On Tuesday, The Root reported that a bigoted old white woman was recorded harassing a Black woman in Bayonne, N.J., by following her down the street and calling her the n-word numerous times. The recording was posted to Facebook, and it caught the attention of a New Jersey assemblywoman who called for an investigation into the racist incident.
Well, now that white woman appears to be losing her Verzuz battle against the consequences of her own actions as she has been arrested.
PIX11 reports that N.J. Karen (the “N.J.” stands for New Jersey, not Nazi in Jail) has been identified as 60-year-old Claudia Emanuele and she’s been charged with bias intimidation and harassment. 40-year-old Tameka Bordeaux, the Black woman who endured Emanuele’s racist attacks and had the presence of mind to record the altercation to put her ass on blast, said that the whole thing started when she saw Emanuele complaining to the mailman about the late mail delivery. Bordeaux said she approached her to offer “neighborly advice and simply said, ‘Hey, you have a valid argument there,’” and that’s when Emanuele started hurling slurs at her and following her down the block.
“She proceeded to follow me from 17th Street all the way to 21st Street and 7/11, calling me every n-word in the book,” Bordeaux said, PIX reports.
This is a clear departure from Emanuele’s claim in the video that “this nigger bitch ran after me for no reason at all.”
“I walked out of my apartment, I talked to the mailman and I just wanted to know where my mail was,” Klan-ish Claudia said. “But she had to be an intrusion. She’s not minding her own business and she’s a procrastinator and instigator. You nasty fucking weg-headed bitch. Black bitch.” (And before you ask, no I don’t know what “weg-headed” means; no I don’t think she knows what “procrastinator” means; no I don’t know where a Karen gets the caucasity to complain about somebody not minding their own business.)
Bordeaux told CBS New York that she chose to stay silent throughout Emanuele’s tirade “because as a Black woman, it’s hard.”
“You can speak up, but then it depends on where you are,” she said. “The story can be switched if you don’t have enough people there to support what is going on. So for me, silence was the best thing.”
Assemblywoman Angela McKnight, the N.J. official who saw the video of the incident and called for the investigation into Emanuele, said in a statement Monday that she “watched the social media live video posted by Tameka Bordeaux of her being racially harassed as she walked down a street in complete outrage and disgust.”
“The white woman shown in the video trailed her and hurled the worst racial epithets imaginable to a Black woman who was calmly walking down a Bayonne street on the way to a store,” she continued. “This behavior is becoming so common now that we simply refer to these racist people as “Karen” and let it go. I can’t just do that. I put myself in Tameka’s shoes and I know it had to take a lot of restraint for her to endure what she went through today. I thank her for being the strong Black woman that she is to remain calm and reserved during the entire ordeal.”
To be honest, it’s a shame that Black people are expected to show so much restraint in the face of flagrant racist attacks. I’m glad Emanuele has been arrested and I hope she’s convicted, but—I’m just saying: Where’s a Twisted Tea can when you need one?