In the aftermath of the viral video dubbed “BBQ Becky,” many comments on the video combined with social media stalkers have charged me with being racist. Why? Because I mentioned race in the video.
The fact is, I did not make those comments online or make the video about race on purpose. I pushed the video to go viral because it was important for people to discuss public spaces, their rights, and how race plays a factor. Not everyone has the same experience in safely experiencing public spaces. That is a fact.
In one case, I had a white man who I had thought was a social media friend enraged with me because he felt the term “Becky” was racist. All he heard was people making fun of the alleged woman in the video, Jennifer Schulte. The comments about raisins in potato salad and seasoning in barbecue became insults in his eyes that he felt targeted him as a white man.
I was surprised the man could not understand the video, considering we had become friends online and talked for hours about Bay Area hip-hop music originating from Black culture. Even more surprising was that he had never taken the time to watch the video or read any articles on the incident. All he cared about was what was said on Twitter.
In that video, I only said what came to mind as I attempted to manipulate the woman away from the two men. She had taken one of the men’s business cards out of my hand, intending to report and harass him further at his job. I had told one of the officers and immediately left the scene once I was asked to, watching the officer take the business card from her.
None of these details mattered, and I could not believe someone who claimed to be a friend would attack me and believe a stranger on a video.
It took some thought, but I realized that this friend was someone I only knew online, and I had never met him in person. It was not a problem to block and remove him from my life. I also reflected on how lonely he was in a town away from most of the civilization where he had lived with his family all his life. He did not know anything else. He did not see himself as racist and could never understand how offensive his stance had become, blaming me for all the online attention and remarks that I could not control.
I decided to make a video describing a story from high school.
I’m an anomaly. I get it.
I realized I had lived in the same town most of my life up until adulthood. I was born in San Francisco and was taught about many different cultures by my dad. He took me to museums and taught me to respect different cultures.
But as my dad moved to Texas when I was ten, I had spent most of my life living with my mom in Pacifica, CA, surrounded by many close-minded people who did not care to understand anything more than what society expected of them. The people I grew up around were bullies materialistic, and the community would not accept you if you did not fit a specific look. Thin with European features, wearing the latest fashions was the only way to get acceptance.
I started to believe that I would learn so much more if I surrounded myself with different people. So, I enrolled in Westmoor High School in Daly City, CA, a high school with maybe 15 white people at most with an equal part population of Black, Hispanic, Asian, Filipino, and Pacific Islander. The difference in history classes opened my mind. At Westmoor, I learned about colonization instead of just the colonies.
Systematic racism is supported by a lack of education in the truth of American history and maintained by a white code of silence. A good example of the deceptive history that has been taught in our society is the Daughters of the Confederacy, who created literature for schools and helped put up Confederate statues, which instilled a fake narrative of the Confederacy being a prideful white heritage.
If only everyone were learning about our full history, we would be a lot wiser in America, and racism would not be such a problematic issue as it is today.