Remember when that woman called the police over black people barbecuing? Over the weekend, there was yet another incident of a white woman getting very worked up over what appears to be black people existing.
This time, a woman announced that she was calling the police over an enterprising 8-year-old girl selling water on a hot day.
And yes, the woman"s angry phone call was caught on camera — even though she tried to hide.
An 8-year-old"s idea to sell water at San Francisco"s AT&T park would be seen as clever to some. One woman, Alison Ettel, was apparently unfuriated.
Twitter user Raj shared a video on Twitter.
"So my little cousin was selling water and didn"t have a permit," Raj tweeted. "So this lady decided to call the cops on an 8 year old. #PermitPatty"
In the video, the 8-year-old girl"s mother can be heard saying: "you can hide all you want. The whole world is going to see you."
Ettel, after ducking behind a stone wall to hide, explains that she is calling the police because the little girl lacks a permit to sell water.
She and the mother disagree about whose property the girl is on, but that is honestly beside the point.
Most people consider calling the police on an 8-year-old who is perfectly safe and also not harming anyone to be reprehensible.
The video went viral, and Raj followed up on Twitter.
"I can"t reply to everybody bc it"s been so many responses," Raj tweets. "But my family thanks you all for the funny comments memes & words of encouragement."
Raj continues: "My little cousin is doing okay for those who are asking and her mom is going to be pressing charges for harassment."
Obviously, as always seems to be the case, some people played devil"s advocate. Some people won"t accept that racism may have been a factor until they"ve eliminated every other possibility.
Raj had some words for them.
"For all of you saying it"s not about race why didn"t she stop to harass the white mean that we"re selling tickets and teeshirts," Raj asks. "But thought calling the police on a child was okay?"
Raj quickly clarifies that she is not asking for answers; her question is rhetorical.
"Don"t answer. Just ask yourself that."
Here, you can see Ettel ducking behind a wall when she realizes that she is being recorded.
Raj follows up those tweets by making it clear (though we think that it was obvious to most) that she is not suggesting that this behavior is universal to white women.
"Clearly I didn"t mean every single white woman," Raj tweets. "But it"s a reoccurring pattern all the videos I"ve seen of black people minding their business it"s a white woman harrashing them & threatening to call the police."
Raj then points out that while having the police called on you can change anyone"s life forever and for the worst, one never knows when one of those "bad apple" police officers will show up and turn an unpleasant day into someone"s last.
Raj tweets: "y"all do realize police kill black people for any reason they want."
Sadly, many racists in uniform then go on to get away with it.
But it doesn"t appear that Ettel hesitated to make her phone call.
Someone on Twitter who saw this video remarked that they had observed in these recurring viral stories that "white people call the police like they"re customer service."
(This, by the way, is the entrepreurial 8-year-old who was selling water)
Alison Ettel spoke to The Huffington Post in an effort to defend her actions … sort of.
First, she says that she was totally justified in calling because the water-selling was just too darn loud.
"They were screaming about what they were selling. It was literally nonstop. It was every two seconds, ‘Come and buy my water.’" Ettel claims. "It was continuous and it wasn’t a soft voice, it was screaming."
We don"t like noise that much either, but the video makes it clear that this is a crowded park area.
She also says that she didn"t really call the police, claiming that it was just a bluff.
"I have no problem with enterprising young women," Ettel claims. "I want to support that little girl. It was all the mother and just about being quiet."
Ettel herself has a business, a cannabis tincture company aimed at dogs called Treatwell Health. Magnolia Oakland has announced that it will no longer carry her products.
"It was stupid,” Ettel admits. “I completely regret that I handled that so poorly. It was completely stress-related, and I should have never confronted her."
Ettel continues: "That was a mistake, a complete mistake. Please don’t make me sound horrible."
She also insists that there was no racial component to her outrage and claims that she ducked behind the wall, not to hide, but to hear the security guard to whom she says that she was speaking.
If the park was so loud that she had to duck and hide (conveniently when she sees someone recording her), that begs the question of how she was able to single out an 8-year-old girl and her mother as the noisy culprits.
We all wish that Ettel had made better choices. Perhaps no one wishes this as firmly as Ettel.
The next time that someone tries to attribute this kind of behavior to southern "rednecks," remember that a California woman who sells marijuana to dogs made a fuss over an 8-year-old girl.
Yikes.
