(This post may contain disputed claims. We make no assertions as to the validity of the information presented by our Opinion Columnist. We are an opinion blog, not a traditional news outlet, and this post should be treated as such. Enjoy.)The national news is buzzing after a white woman was captured on camera pulling a gun on a black family outside a Chipotle in Michigan. There’s additional footage, however, that’s not being shown, and it proves we may have been able to “keep our guns,” but we haven’t been able to keep our rights.
An angry exchange with accusations of racism was caught on video outside of an Oakland County Chipotle restaurant in Orion Township, Michigan. It shows a white woman allegedly pulling a gun on Takelia Hill, who is black, and her 15-year-old daughter Makayla at about 8 p.m. on Wednesday evening.
According to Hill, the woman bumped into her daughter before entering the fast-food restaurant, sparking the “threatening” encounter, The Detroit News reported. As it often goes, however, there is more to the story than what most mainstream media outlets are reporting. In fact, there’s more video that’s rarely being shown.
Instead, many outlets are running a seemingly careful selection of footage and giving Takelia Hill and her daughter a platform to tell their story. According to the mother, this encounter was evidence of racism after the white woman allegedly bumped into her daughter then refused to apologize. Instead, the allegedly racist woman began yelling at her.
“Before I could walk into Chipotle, this woman was coming out, and I had moved out the way so she can walk out,” Makayla Green explained, according to The Detroit News. “She bumped me, and I said, ‘Excuse you.’ And then she started cussing me out and saying things like I was invading her personal space.”
The teen said that she called her mother over because she was scared. “I walked up on the woman yelling at my daughter,” Hill recalled. “She couldn’t see me because her back was to me, but she was in my daughter’s face.”
The altercation then moved to the parking lot, where it continued to escalate with the woman pulling a gun on the family. That initial encounter, near the woman’s vehicle, was caught on camera, but it’s a clip that’s rarely being shown. Luckily, we have it:
In the footage above, a much different picture is being painted than the one by many news outlets. As can be seen, the white woman is trying to keep her cool and de-escalate the situation as she’s yelled at by Hill and her daughter, who repeatedly call her “ignorant” and “racist.” With cameras shoved in her face, she’s blocked from entering her vehicle.
“You’re blocking me from getting into my car,” the woman tells Hill and her daughter, who argues that they aren’t as they literally stand between the woman and her vehicle. Eventually, they move out of the way, allowing the woman’s male companion to open the passenger door for her so she can get inside, but the confrontation continues.
“Say something and I’ll beat your white a** too,” Hill tells the man, pointing a finger in his face and continuing to call both the man and the white woman “racist.” Repeatedly, the woman offers apologies.
From inside the car, the white woman tells Hill, “I care about you,” and reassures her that the bumping incident didn’t occur due to racism. “I’m sorry if you’ve had an incident that has made someone make you feel like that. No one is racist,” she says as Hill continues to yell over her. Finally realizing that she’s not going to be able to de-escalate the situation, she rolls up her window and the man, who’s in the driver’s seat, slowly begins to back out of the parking spot.
At this point, however, Hill has moved to the back of the vehicle. Rather than get out of the way, which would have been easy to do considering the speed of the vehicle and the fact that she knew the couple was trying to leave, Hill is heard striking the vehicle, presumably with her fists after her daughter tells her to “watch out.”
It’s at that point that the woman exits the SUV and draws her gun. Of course, Hill said she thought the vehicle was going to hit her as the driver backed out of the space, but rather than move, which she could have easily done, she admittedly hit the back window of the SUV to stop it. Think about that a second. Striking an SUV to stop it somehow makes more sense than simply stepping out of the way, but I digress.
After pulling the gun, the woman walks backward and repeatedly shouts, “Get the (expletive) back!” and “Back the (expletive) up!” as she points the gun,” making it obvious she is fearful of Hill and her daughter. While we might have been able to “keep our guns,” we certainly haven’t been able to keep our rights to self-defense as what happened next seemingly proves.
In footage captured later, the woman is seen on her hands and knees on the ground near her SUV as an officer, with some type of weapon drawn, approaches her. After getting near enough to pick up her gun, which is on the ground, the woman, still kneeling, puts her hands behind her back as another officer places handcuffs on her. She was subsequently arrested, according to Daily Mail.
The incident has been called a “horrifying confrontation” by many news outlets, and it is, but not for the reasons they seem to report. The truly horrifying part is that most are only running with footage similar to the video below and neglecting to show the footage above at all:
This wasn’t a racist encounter. This was what we presume to be a law-abiding citizen using their Second Amendment right to defend themselves and their property. Anyone who can look at the first video and say the white woman wasn’t fearful is lying. She and her companion wanted to leave and were being prevented from doing so, repeatedly, and most concealed carry permit holders would agree that the woman was justified in pulling her weapon for that reason.
However, she will now be crucified in the media as a racist simply because the person preventing her from leaving and causing her to feel threatened enough to pull her weapon was black, much like we saw with the McCloskeys, the white lawyers who defended their St. Louis, Missouri home with firearms after “peaceful protesters” broke down a gate and entered private property.
Make no mistake, we are seeing different rules for different people, based on the color of their skin. If you’re white and someone who is black leaves you feeling threatened, you no longer have the right to protect yourself unless you want to be called a racist and drug through the mud by the media. And, that’s the real racism our country now faces.
