This reminds me so much of my grandmother. Whenever she would see a person of color, especially black people, she would stop whatever she was doing and just… stare at them. One time we were stopped at a light on the way to a restaurant or something and a black woman crossed the street, and nana literally stopped mid-sentence just to stare at her. My mom directly called her out for it and nana tried to say she was just “wearing nice shoes,” all the while still keeping her eyes on this woman. I thought this was just a nana thing at first, after all my grandmother had a number of issues, but then I saw the exact same thing happen with someone else.
I used to work at a candy store at the local mall. I’d had the opening shift on a weekday, which meant a lot of sitting around since nearly no one would show up until school got out. The only people who would show up this time of day, most of the time, were very little kids, and because of that I didn’t really bat an eye when a pair of black children came into the store. I was maybe a little concerned cause they were pretty young and they came in alone, but we were right next to a couple clothes stores so it was very possible their parent was just buying clothes and told the kids they could stop by. After that I just went back to doodling. A few minutes later, an old white woman walks in with what I assume was her granddaughter. The daughter immediately went to staring, starry-eyed, at the Elsa Jelly Belly dispenser we were never able to get rid of, but the grandmother immediately stopped interacting with her grandchild when she noticed the two black kids. I was concerned, Texas is a red state after all, so I kept an eye on the woman out of the corner of my eye. She didn’t just cast glances at them while dealing with her granddaughter (albeit that would still be pretty racist,) she actively stopped interacting with her kid to spy on these two little boys. She legit walked away from her just to stand behind a shelf and watch them. This went on for a bit, and I had half a mind to walk up to the woman and be all “Excuse me may I HELP you?” when she started stomping toward me and I had to quickly readjust to make it look like I wasn’t watching her.
She walked up to the counter and passionately reported that she saw two kids STEALING CANDY!!! from the bins. She said this in an extremely accusatory manor, as if I also should have dropped whatever I was doing to spy on children, and demanded I do something about it. I lethargically said “Okay.” and went up to the kids. They’d each taken one of those wax soda bottle candies, which were the one candy in the bins that customers weren’t allowed free samples of, but the store was run really poorly and I knew no one would notice, and honestly even if that wasn’t the case I just didn’t really give a shit. I said “Hey, you’re not supposed to take candy from the bins without asking first.” The one of the kids said “Okay. Can we have these?” I said “Sure.”
I went back to the counter, doing my best to ignore the old woman glaring at me, and shortly after she left with her grandkid without buying anything. People take candy from the bins all the time. If you’ve been to a candy store before and you haven’t, you’re lying, you have. And I’m 100% certain that if those kids were white, the old woman wouldn’t have said a damn thing. But for people like her and my nana, its like they think its their civil duty to keep an eye on black people, like any black person could just cause a crime at any moment for no reason. They seem excited by the prospect of “putting them in their place” or something, like how dare these fellow human beings think that they’re equal to us. It’s disgusting. If you do this, you’re a bad person.
And we all know this isn’t just an old woman thing, unless you all forgot the time a woman called 911 on a man for writing “Black Lives Matter” in chalk on his own home, refusing to believe he actually lived in the house he lived in. Look at that disgusting smile. Look at how eager she is to be confronting this man, as if she’s some sort of hero. People like this are always waiting for the one moment a black person slips up. If their behavior isn’t flawless 100% of the time they get attacked, even if they didn’t even do anything, or if they’re a literal child.
Don’t act like you can’t do anything about this if you’re white. You can. Instead of watching poc like a hawk, watch the people watching them. Be aware of your environment and when something like this might happen. Be willing to support, distract, and/or diffuse the situation if needed, and make sure that the person spying doesn’t get away without being publicly called out for what they’re doing. Even if you can’t do it openly, film it. Be a witness. Do what you can to offer your support from the sidelines. Quiet, subtle, everyday racism is just as dangerous as the extreme stuff, and we need to stop pretending it isn’t.
