Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To hope this racist woman loses her job

999 replies

TildaKauskumholm · 26/05/2020 10:43

twitter.com/melodyMcooper/status/1264965252866641920?s=19. Was appalled to see this video on Twitter - a guy in Central park, NYC, who was birdwatching, politely asked a woman to put her dog on the lead as per the regulation in that part of the park. He started filming it as she got abusive and called the cops, to say that she (white) and her dog were being threatened by an African-American man and could they send the police (as we know this can often result in a shooting).All the while she was holding her dog up by dangling it from its collar, half strangling it. The man left and his sister put the video on Twitter, resulting in the racist dog strangler being identified very quickly... she has a high powered job with an insurance company. The animal shelter took back the dog, and her company says she is on 'administrative leave' hopefully meaning she will get fired. I was really shocked and dismayed that such open racism is still going on, even though she was being filmed! Surely she must lose her job at least, what company would want to be linked to something like this?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
5
Zucker · 26/05/2020 12:29

She could have killed him with that call. She knew what she was doing.

It seems the problems run deep with this woman....that poor dog too.

twitter.com/Chinchillazllla/status/1265152333274546177

Greensidepark · 26/05/2020 12:29

And what is scary is that I always assumed this type of racists would be living in some backwater. This is a woman working in NYC for a major financial services company. She would have black colleagues.

nuttymomma · 26/05/2020 12:30

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

Sparklfairy · 26/05/2020 12:30

She wants him to be frightened of the power she wields over him because of her white privilege.

This. Whatever the rights and wrongs of what he did, the above is absolutely unacceptable. You do not play white woman scared of a black man card to the police when the outcome all too often is that he could get shot. And I say this as a white woman. Disgusting.

C8H10N4O2 · 26/05/2020 12:30

she didn't sound scared in the slightest until she faked anxiety and over breathing on her call to the police

Exactly. She looks him in the eye and tells him she will report to the police that "an African-American man is threatening my life" then puts on the voice for the police. She was the one in breach of the local bylaws/park rules not him.

The police should be following up with her not him. If her employers have a fairness and diversity policy then I'd question why she is is an appropriate employee or supervisor - who wants to work for someone who casually issues race based threats to evade accountability?

JustTurtlesAllTheWayDown · 26/05/2020 12:31

On the face of it, she is awful but the shaming and videoing of people is deeply problematic.
There have been two that have gone viral in recent years where it was revealed later that the person being filmed had serious mental health issues and had clearly been goaded, and only the bits that made them look bad were shown. In both cases, the person being filmed was a woman.
I'm not saying that's what happened here, but I'm always very suspicious of a lot of these shaming videos put online. You don't know what happened before the filming started.

Hoggleludo · 26/05/2020 12:31

I couldn’t believe it!

The dog was being strangled. He actually bit her. In what I think was his way of trying to say. Stop hurting me!

Greensidepark · 26/05/2020 12:32

And of course her apology starts with I am not a racist Smile

boredtotears11 · 26/05/2020 12:33

and she sounds quite scared.

Was she hell scared, she was putting on an act, safe in the knowledge that it would be her that was going to be believed. If I was black I too would be filming, it’s their weapon against racist nasty bitches like her.

Waxonwaxoff0 · 26/05/2020 12:33

She knew exactly what she was doing and yes it was racist. Everyone knows how the police treat black people in the USA, she was making a point to him.

Filming someone is not intimidating and anyone who thinks it is needs to get a grip. He wasn't approaching her, she was the one who came up to him.

dontdisturbmenow · 26/05/2020 12:34

I can't believe people are more bothered by the racism than the poor dog being strangled. Poor thing! Was she really that angry age couldn't see what she was doing to her dog?

BiggestJulie · 26/05/2020 12:34

A friend of mine knows this man. He is a well known birder and was in a part of the Park that birders use and where dogs are required to be on the lead, precisely because it is a wildlife area.

The reason he had his camera out was because he was photographing birds - not because he was trying to provoke an incident.

When she refused to put her dog on the lead (having been asked politely) he warned her that in that case he would offer the dog a treat - he stated that that was to induce her to put the dog on the lead, as that would be the only way to stop him giving the treat.

People who have pointed out that in the US any black person, especially men, are well advised to film any time it looks like an incident is developing, are, sadly correct. If you don’t want to be filmed, and have the film shared, don’t be a racist pig in a public place.

