Five years after “BBQ Becky” was dubbed into meme infamy, the story has become a hero myth, losing its purpose—to create a cultural bridge so all people can understand what Black people go through.
As the person who filmed it, I find the story still haunts me because so many questions were left unanswered. Most would be answered if the story had been reported fully from the beginning.
What bothers me most is two things: my ex-husband Kenzie Smith is constantly put as a central focus in local media as a hero. I don’t understand the purpose of doing this. In doing so, it erases the importance of the others involved. Secondly, people have many questions when they watch the full original video, yet none have been reported. Questions most often asked are about the business card that launched my pursuit of Jennifer Schulte, the woman in the story who was dubbed “BBQ Becky.”
Over the years, I have been told by academics and journalists that the video I recorded made history, not just by the documentation of it and making it go viral but by the tactical decisions I made that are displayed in the video. The video created undisputable evidence that this woman lied to dispatch to escalate the situation with the police. What I did when I loudly insisted on getting the card back, saying, “I’ll leave her alone. I just want my card back,” so dispatch could hear, made Schulte leave the area so the police would not arrive at the location Schulte originally had been harassing the two Black men.
These are essential details to the story for anyone who does not understand what it is like being Black and dealing with police. When the video is linked to an article, there is no more explanation, and many people then wonder why I was harassing her and why I did not let it go. “I’m just as bad as her. I see two Karens,” some of them now comment on YouTube.
Lastly, there is a reason why videos like these never went viral before. That is because it was culturally unacceptable to point out racism unless there is solid proof, like someone saying the “n” word. It was not easy making the video go viral. It was shot by a journalism student who had been a photographer for over ten years already and shot many videos. Shooting it in landscape made it more palatable to consume. Some people have even remarked they wanted to see more as if it was a show.
To put context behind the video so people would understand, I asked Oakland native and writer Joy Elan to publish an article in PantherTimes so we could make the video go viral; the article we published is probably one of the best sources of reference since the interviews are fresh and the card is mentioned, yet it is often ignored since it was on my website and not a major news outlet.
Newsweek used the PantherTimes article as a source in their reporting at one point, and I have left it in the description of the original YouTube video so people could get more context into why I was following the woman involved, Jennifer Schulte. One thing I do question is if Schulte used the “n” word. I asked Onsayo Abram, the man Schulte first harassed if he heard her use the “n” word, and he said no. I can imagine Smith wanting to make people believe this was a racist act, so he may have thought she said it or embellished it. That is what he does.
I don’t know who to blame more in this situation, mainstream media for dumbing stories down while trying to make a profit churning out watered-down news stories; or the public who consumes the media expecting stories to sound more like mythical fantasies with a hero, a villain, all wrapped up with a happy ending. No one has the attention span to pay attention for more than a minute, and they certainly won’t spend time and effort researching a story in depth, especially if it’s a journalist with a tight deadline. News publishers chase after SEOs and clicks and don’t provide enough time for journalists to investigate stories properly. Either way, the format remains. Most stories must be simple and short for people to engage in them.
To get the story broadcasted on local news, I had to interview, saying the story was about wasting police resources. Claiming it was about racism was not going to work, it would have been denied.
Now, everyone is quick to talk about “Karen” because it’s a surefire away to get viewers’ attention. Racism and fascism can be openly discussed even on local news broadcasts. Times have changed, and I’m proud I was involved with the other people in my community to push that line of progress forward.
Besides our public acknowledgment of racism being a pivotal factor in the story and police being weaponized to control the public and keep public spaces racially segregated, what else has changed?
Remembering this is a new, widely accepted understanding of our culture is important. Yet I believe people are missing several points from this story, distracted by a straightforward narrative that White women are evil Karens and Black people are victims in a system that does not change. There’s nothing more to do but enjoy petty memes and jokes about another “Karen” going wild again.
Being White, I have almost entirely been excluded from the importance of the story, and I’m not the only one who has noticed, as many people I know pointed it out telling me I should speak out more.
That narrative was acceptable five years ago. I just wanted the story to go viral, I wanted to let Black people have their moment. I gave them the needed evidence and let them take over from there. I did not want to make it about myself. The story itself is not about me—not until I confront Schulte—then it has been twisted to “I’m just as annoying as her,” rather than I diverted her away from Black people she was attempting to have police approach aggressively.
If you look at it from a macro level, you would see the story is not just a tragedy of White people harassing and weaponizing police towards Black people in public spaces. It’s a story about how White and Black people can work together to change culture and hold racism accountable.
