I Am Done*
Emboldened Racism in the United States
I am a white woman. I would like to apologize to all people of color and normal humans of the world for the following behavior by fellow white people in 2018. Conveniently sorted by location or theme.†
Businesses or Places of Worship
- Calling the police on two black men shopping for phones at a California T-Mobile store, saying the store was being robbed.
- Anonymously calling police on a trio of African American people checking out of an AirB&B in California because they might be burglars (with luggage).
- Watching three African American teens shop at a Missouri Nordstrom Rack, and calling the police because they were looking at shirts to wear to prom.
- Leaving bacon at a Islamic mosque in New York.
“Go Back To…”
- Telling a Korean American train passenger in California to “go back to Asia.”
- Asking a Navajo lawmaker in Arizona if he was in the United States legally, and calling Latinx legislative aides “illegal” and telling them to “go home.”
- Telling a Latinx family to “go back to Mexico” at a Six Flags amusement park in Texas.
- Telling Asian American servicemen in California “this is not your fucking country” and pulling your eyes back in a racist gesture just to emphasize your point. While driving on the highway.
- Telling a Hispanic family at a Washington McDonald’s to “get out of this country.”
- Beating an 92-year-old Latino man in California with a brick and telling him to “go back to your country.”
Home (or Near Home)
- Seeing a young African America boy mow a neighborhood lawn in Ohio and then calling police after he accidentally mows a part of your unfenced lawn.
- Vandalizing the home of a Muslim family in Maryland.
- Pulling a gun on a Mexican American man for driving in a Nevada neighborhood.
Name Calling
- Calling a Mexican immigrant in California a rapist.
- Harassing Muslim teens in New Jersey as being “traitors to the country” because of their religion.
Public Spaces, General
- Yelling the n-word during a New Jersey screening of the film Black Panther.
- Kicking a group of black woman off a golf course in Pennsylvania because they were playing too slowly.
- Demanding a young black girl stop selling water on a public California street and then calling police because the girl didn’t have a permit to sell water.
Public Spaces, Swimming Pools
- Calling the police on a black family because they were using their private neighborhood pool in North Carolina.
- Demanding African American kids leave a public pool in South Carolina because they are “little punks.”
- Asking an African American woman (but not white people) at a California hotel pool if she and her child had showered before swimming because “people carry diseases.”
- Calling the police on a black man in Tennessee for wearing socks in a swimming pool.
Restaurants
- Calling the police on a black family eating their sandwiches at a Subway restaurant in Georgia because they “looked suspicious.”
- Getting two African American men arrested because they were waiting for a business meeting at a Starbucks in Philadelphia.
- Calling police on a group of African American friends talking in a parking lot after eating at a Louisiana Chili’s.
- Handcuffing an African American couple after they questioned the cost of a meal at a Florida Waffle House.
- Threatening to call ICE on Latinx restaurant workers at an upscale restaurant in New York because they’re not speaking English.
- Telling a black couple they need to give up their seats at a Texas restaurant (Sambuca 360) for a white regular, and then calling the police when they refused to do so.
- Calling the police on a group of black sorority sisters at an Ohio Bahama Breeze Island Grille to make sure they paid their bill.
Unclassified Harassment
- Telling a black home inspector in Tennessee that he had no right to be in the neighborhood or inspect the home he was investing in — and then calling police.
- Seeing a black female graduate student napping in her dorm’s common room in Connecticut — and calling the police.
- Calling the police on a black politician canvassing for votes in Oregon.
- Calling police because an African American family was using a charcoal grill in a California park.
- Telling a Puerto Rican woman in Illinois that she should not be wearing a shirt with the Puerto Rico flag on it (eve though Puerto Rico is a US territory).
- Asking a transgender woman in Washington, D.C. for her ID to enter the woman’s bathroom.
That’s a total of 32 different cases of harassment since the start of the calendar year. Or an average of 1.2 cases of harassment per week.
And that’s just what’s reported.
Yes, I understand that these sorts of things happened in the past (African American scholar Henry Louis Gates was arrested for breaking into his own home in Cambridge in 2009). And perhaps we’re hearing more of this sort of not-so-casual racism because of the spread of social media.
But I’d argue what’s different now is the absolute emboldening of average people to call police on other average people for behaving in ways that are, well, average. In many ways, modeled by the US commander in chief.
In 2018, we have a president who calls for his opponents to be mocked and jailed. He is repeatedly claiming that an African American congresswoman is “an extraordinarily low IQ person” because she powerfully disagrees with his policies (she’s received death threats). He compares non-white people to animals.
This isn’t a regional problem. These sort of bigoted displays take place all over the country.
We are better. We must be better.
*Title borrowed from a social media post by a friend.
†I will add to this post as white people continue to behave poorly. Edit 7/9/2018.
