It always bothers me when Black people get praised for remaining calm and cordial while dealing with the aggression of racist white people. One reason it’s so bothersome is that it’s far more satisfying to watch a racist get folded up after choosing the wrong negro to try their best KKK Grand Wizard impersonation on, but the more serious reason is simple: Black people stay calm out of self-preservation. We know we can’t match a white person’s hostile energy without being perceived as more hostile...particularly when the cops show up.
Last week, a Black man posted a video to Instagram showing his interaction with an elderly white woman in a senior housing complex in San Bernardino County, Calif., who called him a “nigger,” essentially told him to go back to Africa, accused him of “stealing” and called the police on him—all because he temporarily parked in a spot reserved for residents.
The video—which is captioned, “San Bernardino Senior Racist Karen, Shame On The City Of Highland, CA.”—begins with the woman asking the Black man if he was in her complex because he was “getting a piece of ass or something.”
The man—who said he was actually there to pick his two children up from his aunt’s home and parked close because “It’s 110 degrees outside”—asked the angry white woman, who probably knits Klan robes in her spare time, “Why are you so hostile?”
The Margarete (I just feel like if Beckys grow into Karens then Karens must age into something) responded saying, “You’re not supposed to be illegally parking.” The man explains that he already apologized for being in the spot and that he was only there for a second.
“No, you were there for more than a second,” the Gertrude replied. “It took more than a second to walk up to the damn office to file a complaint.”
The Dorothy—who probably has a large “Mammy” doll collection that she claims isn’t racist because they remind her of her nana—insists that by parking in a reserved spot, the Black man was “stealing from me.” When asked by the man why she felt the need to call him a “nigger” (apparently that happened before the recording started), the Eleanor explained that she has the “constitutional right to freedom of speech” before reaching all the way to the peak of Mt. Caucasity for her next comment.
“I don’t have to leave America to go to Africa,” the Clementine said. “You guys need to leave Africa to come to America.”
The Eloise actually thinks enslaved Black people booked a cruise ship from the continent to the Americas on Travel.com because we wanted to try colonizer cuisine for the first time and marvel at all the spices white people stole but refuse to use.
“No, you all took us from Africa and brought us here,” the man said to the Bernadette who clearly learned history from the White Supremacist Guide to Revisionism. “You hate Mexicans, but every street out here is named a Latin name. You are all so hateful. Why do you hate so much?”
Later in the video, the Caroline continues to accuse the Black man of stealing until he replies, “But don’t you all steal everything?” (At which point I almost jumped up to testify.)
Mind you, the whole time the Black man and the Annabelle were reenacting this Driving Miss Daisy cut scene, the white woman—who probably named her first child Jim and her second child Crow—has her car blocking his car from moving out of the very spot she complains about him being in while she waits for the police to show up and shoot that Blacky on sight. Fortunately, that wasn’t the outcome.
A Black cop showed up and the man explained to him that he was only there to pick up his kids and that she called him the n-word repeatedly while he spoke to her respectfully—a fact he spent way too much time trying to get her to understand as he embarked on a futile attempt to get her racist ass to see him as a human being.
When asked if she thinks the Black cop who showed up is a nigger as well, the Gwendolyn replied, “Nope. That’s a hate word. I hate somebody stealing from me.”
The altercation ended without anyone being arrested or hurt and without a white woman getting her old David Duke fangirl ass whooped. The Black man ended the recording by panning the camera over to his two small sons who were in the car the whole time a terrorist was blocking them in while calling their father a nigger.
He left his Instagram followers with a final message: Y’all be careful out here, man. Racism is real.”