I represent the story as a White person on the other side of the spectrum. We do exist! My presence has relieved many Black people and POC who met me. Knowing White people can understand and fight back for them gives them hope.
White people should know everything I’ve learned so they can think critically about these cultural issues and understand they can also make progress and comfortably become a part of diverse communities beyond filming “Karen.” They should be! The narrative is still segregated while the country is becoming more diverse. How we (White people) think of ourselves as being respectfully represented in diverse communities should be the question we ask, something we envision and consider.
After the video went viral, I ran into and met former Black Panther Party Chairman Erika Huggins. She looked at me and said, “You were the one that filmed that video? That was your voice?” She then added, “You see what we see. You see what Black people have been trying to explain for so long. I need you to educate your people.” She then added that White panthers existed and were helping the Black Panther party, hinting that I should not shy away from that history.
Educating “my people” is such a difficult task. I can’t appoint myself a teacher; they’d have to want to learn from me.
From my experience, most shut me down and treat me like a nobody who knows nothing because they want to be the ones who bask in the light of not being racist. They don’t want to admit they have much to learn.
I’ll admit it: I still learn to this day because I humble myself and shut down that ego once it starts to get offended. Too many White people can not learn to humbly acknowledge that they might not know what anti-racist action means to understand the Black perspective in America truly. Or any other perspective, for that matter.
Frankly, not enough people know how media works while they make commentary on their social media platforms as if they are experts in what they speak.
Making this story go viral all over the world took a community effort. It was like passing a baton in a relay race. I passed it to Joy Elan, who wrote the story, and Elan passed it to Davey D Cook, who posted the article to his Facebook page. Without Elan, there would be no article, and the story would not have spread without Cook, who is well-known and respected in the community.
That history must be known because not one hero went through a traumatic journey and triumphed in this story. Many did. A community took action and strategically made it come to live in the minds of America and the world.
That is why the many stories that have centered my ex-husband Kenzie Smith as the main character have started to take their toll, distorting the history into fantasy he has made his own. There is no better example of how stories can bend into myths about heroes than a recent Mercury News article published on the 4th of July.
The story begins with Smith enduring images of Jennifer Schulte, the woman dubbed BBQ Becky, all over his Facebook feed.
Schulte, a White passerby, called 911 multiple times over a three-hour span to report Smith, along with his friend Onsayo Abram and others — all of whom are Black — for using a charcoal grill on the Lakeshore Avenue lawn, where it wasn’t allowed.
The Mercury News, July 4, 2023
Correction: Schulte called 911 on Onsayo Abram (or Deacon) two hours before I showed up to film. According to Abram, Kenzie Smith was there for half an hour before I showed up, but Abram was not interviewed for this article. That means only Abram endured the harassment for two hours since, once I arrived, I started filming her and manipulated her into moving away from the area. Abram was often unavailable for interviews because he works at different locations during the day and is not available in time to talk to journalists whose deadlines can be as short as end-of-day.
I filmed Schulte for 5 minutes, stopped, and then she snatched a business card that Abram had handed me out of my hands. She said she would use the information to contact Abram’s job and continue her harassment.
I started filming again to prevent her from photographing the card, orbiting around her as she walked in circles. That is around the time when she finally gets ahold of dispatch again. Dispatch hears me in the background and asks if she can leave the area, not understanding why Schulte was staying in the area with people she claimed were threatening her harm over a BBQ.
Schulte leaves the area, and I follow her. This was an essential move because I could steer her away from the BBQ area, away from Abram and Smith, so when the police arrived, it was just me and her. When dispatch kept asking if Schulte had “that woman’s card in the background,” Schulte lied and said no. When dispatch asked if I had any guns or knives, she told dispatch she didn’t know, even though it was clear the only weapon I had on me was my phone being used to record. She also lied, saying I was shoving her while filming her, showing that she was not at all being touched. Ironically the official police report said “charcoal grill” as a weapon.
One Black woman showed up before Smith to be a witness in case the woman escalated the situation with the police when they arrived. That woman was also uncomfortable getting close to Schulte as she believed residents across the street might think she was harassing Schulte. So she was thankful when I arrived to take over.
Twitter documentation of the incident from the bystander witness viewpoint:
Watching the BBQ Becky Video synced with the dispatch audio exposes Schulte’s purposeful lying in an attempt to make herself a victim claiming she was in danger.
