The frequency of such incidents is maddening and untenable. Starbucks is still reeling from the consequences (I mean, it's good there were consequences...but moolah was involved...) of harassing customers for existing while Black.
Thank the Good Lord in Heaven above that here in Saraland, Alabama, we have police officers to save us from women like Chikesia Clemons, who don't want to have to pay for their plastic utensils at Waffle House! THIS is why people sign up to be cops, folks. To protect us from such horrors. Who ARE these people who think they are entitled to their plastic utensils for free??? Just because they got them for free at the same Waffle House the night before???
And, I'm sorry, they had the nerve to be melanin-endowed, too? That's just a bridge too far, people. The police are going to have to be called, and naturally, they will be white, and they will violently arrest her! If, in the course of throwing her to the ground, threatening to break her arm, and putting their hands on her neck, her top happens to get pulled in such a way as to expose her breast, why, that's just part of the job, right, Officers? You just keep twisting her arm, because she is such a huge menacing threat, what with her thinking she had the right to ask for the information of the district manager so she could complain, and all.
I mean, there was a white man in Tennessee who actually shot and killed four people at a Waffle House, and I would love to see the video of how HE was treated when he was arrested. I mean, he was pantsless when he committed the crime, and heavily armed. Was he wearing pants when you found him in the woods? Because HE was covered up in the arrest photos...just saying.
It wouldn't surprise me, given the disparity with which Black and white citizens are treated by the police. Dylan Roof executed nine Black worshipers in a church, and after he was arrested - alive and well, of course - they even stopped at sent someone to Burger King to get him his favorite meal. Meanwhile, Stephon Clark, a Black father of two beautiful babies, was hunted by cops who think he fits the description of someone who vandalized a car, and then shot twenty times in his grandmother's backyard for holding what turned out to be a cell phone.
It's not just the police, though - it's the fragile egos of white people who cannot handle being challenged or inconvenienced in any way - the white people who see the existence of black people in "their" spaces as a challenge or inconvenience, period. The ones who have calling the police as their default impulse. Nothing illustrates that better than this ridiculousness from Pennsylvania...where at the Grandview Golf Club, police were called to complain about a group of black women who were (I cannot believe I am about to write this) were playing too slowly.
At the second hole, a white man whose son co-owns the club came up to them twice to complain that they weren’t keeping up with the pace of play. Thompson, an attorney and the head of the York chapter of the NAACP, told the newspaper it was untrue.
On the same hole, another member of the group, Sandra Harrison, said she spoke with a Grandview golf pro, who said they were fine since they were keeping pace with the group ahead of them.
Despite that, the women skipped the third hole to avoid any other issues, she said.
When they took the customary break at the 9th hole, they were told their break was taking too long, and they needed to leave. Like, not just go to the 10th hole - leave the actual course.
Thompson said the man from the second hole, identified as former York County Commissioner Steve Chronister, his son, club co-owner Jordan Chronister and several other white, male employees approached the remaining two women and said they took too long of a break and they needed to leave the course.
The women argued they took an appropriate break, and that the men behind them were still on their beer break and not ready to tee off, as seen in a video Thompson gave the newspaper. The women were told that the police had been called, and so they waited.
Only, THIS time, there is a super happy ending!!! Because when the police got there, they saw the whole thing was, let's see...what is the legal term for it... total bullshit and left without pressing charges. Regardless, the women were shaken up and upset at their treatment. A meeting with the club's manager isn't gonna fix it.
I've paraphrased my friend, Vivian (a WOC herself) before, and I will do it again. Every day that goes by that Black people don't burn this country to the ground is a goddamn gift. When will we learn?
