A Black man refused to return his White neighbours package that was mistakenly delivered to his house and his reason is thought provoking.
Sean Carter, a Phoenix lawyer, took to Facebook to explain why he is refusing to give his White neighbour a package meant for him that UPS delivered by mistake to Sean’s house in Phoenix, Arizona.
He said he is waiting for UPS to come get the package and take it to the right house instead of taking it to his neighbour himself. The reason he gave for why neither he nor his teenage sons would be taking the package to the neighbour is that they are Black and it is dangerous to have Black kids sent to White people’s homes because they might be mistaken for criminals and killed.
Sean wrote on Facebook:
UPS mistakenly delivered this package to the wrong house. The address on the package is for a house just a block over, so we are waiting for UPS to pick up the package and deliver it to the right house.
“But Sean, why wouldn’t you be a decent person and just take the package to your neighbor? Or better yet, you have teenage sons. Send one of them. That’s the perk of having teenagers — free menial labor.”
The answer is because we’re black. And it’s extremely unsafe to send our boys to the home of any family that we don’t know in this predominantly white neighborhood.
Why? Because there is a realistic chance that one of my neighbors will see my boy as a threat and call the police or even pull a gun on him. And if you think I’m being ridiculous or paranoid, Google “Brennan Walker,” a 14 yo black boy who earlier this month, missed the bus and tried to walk to school. He got lost and approached a house to ask for directions.
The owners of this home were convinced that this 14 yo BOY had come to kill them (in broad daylight), causing the husband to pull out his gun and open fire on the fleeing BOY.
THAT is why this fucking package will be sitting on my porch until UPS retrieves it. Because I can’t trust that my white neighbors won’t see me, a Harvard-educated lawyer (or my 14 yo honor student son) as a roaming homicidal maniac.
After Sean shared the post, he was called out by White people in the comment section. He later wrote another post addressing this.
He wrote:
To my beloved white Fam,
I need your help understanding something. As some of you know, on Friday, I posted about being afraid to send my teenage sons over to the next block to deliver an Amazon package that had been mistakenly delivered to our house. My fear arises from the fact that one of my white neighbors might become frightened by seeing a black male approaching their house and call the police or even pull a gun on them in “self-defense.”
As a result of this post, I estimate that I received 10 THOUSAND comments from white folks calling me everything but a child of God. I was called a “racist,” “asshole,” “pussy” (by men AND women), “cuck” and SEVERAL words and phrases that rhyme with the latter term.
So why the vitriol? Because I am afraid for my children? And? Even if my fear was completely irrational, is that a reason for anger and hatred? If a stranger on FB posted about having arachnophobia, I can’t imagine that 10,000 folks would go out of their way to comment, “It’s just a spider, you dipshit! Grow a pair!”
So what accounted for this somewhat bizarre reaction to a black person expressing fear of his white neighbors, particularly in this context? After all, I did not suggest that my neighbors were “blood-thirsty savages” just looking to pounce on anyone with a package (“Free package time, Cleetus!”). I simply suggested that they might see my black sons as a threat (something that has been documented REPEATEDLY … white Americans find black males threatening and have an exaggerated fear of us).
And once again, I can understand how someone might disagree with my risk/reward calculus and suggest that I should have acted differently. But where did the hatred arise? Because my calculation is off? Because I have poor math skills (like almost every other American)?
Seriously, does anyone have any ideas as to what caused such an intensely negative reaction from so many white folks? And I’m not asking why they thought I was wrong. I can read too (like almost every other American — barely).
I’m trying to understand where the visceral reaction comes from? What they found offensive? And why do I want to know? Because pissing off that many white people at one time was the realization of a lifelong dream and I want to be able to do it again next week.
P.S. There will be people (I’m feeling generous in using that term) who crawl into this conversation and write stupid, racist things. It’s called the Internet, Fam. So try not to get distracted by them and instead, help me understand this dynamic. After all, Friday is only 4 days away and I’ve set a goal to piss off 25,000 white folks next weekend, so I need you to help me perfect the “secret formula.”