All three of them had fear in their eyes. They were being watched from the highrise apartments across the street. It is well-known in the community that people in the apartments watch over the park and call the police on Black people in the park. Add to that the time, April 28, 2018. It was a time when the internet was filled with videos of police shooting Black people for what seemed like ridiculous reasons. For some reason, the police always claimed they felt a threat, and now this video showed evidence of how that threat can be formed. I understood this, and that is why I was yelling about the card, about how this was all just over a BBQ, and I would leave her alone if she just got the card. I wanted dispatch to understand what was going on, that she was lying, to make the police believe there was a threat to get these two men arrested.
Was charcoal grilling allowed in that particular area? Well, that was never clear and still is not evident today. That statement says it was not. Based on a map, only propane grills were allowed, but Oakland allowed all kinds of charcoal BBQing in that park anyway.
By the time signs went up in the mid-2010s forbidding drinking, smoking or barbecuing, the atmosphere around the lake had noticeably changed, longtime residents noted in interviews.
The Mercury News, July 4, 2023
Read the history of the mid-2010s BBQ Codes at Lake Merritt:
- Oakland Police Threaten to Cite Residents for Barbecues by Lake Merritt
- Oakland to Take Down Lake Merritt Signs Prohibiting Musical Instruments, Activists Plan Protests
When I saw Schulte’s LinkedIn before it was deleted, it showed in 2015, the environment consulting company she worked for in the City of Oakland during the time when the strict Lake Merritt code rules had been put in place.
This means she may have been directly involved in starting the park codes against charcoal which was attempted to be enforced by police with citations in 2015. The city of Oakland has never addressed this situation directly. Reporters have attempted to contact the employer during the incident going viral but have their emails blocked, as reported by The Root.
When I explained this to the reporter, instead of somehow including it in the story, they wrote:
Smith texted his then-wife, Michelle Snider, who arrived from a nearby restaurant and began filming Schulte. Snider questioned Schulte about why she called 911 over a small barbecue among Black people, prompting Schulte to say the group’s race had nothing to do with it.
Snider and Schulte, both White, became tangled in a frantic war of words — each accusing the other of harassment — in a nearly half-mile pursuit to a Quik Stop on Merritt Avenue, where Schulte spotted a responding Oakland police officer and began sobbing.
The 24-minute video, viewed 10 million times on YouTube, is long and uncomfortable. In an interview, Snider said she now cringes at herself watching it but stands by her intent in filming the video.
‘I wouldn’t have done things any differently,’ she said.
The Mercury News, July 4, 2023
Question: Why is it so important to focus on how uncomfortable the video is and whether I regretted doing it?
This is one of the most irrelevant questions I often get. Did I regret what I did? Do I feel sorry for her? No! As I told this reporter and many others, she stood by what she was doing. She believed in it. That wasn’t a mental illness, as many claimed. That was tactically purposefully on her part. Why would I feel sorry for her? She wanted to get two men arrested, but she wanted to affect their employment negatively. She doesn’t care about how she impacts other people she only cares about policing them out of a public park.
In addition, there are a lot of people who enjoy the video. I’m often told they watch it and laugh because it gives them a sense of justice. I did tell the reporter this.
Saying the video was uncomfortable to watch and cringe is only relevant because the entire event irritates me. It’s haunted me for five years. I don’t want to deal with it anymore. To other people, it has been a source of entertainment. That’s why it has ten million views. People have told me many times they watch it regularly.
When I met Daveed Diggs at the Oakland Museum of California for “Park Jam” that summer, he told me my video was the best thing he had watched all year, and he couldn’t get enough of it. He expressed his love for the video on The View.
Another misconception many people have about this video; too many people believe it was a Black woman who filmed it, and they are shocked that I am White. As if they couldn’t believe it was possible. The Mercury News story ends with Smith mentioning how we went to a Dave Chappelle show, front row for free, as honorary guests.
When I met Chappelle, the first thing he did was apologize to me. He said, “I honestly thought you were a Black woman. I was wrong.”
Chappelle was saying he had assumed and realized that was a bias he had. He was pleasantly surprised that a White woman could do something like counter another White woman being aggressive toward Black people. He admitted he hadn’t watched the entire video (as most people haven’t) and was just thankful for the memes and the conversations from it. He kept hugging me, saying thank you.
The Mercury News story mentions two White women harassing each other in the video, but why was I harassing her back? Framing the story like this is almost like saying “both sides” are wrong, making it seem like I’m just as crazy as her, leaving people to often ask me why we didn’t just ignore her.
