This is utterly horrible, people! The Root is all over it
White Woman Calls Security on ‘Suspicious Man With a Baby’ at Park in Washington, DC
Well, it looks like the epidemic of well-meaning white folks (I guess) calling the police or security on black people as they go about their lives is par for the course in 2018 America.
It is becoming increasingly clear that although the whites have always had an irrational fear of black people, as they move in closer proximity to them (i.e., via gentrification), they also bring their biases—along with ironic dive bars and astronomical rents.
Hmm, that’s a rather racist opinion from a magazine that is always complaining about raaaaacism and is always Offended.
This time, a black father was pushing his son in a Washington, D.C., park, and a white woman saw fit to notify park security about “a suspicious man walking the bike path with a baby.â€
It should make no difference that that man, Donald Sherman, is a professional, a lawyer, because to some folks, he will always be a scary black guy.
Sherman explained in a May 10 Facebook post that on the day in question, his son was not feeling well, so he stayed home with him.
I’m pulling their screenshot
What is clear to anyone with eyes, however, is that Sherman is dark-skinned while his son is not, perhaps prompting the woman to think that a black man somehow stole a white baby. I guess.
Sherman noted that the only person he saw on their walk was “a white lady on a bike who veered off as Caleb and I were walking in her direction†and that she was the one who “saw fit to report me to security.â€
Here’s the thing: if this even happened, and we’ve seen so many incidents which were made up and then busted, clearly made up, or had no backing proof, there’s no proof that the white woman was the one who complained. For all we know it could have been someone he didn’t see who called it in. Did anyone running the accusation bother to attempt to contact the D.C. police to see if it even happened?
And I bet if I ask the story authors if this happened I’d be accused of unconscious bias and white privilege and stuff.
But, of course, this leads to unhinged rants in places like the Washington Post and the need for a National Conversation and stuff
Here are the things that black people can’t do in the United States in 2018 without a white bystander calling the police on them: sit in a Starbucks coffee shop; eat at a Waffle House; work out at a gym; move into a new apartment at night; golf with friends; fly on a plane; barbecue at a park; shop for a prom outfit; buy a money order to pay the rent; check out of an Airbnb; or take a nap while studying at their Ivy League college campus.
Don’t be drunk, abusive, and threatening in Waffle House. Speed your play up on the golf course. Don’t be very fat on a plane. Barbecue in the proper designated area. As for the others, I’m not familiar with them enough to make a comment, beyond the notion that, sure, some people are racists, and that goes both ways, and some things are turned into raaaaacism when they’re simply incidents. When a black woman was very rude to me at Taco Bell, I didn’t take it as racism, just a person being an a-hole.
