Monica Shepard and her teen son, Dameon, speak to reporters about their May, 3, 2020 experience in Pender County, N.C., with a mob of ...
It’s wild that in the year 2021, I can still be amazed by the sheer arrogance of mediocre white men.
Imagine this scenario: You’re a Black parent of a Black teen and a group of more than a dozen aggressive white people—led by a police officer—come to your Black home uninvited. They demand information you don’t have and when you tell them repeatedly to leave, they refuse. They’re later acquitted of crimes it damn sure appears they committed, but instead of thanking their lucky white privilege stars and moving the hell on, they demand an apology from you for how you perceived them after they invaded your home.
I know this almost sounds like the next Jordan Peele movie, but sadly, it’s just America being America.
Last May, The Root reported that Monica and Dameon Shepard were involved in an altercation with now-former Deputy Jordan Kita of the New Hanover Sheriff’s Office—who was off-duty at the time—and the gang of white thugs who claimed they were looking for a missing girl and felt entitled to remain on their property after being told repeatedly that no one of the name they gave lives there and after being asked to leave. Kita also reportedly blocked them from closing their door.
Kita—who has since been fired—and another man, Robert Austin Wood, were the only two in the group to be charged with trespassing, breaking and entering and other crimes, but because America is still the land of white men doing whatever the hell they want, both men were acquitted. Now, these mother fuckers are demanding an apology from the mother and son they terrorized, because they don’t like the way they have been portrayed.
From CNN:
An African American mother says she won’t sit down to talk with two men who came armed with about 13 other White people to her North Carolina home last year looking for a missing teenage girl — and she doesn’t care that a court acquitted them.
Still, lawyers for the two men say they not only want the families to come together and sort out what they believe is a misunderstanding, but their clients also want an apology from Monica Shepard and her teen son, Dameon, as well as from their family’s lawyers, for comments they feel painted their clients as racists.
A “Kumbaya” moment seems unlikely. As the criminal cases against Jordan Kita and Austin Wood unfolded, the Shepards filed a civil lawsuit likening the group to Ku Klux Klan night riders and demanding, among other relief, more than $25,000 in damages, legal fees and “training concerning the history of racism and mob violence” for those who came to their home in May.
Following the May 3 encounter in Pender County, a short drive northeast of Wilmington, many tuning in to the story labeled the White men bigots, the mob racially driven. Neither was true, the attorneys say, and they blame the Shepards and their legal team for perpetuating that perception.
Here’s the thing: Fuck you.
These people had no right to mob up on a person’s home and demand entry like some fake-ass D-list Justice league, and they damn sure don’t have a right to control how they were perceived by the family they intruded on. If the Black family thought they looked like the KKK then maybe it’s because THESE ASSHOLES LOOK LIKE THE KKK!
Their fragility over it should be their own problem to deal with.
“I’ve said this before: It’s about accountability,” Shepard told CNN. “You can’t just form a mob and go around being vigilante citizens. There’s laws against that. I’m not interested in sitting down. It’s all about accountability at the end of the day.”
Exactly.
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