Smith, the man who had been barbecuing that day and whose Facebook feed is still dominated by images of Schulte, said the incident’s notoriety has been both a “blessing and a curse.” Three days after it happened, when the video was all over the internet, the local media and CNN, he walked out of his house to applause from his neighbors. He was called a hero for holding his ground.
The Mercury News, July 4, 2023
Correction:
For the record, the statements Smith told the journalist were not factual. First, it took about two weeks for the video to go viral. There was no applause from his neighbors; I was living there, I know. There was a lot of praise towards us, and both went viral.
– Michelle Dione
Abram was BBQing, not Smith. It was Abram who brought the BBQ, the meat, the charcoals, and supplies. Abram was harassed for an hour and a half by Schulte before Smith arrived. Smith text-messaged me and told Abram, “Don’t worry, just watch. My wife is going to handle this.” Then he watched me handle it and laughed, making jokes while smoking a cigarette. This is an excellent example of the dynamic of our relationship. He calls on me to help him, I do the work, and then he takes the credit.
After I diverted Schulte away, Smith remained there for the rest of the day, letting me know the officers did show up later, telling them officially they were not supposed to grill with charcoals, but the police were not spending their day forcing them to leave.
The video was published on YouTube on April 28, 2018, and sent to Elan. Elan interviewed Smith and me and wrote the story quickly so we could publish it on PantherTimes.com on May 2, 2018. It was not until May 8, 2018, that Cook shared the article on his Facebook, which then made the video go viral. Before that day, the video had 54 views on YouTube. That would be ten days after the incident occurred. CNN did not report on the story until May 22, 2018
As someone who lived with Smith at the time, I can assure you there was never a day he walked out of the house to grand applause being called a hero. That’s something you would only see in a movie. Did the editors at The Mercury News read that quote and think, “Yeah, sounds legit”? Back then, we only talked to a few neighbors; most of them in our apartment building moved away after the Ghost Ship fire since one of them died in the fire, and it haunted the roommates to stay there.
Here’s the thing. I’m not trying to point the blame at the journalist who wrote this particular story. They only did what many others have done: They went to my ex-husband as a source because he’s available and eager for attention. I should have warned him my ex was an ex for good reason. He lies.
When I helped him five years ago set up interviews, I did all the work of talking to journalists and setting up the schedule, so all he had to do was be ready. I wanted him to tell the story and represent a Black man who had been harassed and wrongfully accused by police at gunpoint before this incident happened. My ex-husbands’ trauma is valid. It’s real. But it doesn’t make him a hero. It’s how he handles that trauma that would make him a hero. So far, I’ve seen him make the story about himself while claiming he’s selfless—very typical narcissistic behavior on his part.
The issue I see here is how for-profit media publishers push fast stories making editors look at holidays and analyze what will create the most clicks. This story should have been written by a non-profit like Oaklandside.org, but at the time it happened, Oaklandside did not exist.
II also believe some blame points back at me, as I did not warn anyone about my ex-husband’s narcissistic tendencies to stretch the truth. Five years ago, I had been hopeful our going viral for such an impactful reason would help him grow.
Going viral, having people cheer you on, claiming you are their hero, is somewhat distracting. Anyone of us can become addicted to attention losing touch with much of reality. I felt uncomfortable and wanted to hide, as I did not want to be dragged into the light for everyone to assume how I was.
I read the comments on Twitter when The Root asked me to write about the story. Some people claimed I was trying to be a “White knight,” others claimed I was trying to be like Rachel Dolezal or “The Catch me Outside girl,” Bhad Bharbie. Just another culture vulture.
People don’t realize I was part of the “Black Family” in all those headlines and wasn’t there to BBQ. I turned down Smith’s invitation as I already had been trying to leave him. And apparently, mainstream media couldn’t frame the story as “Two Black men being harassed by a White woman.” It had to be a family. Think about that for a second. Why is that? My daughters were with me and only came to see me “roast” someone. They don’t even like my ex-husband.
If I could get anyone to understand anything, it is that too many of us are looking at things through a narrow lens, as if there are no possibilities beyond our biases shaped by the media we consume. People can be good AND evil; whatever it means to be good or evil is different for every individual to their perspective created by their environment and life experiences. They can be honest at times and dishonest at others. We aren’t simple creatures, yet we shape our narrative in very simplistic ways.
