Have you seen this video of a white, female police officer crying over a breakfast sandwich?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H2wZg8ICMo
I have watched it a few times now.Â
I keep looking for the part I missed. This woman is crying. She has had a terrible experience.Â
So, I keep watching it. Because I do not see the terrible part.Â
I am a teacher. Once, while on a walk in the park, I saw a former student. He yelled obscenities at me, among them, “Saggy titty, old bitch!” It wasn’t cool. But I did not cry.Â
But she IS crying. Yet no one called her a bitch. No one called her anything, as far as I can tell.Â
She waited for some food? This is the trauma she experienced?
I have been out to eat with my black partner. We have gone to restaurants where I had eaten before, with white friends, and had a lovely time. When we went together, we waited for our food forever, while we watched all the tables around us get fed before us. I have even had my food brought to me, alone, while my partner was not served until long after my meal had gone cold. This has happened to us more than once. More than a handful of times.
In the video, at around 30 seconds, she mentions that she likes to pay for her own food. Yeah. That is how commerce works. But, correct me if I am wrong here, the way she says it implies she is accustomed to having her food paid for, presumably because she is a police officer? Must be nice. No one says, “Oh, you teach hundreds of kids a day, here’s a McMuffin.” If they did, I would take it. I would be like, “Heck yeah! Thanks!” Because it NEVER happens. Yet, this seems to be part of her reality. Maybe that is why she is so upset? Because she is not receiving SPECIAL treatment all of a sudden?
It really seems like that is the thing. She expects, either because she is a police officer, or because she is a lovely blond person, that people will just fall all over themselves for her. That they will say, “Thank you.”
Thank you? No one says, “Thank you,” to people for no reason. Most people don’t say thank you even when they should. For example, in her narrative, she does not mention thanking the poor worker who had to come outside and bring her a cup of coffee. She seems to imply that she was short, if not rude, to this person.
And then she says, most disturbingly, “I know this will all blow over.”
What is “this” that will all blow over? Holding police accountable? Lady, teachers have been being held accountable for a long, long time. There are laws about it in every state, in fact. And you know what we do? GET BETTER AT OUR JOBS.Â
If you want this to “blow over” then things are going to have to get better. We are going to have to become a society where people in the uniform you want to take off so you can “chill” do not kneel on the necks of Black people for nine minutes. Do not shoot Black people for being asleep. Do not walk off the job to defend the rights of their colleagues to attack elderly men.
Because, Officer Karen of the Self Pity Department, Black people cannot take off their skin and just “chill.” And the anxiety they feel is steeped in some pretty deep and direct racism. Centuries of it, in fact. So, if you “don’t know how much more (you) can take,” after a couple of days of people declaring that you should maybe treat them like they matter, imagine how Black people in this country feel?
Oh, you probably can’t. Because you have so little imagination you didn’t realize how trivial and ridiculous your little pity party looks to the rest of us.Â
