe Park, Mich., began Tuesday when resident Jedonna Dinges noticed her neighbor’s flag and called the authorities.
“I said, I know there’s not a klan sign in the window next door,” Dinges told Fox 2. “And I opened the curtains and I looked and sure enough, there was a klan sign in the window next door.”
Dinges said she installed the camera after someone left a full gasoline container in her dumpster a few weeks prior to the incident. Apparently, her not-so-friendly neighbor got all in his white supremacist feelings over the fact that the camera faces his house. Since the last thing a Black woman in America needs is a paranoid klansman living right next door, Dinges “called state and federal authorities and shared the picture of the flag on her Facebook page before local police got wind of the situation and went to the neighbor’s house, urging him to take it down,” Fox 2 reports.
“When the police asked the neighbor about it, he said ‘Well I didn’t want to go over there and say anything to her, we never had any problems with them,’” Dinges said. “They made it clear with the police we never had any problem with her, but we’re non-confrontational people. I don’t know how you get any more confrontational than a klan sign.”
Yeah, that sounds about white. It’s not hard to imagine a racist being bold enough to show off his retro-MAGA decor in an attempt to intimidate his Black neighbor because he was too cowardly to simply knock on her door and say, “Hey, what’s up with that camera?” Still, one can’t help but wonder what his racist ass had to hide that had him so angry at the camera being installed. It couldn’t be a fear that his weekly cross-burnings would be filmed because, clearly, he’s not ashamed of his Klan-ish ways.
Anyway, Grosse Pointe Park Mayor Robert Denner condemned the incident saying that officials need to “make it clear that that sort of behavior is not welcome in our city.”
“We’re shocked,” Councilwoman Lauri Read said. “Sadly Jedonna was not shocked by these actions and that says a lot.”
Yeah, that’s the thing about racism in America: Black people might still be taken aback by blatant, in-your-face displays of racism in 2021, but racism in and of itself is never very surprising. Fortunately, Dinges said her community has been supportive of her since the hateful act occurred.
“The number of people that have reached out to me, I’m overcome with emotion at the love and support that I’ve received from strangers in my community,” she said.