I hope she loses her job, and the way she was treating her dog - because threatening a black man was more important than its welfare - was also an absolute disgrace. She probably deserves to lose the dog too, though I expect the shelter will decide what’s in the dog’s best interests when detemining ultimately whether to return it to her.

dreamingbohemian · 26/05/2020 12:36

There are people on this thread who would have both-sided the Klan ffs.

You don't get to threaten racial violence because you're intimidated.

araiwa · 26/05/2020 12:36

If only there was an easy way not be videoed being racist

TheLashKingOfScotland · 26/05/2020 12:37

Filming is intimidating. If it wasn't then no-one would do it. People film to have evidence but also to try to intimidate the other person into better behaviour.
It doesn't mean filming isn't a valid response to a threatening situation but the act of filming is about trying to redress the power imbalance.

Pinklynx · 26/05/2020 12:37

@nuttymomma why do you think it wasn't done with racist intent? If you were in a park would you say a white man was threatening you? Or would you just not mention someone's ethnicity at all if they were white? She was implying the situation was more dangerous because he was black.

Why was she perfectly lucid when approaching him and then weeping and acting scared when on the phone to the police. It was a total manipulation. She wasn't scared at all, she was trying to get someone she was annoyed with into big trouble by using his race against him. If that's not racist, I'd love to know what you think racist behaviour actually is?

Livpool · 26/05/2020 12:38

I am shocked that people are defending this racist woman - what she said to the police was appalling and if he hadn't recorded it then he could have been shot by the police or else arrested and left to rot in a hellhole prison

NursieBernard · 26/05/2020 12:38

Horrendous behaviour from that woman and I hope she suffers the consequences for her actions.

twilightcanine · 26/05/2020 12:39

This woman didn’t do that though. She tried to use (completely understandable) fear of the police as a weapon.

Absolutely right.

Feeding treats to a dog that is not under proper control is, in no way, a 'crime' so bad that a suitable punishment is being shot by the police, while someone else puts on crocodile tears and hysteria to try and increase the chances of that happening.

PanicOnTheStreets85 · 26/05/2020 12:41

Didn't he say to her just before the video starts "Look, if you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it." I don't know what he meant by that and I think I would find it threatening if anyone said that to me.

But she was definitely out of order both keeping the dog off the lead and bringing his race into things.

zscaler · 26/05/2020 12:43

I don't think it was racist - she was being threatened by an african american man. Filming someone is very intimidating and threatening and he just so happened to be african american. Maybe the reference to his race was unnecessary but I don't think it was done with racist intent.

This is so ignorant. People will twist themselves into absurd knots to defend white women, it seems.

Do you really think there was no racist intent when she aggressively approached a black man who was speaking to her politely and asking her not to approach him and told him she was going to tell the police that a black man was threatening her life? Do you truly think she just ‘accidentally’ mentioned his race, and that it wasn’t actually a calculated move on her part to remind him that black men like him are shot all the time in America when they have done absolutely nothing wrong, because the police have decided they’re a threat?

Do you really think she thought he was threatening her life as she marched aggressively up to him, shouting at him and ignoring him as he politely asked her to stop approaching him?

You are ignorant beyond belief, or wilfully naive, if you believe these things.

The fact she did not have her dog on a leash and was mistreating it is more concerning than the alleged racism.

What she did to the dog was bad, but do you really think it’s worse than her trying to get a black man shot for asking her to follow rules?

twilightcanine · 26/05/2020 12:43

I can't believe people are more bothered by the racism than the poor dog being strangled.

Really? I love dogs, study dogs, volunteer with dogs, live with multiple dogs. I have qualifications in canine behaviour just for the sheer fun of learning about them. I was appalled by the strangling of the dog and suspect it probably would be better taken off her, but cannot think it was worse than trying to have another person shot - which is what I think many people believe she was trying to do.

Lynda07 · 26/05/2020 12:43

That's an appalling story. What a wicked woman, I'm glad she is on 'gardening leave', hope it continues for a while to give her sufficient time to see the error of her ways. Well we do live in hope.

JudyCoolibar · 26/05/2020 12:43

Seriously disquieting that there are so many people on here trying to find excuses for blatantly racist conduct. Perhaps people are right about the influx of right-wingers on MN not being coincidental.

AdelaideK · 26/05/2020 12:44

She's a disgrace and she didn't look at all scared. But she's a woman so must always be in the right according to a lot of MN.