Anti-Blackness is a special brand of racism. It seems like everywhere in the world where Black people exist, non-Black people perceive us as a threat and will weaponize their irrational fear of us without hesitation. Non-white people of color are not immune to this behavior.
In El Segundo, Calif., three Black women went for a jog on the beach Sunday when they came across a Karen of color (I know. That was weird for me to write too) who they recorded in the midst of a racist rant where she claimed her “environment has been harmed by this African Black person.”
From NBC Los Angeles:
Brittany, Raquel and Jessyka say they were jogging near El Segundo Beach early Sunday morning when the woman passed and they believe they heard her call them the N-word.
“I stopped and I said, ‘What did you say to us?’ And she just went on kind of a racial tirade and was like, ‘You need to go back to Africa,’” said Brittany.
Said Raquel, “I think in the beginning it was a little bit of shock. At first, when she yelled the first racial slur at us, we were not sure of what we heard.”
The women say they continued on their jog until they passed the woman again and asked her what she had said.
“She continued on that she was from Mexico and this was her continent and we needed to go back to our continent,” Raquel said.
They say they started recording because the woman claimed she was being attacked.
In the video footage, the woman can be heard shouting “I’m calling the police. This woman just hit me.” Later she can be heard saying to the Black women, “You guys are so violent. You Africans are so fucking violent. You’re an African, right? I’m trying to get a description. Why are you so offended by the fact that you’re African?”
During the time of the recording, it’s clear that the woman isn’t being attacked, and, seeing as everyone involved in the incident appears to be relatively calm and the bigot appears to be physically unscathed, it would be hard for anyone to believe any actual violence had taken place. Perhaps that almost explains what Klan-ish Karen said once she got on the phone presumably with 911.
“I need a paramedic...I need an ambulance’” she said. “My environment has been harmed by this African black person.” Why Brown Hitler would need an ambulance and paramedics to tend to her injured environment is still unclear.
“I have been harmed by the environment that this African has created,” she continued before shouting, “This African...Black lives, Black lives!” (Either she was mocking the Black Lives Matter movement, or she was just really passionate about describing what she views as pests needing to be exterminated. Or both. Probably both.)
Listen: As much as I love to engage in a humorous Karen roast (I’ve been dying to write, “I left my racist in El Segundo” this entire time), this isn’t really a joking matter. When Karens lie to law enforcement about violent Black people attacking them, we’re the ones who are put in harm’s way. Our environments are actually harmed and our bodies are likely to follow.
Of course, that may not matter because one of the Black women told ABC 7 that she filed a report with the Los Angeles Police Department after she was told by El Segundo police that the woman seen in the video never called them. They recommended that she reach out to the LAPD.
Whether or not the call to police was actually real, the racism was very real as is the harm it caused to the victims.
“I didn’t think this would ever happen in Los Angeles,” Brittany told ABC. “I haven’t experienced it. It was a very sobering experience. It just reminded us, as we see everything happening around us, this can happen in our backyard.”
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