Upsetting a white person while Black can be as simple as telling them what they can and can’t do. Even the recent brawl in Montgomery, when it comes down to it, began when a Black man told a group of white people that they needed to move their boat. Now, a Black person asserting their authority doesn’t always result in physical violence, but white folks—particularly those who constantly assert their non-authority while minding Black people’s business—will ultimately reveal their racial resentment when they are challenged in any way by Black folks.
Take for example a recent video that reportedly took place in North Carolina showing a confrontation between a Black woman and her white neighbor whose dog apparently got loose and wandered into the Black woman’s garage.
The Black woman who goes by BreYonna (or Bre) on Twitter can be heard assertively (or what white people call “aggressively” when Black people do it) saying to her neighbor, “OK, you gotta get your dog. You gotta put your dog on a leash. You gotta keep your dog out of my yard.”
The neighbor apologized in a tone that made it clear she didn’t think it was a big deal, to which Bre explained that this wasn’t the first time it happened. The neighbor then told Bre that “she doesn’t have to get rowdy,” which already sounds like she was trying to frame Bre as an “angry Black woman” for getting frustrated over something neighbors commonly get frustrated about.
Suddenly, the white woman can be heard screaming, “Get off my property!”
“I’m not on your property, and I never was,” Bre said. “You look crazy. You look like you’ve lost your mind.”
“I will show you crazy,” the woman responded, though it soon became clear that what she meant was, “I’ll show you racist!”
“Whatever. What are you Black? You’re Black so you have rights?” the unhinged white woman who appears to have just then remembered that Jim Crow ended decades ago.
Family members of the neighbor tried to get her to chill out, presumably because her Klan robe slip was showing, but Bre wanted to let Karen go on ahead and hang herself (so to speak).
“No. No. No. Let her say what she has to say. I haven’t stepped over my property line, but I will make sure everybody knows you’re a racist,” Bre said.
“Yeah, you are a racist,” KK-Karen says. “You just think that you’re Black so you’re up in my face, yeah. Oh, she’s Black, you guys. Be scared. Run. I don’t give a flying f**k if you’re purple.”
Now, normally, when a white person flies off into an “I don’t care if you’re Black, white, green or purple” rant it’s only after they’ve been accused of racism. In this case, the white woman is literally the first person to mention race, then she appears to accuse the Black woman of being “racist” just for being “up in my face” while being Black.
I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb (again, so to speak) when I say her resentment of Black people clearly precedes this incident. She’s clearly projecting here. Just because she’s afraid of Black people doesn’t mean Black people are intentionally weaponizing their Blackness to cause white people to “be scared.”
In fact, this whole episode is eerily similar to the time a Black man told a white woman to leash her dog, and “Central Park Karen” responded by threatening to tell the police “there’s an African American man threatening my life” with a clear emphasis on “African American.”
Maybe some white people are just racist.