Am I perfect? Absolutely not. Am I innocent in all of this, as someone commented on TikTok recently that I was not? Of course not. Innocence is for the young and ignorant. I’m an experienced middle-aged woman. I am trying to achieve perfection by living and learning through experiences. That is the key to life, improving, and evolving. I genuinely hope we can open our minds to what is possible and what we can become. Otherwise, I fear we will fall into regression and forget all the progress we have fought for and why we fought for it. This story is just one example of how easily we can forget where we came from, making us not understand where we are going.
You can watch a short interview in which I describe what happens, including the background behind the stollen card on A&E’s Neighborhood Wars Episode 6, “The Grill Seargent” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK5QdpM0Rj4 Social Media
Updates in Light of Kenzie Smith’s Death on June 20, 2024
In light of the recent death of Kenzie Smith, I have written about his activism in Oakland. It is understandable how many saw him as a hero. If you'd like to ready more about him and the background that led to this incident and his activism, you can click on this link. Activists are complicated.
As someone who watched one man be propped as a hero for texting me and then having me do much of the work to get him in the media spotlight and start his campaign while draining away our finances and refusing to work; for me and my daughters it had turned into a sort of cruel joke. It was extremely difficult to go through the divorce process when it didn't need to be. I wanted to remain friends. Smith was possessive and refused to let me go leaving our family feel like we were being held hostage not only by him but the power he held with community support. He later told people to choose between us and depicted himself as a victim while spreading gossip and lies about me, as many people would call and tell me they did not believe him and refused to choose.
Hero is someone you prop up as a savior in something you would not do yourself, like an athlete or a politician who puts in a lot of work and gains extraordinary privileged access. Smith did not have a lot of privileged access, he was an intelligent man who knew how to network and had a lot of PTDS he struggled with throughout his life. He did indeed turn a bad situation into something that inspired many. He did shake hands with many and take positive actions. The point of telling these stories is to learn from them. The people we often see as heroes and activists are often fighting internally with issues and are not perfect. Community silence and refusal to uphold activists responsible only enables toxic environments in the community. What activists need is community support in order to succeed, even when it is a need to hold them accountable and give them space to be honest with who they are and what they struggle with. Please stop putting activists on pedestals treating them like they are perfect examples. We are all humans.
In summary, I wrote this last year out of frustration because a) for years media reporting has been the same. It has focused mostly on one persons account and centered him as a hero. The Black man is a hero. The white woman is the bad person. This is a narrative that is easy to follow, easy to cheer along with. b) after all these years I had hoped things would be better in Oakland, but Oakland is more divided than ever. When we first went viral Oakland organized across race lines, now people are fractioned off by race. I believe in keeping a narrative of Black vs White while ignoring the fact that I AM A WHITE WOMAN who counter acted against racism. Countless people to this day believe it was a Black woman who filmed the video. What does that say about people's assumptions? Or the fact that they would only elevate a Black man in the story, and ignore the woman who counter acted this woman engaging her and dispatch for 25 minutes. Later that same night a Black woman, Joy Elan, immediately wrote an article in order to frame a story so the video could be understood. She was instrumental as well in the story.
From there I had to spend 6 months almost everyday for hours talking to journalists, explaining the story over and over again prepping them for Kenzie so he can explain his side. At first this was the correct thing to do. He was not going to spend time dong it and the main story needed to be about how he and his friend were being treated. But the fact that five years later, the story was still relevant with so many questions unanswered and no one in media would ever question anything about the "card" or anyone else involved when I have had so many people ask, there is definitely public interest in how this became viral. Ask yourself, why "Karen" videos did not exist before this one. Things like this do not just go viral. There was a method applied.
I spoke with the journalist at East Bay Times/Mercury News Shomik Mukherejee and explained my frustration as well as other people who had been involved with the incident and the continued portrayal of Kenzie Smith as a hero when it had been a community effort to flip the racist narrative and make the video go viral. Mukherejee deeply apologized for framing the previous article that way, and took great care to frame his recent article in Smith’s Death:
Smith was lauded by the public as a local hero — especially for work he’d already been doing to help homeless residents in Oakland — but privately he struggled with the attention, saying in an interview last year that he often suffered from traumatic stress.
“He always made sure people knew he believed in them, because he wanted them to believe in him too,” said Michelle Dione, Smith’s ex-wife, who remained on good terms with him.
Another well written article written about Smith from the Oaklandside showcases much of his recent community advocacy, showing a perspective that is not personal in nature yet knowledgable in his local reach. I’d recommend reading both articles in order to understand who he was and respect him as a complicated, compassionate figure who was trying to navigate a world that had caused him much trauma.