Today was a two Karen day, like male and female bookends they were triggered by my riding a bike they "felt" was: A) Odd for a Black person to be riding; (B) Too expensive for a Black person to be riding, so maybe I'd stolen it?; and (C)
needed to tell me they own a much nicer and more expensive one, at which point I said my food is getting cold I have to leave.
These are my neighbors, and now that Trump has won, will be even more insufferable.
#BlackMastodon
@muiren
Did they say your specific brand of bike was too expensive for a Black person, or was it more that any new bike would be too expensive?
To me it seems very strange to claim that a bike would be too expensive for someone and but also say you own a more expensive one, I just don't think of the bike market as having a structure that makes it plausible to happen.
Honestly I would have expected "black people can learn to bike?" as the more likely type of racist reasoning around bikes.
But I'm neither black nor American, so I obviously know very little about the texture of American racism (in general and in your region specifically).
@tobychev @muiren I think you’re overthinking this.
The people who say this have an image of black people in their mind that is inflexible and does not contain hobbies or items that are too expensive or too “white”; see the white woman who called police over a black man out birding, a hobby that costs between a few bucks for a guide and a little over a hundred for a set of binoculars.
OP existed outside of that image, and that challenged them, and that angered them.
@WhiteCatTamer
I'm with you on the part where racists are angered by black people breaking their expectations on which spaces they can inhabit.
But I was specifically surprised by, and asking about, the specific way they choose for trying to fit op back into their frames.
Though now that I write it out like this I see it: a black lady was seen with a surprising object and easiest way to fit that with their model of the world is invoking crime (because it makes the object not really her's, solving the contradiction).
Thanks for your patience!
@muiren
