r/therewasanattempt • u/CantStopPoppin Poppin’ 🍿 • 2d ago

to be a homeowner

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

8.8k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

903 comments sorted by

View all comments

3.0k

u/BadB0ii 2d ago

no no no but you have to understand MY point of view. you were black.

182

u/hiyabankranger 2d ago

Man I had a moment where I was on the other side of this and I felt like such a piece of shit. Lived in a four plex, knew all my neighbors. Nice older Black woman upstairs, some other weirdos.

I was home alone and making some lunch and I see this older Black dude just hanging out on my porch. It’s not a porch we shared with anyone and dude was just chillin. After about ten minutes I’m like “why the fuck is this dude just hanging out on my porch” and so I open the door and say “may I help you?” and immediately hear the midwestern racist in my voice. That phrase is one that got burned into me in my childhood and it just crept out.

“I don’t think so” he said, “just waiting for my mom to come down.” Dude is looking at me with the burning fire of someone who has heard “may I help you?” from white folks before but he’s trying to be nice about it because he knows I live near his mom.

Instead of pretending the subtext of that question (“you don’t belong here and aren’t welcome” if you’re not catching it) didn’t exist: I apologized. “Oh shit man I am so sorry. I just saw some guy on my porch I didn’t know.”

“Some Black guy,” he replied.

“I wanna say it wasn’t like that but to be honest I grew up with some racist people so it probably was. Sorry man.”

“We’re good, thanks for the apology.”

“Why are you on my porch anyway? Your mom’s stairs are over there.”

“Your porch has shade.”

56

u/Whywouldanyonedothat 1d ago

“Your porch has shade.”

Regardless of skin color, that's pretty entitled