The video quality is remarkably good: a doorbell’s view onto a dark yard. A casually dressed black man approaches and rings once. He waits on the porch for a moment, looking less confident as the seconds tick by. Then he turns and walks away. A woman posted the video to the “Beacon Hill, Seattle” Facebook group, which has nearly 3,200 members, asking for help identifying the man, saying that she was frightened. A few people of color and white people commented that the black man did nothing wrong and was probably lost. Other white commenters justified the woman’s fears, alleging that the black man was clearly planning to rob her home. Others posted links to the Seattle Police Blotter, attempting to tie the doorbell ringer to other burglaries perpetrated by black men.
White homeowners can be very territorial. In Greenwood last year, I witnessed a couple pushing a baby stroller down a quiet street who were tailed, photographed, and accused of Amazon package theft on nextdoor.com, a private social network program that lets people (usually angry white homeowners) post comments about things going on their neighborhood. I had naively hoped that white people in Beacon Hill—“America’s most diverse zip code”—would be very different from and more progressive than those who lived in very white neighborhoods like Greenwood. But what I’ve seen on Facebook in the last week proves that racism is alive and well on minority-majority Beacon Hill.
A white person with free time on my hands I, perhaps unwisely, started arguing with strangers on the internet. Many of the white people I have had exchanges with can’t understand that they are criminalizing totally normal behavior. They did not see that they were perpetuating unfounded fear and suspicion of black men. And they are very offended by the notion that any of their comments could possibly be racist. Again and again, I have tried to engage, but as the negative comments multiplied hourly, I have begun replying with simply #whitefragility. A white man recently took offense to that, calling me in turn, “gentrifying suburban white girl,” which is not entirely inaccurate.
The comments section on “Beacon Hill, Seattle” got very heated. Tones were policed. Names were called. Two black men were even banned from the group. A backlash ensued, arguments spilling onto other area Facebook pages. The men were reinstated. A peace summit was called for: a meeting of neighbors on Saturday, July 22. Of the hundreds of commenters, only five people attended. It was a noble effort toward racial harmony, but like many such efforts, failed to draw the people who most needed to hear the message.
The original post has since been deleted, but many questions remain. Was the woman who posted the video part of the influx of new white neighbors, pushed here by high housing prices further north? Does she pride herself on being “woke”? Does she have a yard sign that says “Black Lives Matter,” or “No Matter Who You Are, We’re Glad You’re Our Neighbor”?
What about the doorbell ringer? Was he on his way to a late-night rendezvous with his lover, but thwarted by dimly-lit house numbers? Or was he someone in distress, looking to a neighbor for help? In 2013, Renisha McBride, a nineteen-year-old black woman, crashed her car in a predominately white suburb of Detroit. Looking for help, she knocked on the wrong door and was shot by a white homeowner. If our mystery black man is aware of all the hubbub that surrounded his doorbell ring, perhaps he is relieved that he only got shamed on Facebook.