On a recent summer day, a Black man was walking along a public sidewalk in a residential neighborhood when a stranger approached him and demanded to see his ID.
The stranger, an Indian man who identified himself as Anand, was neither a police officer nor someone with the authority to stop a citizen and request identification. Rather, he was just a resident of the area who was apparently on a racial profiling rampage.
“I know this is not your house. I know you don’t live in this neighborhood,” he told the man filming the interaction. The video has been circulating on social media since it was posted on Aug. 1 and now has over half a million views.
“I’m in my own neighborhood where I live, walking near my house, and I have this man asking, ‘Do I live here?’… I’m going to start a civil lawsuit right now,” was the narration at the outset of the video.
During the tense encounter, the Indian man used the derogatory term “boy” and was quick to weaponize the police by repeatedly threatening to call the cops. After following the unidentified Black man as he tried to walk away, he then blocked him from continuing down the street, presumably trying to hold him until authorities arrived.
“I’m getting harassed,” the man filming told the harasser’s wife when she approached the men arguing on the sidewalk. In the video, she seemed embarrassed, nudging her husband to come back with her to their house. “Come with me, please. Please,” she urged.
But Anand didn’t listen; instead, he closely followed the man as he walked down the sidewalk, even stepping in front of him, barking, “I’m going to call the cops. You wait here, boy,” adding that it was a “protected neighborhood” and that the man was “not supposed to be in here.”
Citizens generally cannot detain other citizens, unless they witness a crime in progress and make a “Citizen’s arrest,” which exposes them to civil (and sometimes criminal) charges if the “arrest” was not justified. Even the police cannot stop and detain someone without probable cause or at least reasonable suspicion that they are engaged in criminal activity — it’s one of the key principles of the Fourth Amendment.
Despite this, plenty of ignorance was on display in the comments section of X, with some making wildly unfounded claims that the man was “attempting to break into someone’s house” or “maybe looking for cars to steal at night.”
Among the hundreds of comments on social media, many shocked viewers are asking, ‘How did we get here?’
“Imagine coming to a country my ancestors built and running up on me like I don’t belong here. The audacity is high,” wrote one on Threads.
“So now we are condemning a person for walking, with no evidence of any wrongdoing? I understand the concern, but being Black is not a crime. I don’t know everyone in my neighborhood and if I see someone suspicious, I will watch them but to command ID and address is disrespectful,” said one person over on X.
Others pointed out that “His wife has more sense than him,” while many were truly confused by the interaction: “Being racist as an immigrant is wild!”
Great Job Grace Jidoun & the Team @ Atlanta Black Star Source link for sharing this story.
