Systemic Racism In Action: All About No Debate, No Common Decency, Fake Outrage

I was in an aisle of a large food store (Safeway). I heard a voice raised in anger. I looked. A tall white blonde blue eyed woman was berating an older brown black haired woman. The blonde was insisting she had been disrespected: “stay away from me!”. The brown woman, whom I didn’t see initially because she was so far from the blonde, excused herself:”But my small daughter is behind you!” The blonde insisted ever more:”You are rude, follow the signs!” “But I am following the signs, there are none here, I just need to be with my daughter! I am sorry!” The brown woman was more than six feet away from the enraged blonde. The back of the store there was more than ten feet across. The little daughter, less than ten years old was ten feet behind the blonde, getting distressed. This was baffling. The blonde talked even louder, addressing the brown woman:”You are incredibly disrespectful!”. That was the cherry on the cake! Not only she was preventing, out of sheer bulk, a mother to be reunited with her child, for no good reason whatsoever, but her, the offender, claimed to be offended! The spite was obvious. 

I recognize racism when I see it. And I have seen it a lot. I then did what I would not have done two months ago. I moved forward, and addressed the blonde:”YOU ARE A KAREN!”. This is a denomination for racist white women keen to call authorities to bolster their racism with fake claims of outrageous behaviors they pretend to have been the victim of, when it is truly the opposite. The blonde standing in the way of the brown skin lady to prevent reunion with her daughter, on a ten feet wide alley, and claiming to have been disrespected was a case in point.

She was stunned. Who dared to attack the obviously superior race, supreme adjudicator of offended reality? That had never happened before! And I added:’’ AND YOU ARE A RACIST!”

The blonde actually went to complain with the store manager, who politely listened to her, and then, full of simmering rage, she had a sort of a melt down, but nobody helped her. To her credit, as nobody behaved as if her cause was worth fighting for, the blonde woman may have perceived, however vaguely, that her demand for an enormous amount of vital space around herself from the brown mother was a parody of systemic racism

This happened in Berkeley, California, a noisily pseudo-progressive NIMBY town. Some wealthy neighborhoods, full of “Black Lives Matter” signs, require people to not call the police. The blonde probably ostentatiously hates Trump, because that is the cover to her everyday racism. She was shocked that her bluff had been called for all to see. The scandal she waged became the instrument of her public revelation for what she truly was, for all to see, including herself.

A proper debate does not switch to claiming invented disrespect. The brown skinned woman was very polite and apologetic. And very explanatory. She explained she had followed the arrows, there were no more arrows, just her daughter out there. The brown Hispanic lady was used to appease the domineering white race. Everybody had masks on, even the little girl, well below the age when it’s required. The blonde insisted on a ten foot space, apparently, and imagined outrage. What she was truly doing was humiliating the brown lady.

Engaging common sense sincerely is the primary human characteristic. Refusing this and claiming one has been gravely offended is a trick to deny, instead, this fundamental human approach. This has also been the bottom problem of the police and justice system in the USA.   

I was witness to this, in a microcosme…  

Patrice Ayme