This Week in Racism
White Drivers Are Taking Road Rage to Racist Levels
It’s an embarrassment of riches in our weekly roundup of the world’s most preventable disease!
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
Death and taxes used to be the only two certainties in life. But no matter how much progress it feels like we’re making sometimes, the sad fact is you can probably slide racism into that list. Are we in a moment of uprising that feels like it has the potential to create real, systemic change? Yes. Do people and organizations still show their ass on a daily basis? Oh, most definitely. And to keep tabs on all that ass-showing, we created a weekly racism surveillance machine. If you already get our newsletter, Minority Report, you’ve likely seen this — but now the rest of the internet can get a taste.
🗑 Slur-hurling fender bender tender turns out to be retired LAPD detective
Of all the phone videos that have ever featured a White person dropping the N-bomb, it’s hard to starting more promisingly than these eight words: “Oh, you can say n****r but I can’t?!” The unholy octet kicked off a minute-long clip captured in Santa Clarita, California, after a minor car accident between a young Black man and a very angry, very cop-looking middle-aged White man. Not surprisingly, the footage blew up on Twitter. Even less surprisingly, the cop-looking middle-aged White man turned out to be a retired LAPD detective. But here’s where it gets good. According to the LAPD, L.A.’s attorney general’s office will be reviewing 370 cases handled by the detective, to see if his willingness to say things like “get back in your cage and wait until the monkey controller gets here” (yes, really) might have compromised his work. We’re gonna go ahead and guess it’s a big yes on that one. (NBC 4 Los Angeles)
🗑 We have a feeling this New Jersey woman might also be a retired LAPD detective
Last week, two Black women were driving in Bayonne, New Jersey, when they got rear-ended. Hard. Hard enough that the other car’s…
