2d • Whiteness
Ciw Case Study: Letters to Chamieka
What can you notice?
Hi Chamieka! I’m posting here because I’m getting attacked in my local neighborhood group and need some perspective.
Yesterday, my babysitter and 9 year old daughter were at the park. Our babysitter noticed three African American men sitting at a table and driving around the parking lot in a red car for about 15 minutes. My daughter got incredibly scared, to the point where she was crying and ran all the way home.
My husband immediately went back to the park to confront them and ask them to leave, genuinely wanting to restore a sense of safety for the neighborhood families.
Meanwhile, I made a quick post in our neighborhood Facebook group asking if anyone knew these guys. I wasn’t there so I wrote down the descriptions our babysitter gave us. I called and asked the police to do a drive-by. And I don’t understand why that’s an issue? We're always told that if you see something, you say something, but apparently that makes me the bad guy now. I’m almost certain they don’t live in our subdivision, so why hang out in a neighborhood you don’t belong in? It honestly felt like they were there purposely trying to scare people.
The comments on the post I made are completely roasting us. It’s devastating that I’m being attacked for simply reacting to that threat. People are calling me a racist, saying things like, 'So because they drove around for 10 minutes and are Black you were scared for your lives?' But that’s not the full story. The point is they don’t live here and they are scaring kids.
I will never apologize for putting my daughter’s safety first. It wouldn't matter if those men were white, purple, or green because they were acting suspiciously and making my child feel threatened. Am I supposed to just sit back and ignore a potentially dangerous situation so I don't get canceled or labeled? It’s completely unfair that my family is being painted as the villains here when we were just trying to keep our neighborhood safe.
___________________
Chamieka adds:
*The entitlement to other people’s presence, other people’s movements, other people’s right to just exist somewhere without being surveilled and reported and confronted- it is relentless. And the rest of us are supposed to keep being patient about it like it is not a years-long, decades-long, centuries-long problem that has gotten people killed."
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Ciw Case Study: Letters to Chamieka
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