In the days after the national uprising for George Floyd, some Blacks on the front lines have used social media to express how some Whites are hijacking the movement by destroying property and causing disruption.
On Sunday, May 31, 2020, a video emerged of a White woman spraypainting “BLM” for Black Lives Matter and “Down With White Supremacy” on the front of a Starbucks in Los Angeles.
During the video, an unidentified Black woman checked two White women for being disruptors.
“This is not a Black woman who is putting ‘Black Lives Matter,'” the woman who filmed the video said while focusing her camera on the woman doing the spraypainting.
The Black woman then approached the two White women and told them, “Y’all doing that for us, but we didn’t ask you to do that.”
The Black woman behind the camera continued addressing the White women as they walked away from the scene.
“Don’t spray stuff out here when they’re going to blame Black people for doing it. If we wanted you to do it, we would have asked,” she said. “They’re not going to show your faces when they see that on HBO. They’re gonna blame that on us. Y’all are part of the problem.”
Speaking into the camera, she added, “You got police officers coming to a peaceful protest and spraying gas on us. Don’t let the media fool you. When they see the vandalism on these places, know that it wasn’t us.”
Days prior to the incident, a video emerged on social media that showed destructive behavior by a White man, who many believed to be a member of the police department in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The video, posted by Twitter user @dyllyp, shows a White man, dressed in all black with a gas mask on his face, knocking out windows at an AutoZone in Minneapolis. Many believe that he helped to start the vandalism that sparked chaos on the night of Thursday, May 28. In the video, a Black man confronted the agitator and asked why he was being destructive. The White man became belligerent and threatened the Black man and others who filmed his vandalism.
As protests continue to occur across the nation, it’s important that the narrative is not marred by a few agitators.
View video below:
Black Protestor caught 2 White Protestors tagging Starbucks. pic.twitter.com/06LuT4ryb8
— greg. 🏳️🌈 (@mistergeezy) May 31, 2020
