Bramble-Gate
Twitter’s main character of the day is this white woman, who found herself in a confrontation with a black avid bird-watcher, at the Bramble in NY’s Central Park.
I generally strongly caution against internet pile-ons. But while I understand the genesis of this incident is ambiguous, the part where she completely lost my sympathy was first saying "I'm going to tell them an African-American man is threatening my life." What is the most charitable interpretation of that? The novel bit of information she's trying to communicate to him is "I am going to tell the police that a person is threatening me" so the "African-American man" part seems superfluous if it's not carrying any weight. So to me, the only way I make sense of it is to conclude that she's implying "We know cops are more likely to show up in force when the suspect is a black man, do you want to take that chance?"
The second part where she lost me is when she turned on the hysterical voice seemingly out of nowhere during the 911 call. Had I been on the other side of the phone, I would have imagined a very different situation. I would have envisioned a chase or escalation, and would have assumed that the change in her voice marked a significant escalation in perceived danger. If I'm a 911 dispatcher, I would assume I'd be more likely to treat it as an assault in progress which (unlike a completed burglary call for example where cops understandably take their time) would warrant a speedier response with backup.
I don't think it's controversial that cops do not treat suspects in the same manner. Her actions seemed calculated and precisely targeted to encourage as forceful of a police presence to show up, and it was intentionally unmoored and exaggerated from the reality. She's apparently a liberal lady living in NYC so she probably does believe that cops are more likely to shoot and kill black men. That she was willing to weaponize that in this personal interaction strikes me as horrifying and vile.
Update: Props to Kmele Foster for actually investigating a follow-up to this story. The recording of the 911 call makes it clear that the dispatcher was having trouble hearing the caller, which definitely explains why she started yelling. However, I don’t think the additional context negates everything. There’s still no good explanation for why she chose to fixate on telling police that she’s being threatened by an African-American man specifically.