lostsoulcouriercollective/Instagram
June 6, 2021, 9:28 am
A viral video, courtesy of Lost Soul Courier Collective’s Instagram page, shows a conflict between a person of color just doing his job and a white man suspicious of said person of color in an affluent San Francisco neighborhood. The white man begins the video on the offensive suspicious of the person taking the video, but by the end of the video, the person of color illustrates that the white man’s suspicions are based on unfair racial profiling.
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The video is shot from the person of color’s perspective: He’s a delivery person bringing Narcan to an address in the 2200 block of Clay Street, putting it with Pacific Heights, considered an affluent neighborhood in San Francisco. According to SFist, the video is presumably shot by Antonio Chavez, founder of the Lost Soul Courier Collective, which claims to be “a community organization centered around food distribution, harm reduction, and adventure cycling.” The “harm reduction” part of the mission includes delivering Narcan, a medication designed to reverse an opioid overdose.
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In the video, the white man—who might even be considered a male Karen by internet standards—confronts the delivery person, quickly getting his phone out to film the encounter after asking him who he is and who he’s with. (Indeed, the white man in the video pulls his phone out of a cell phone holster on his hip.)
The delivery person—who initially pulls out a power move by having the white man put on his mask—responds that it’s none of his business, and things escalate from there, with the nearly eight-minute encounter shared to Instagram.
“He asked me what I was doing, and I replied my job,” he posted to Instagram. “He asked me who I worked for and I told him to mind his business. He then followed me to the halfway house I was delivering to and stood in my way as I tried to leave.”
“I’ve never seen this guy before in my life,” he continued. “I posed no threat to his safety or his property. He threatened to call the cops on me, and after I talked some shit to him he admitted that it was an empty threat. He explained that things have come up missing in the neighborhood, so it must have been me who stole his shit. I’m guessing that in his mind I had no right to be walking down his street, and I must be looking for something to steal.”
He went on to observe, “I have a strong feeling that he wouldn’t have harassed me if I was of a lighter complexion, but this is an everyday thing when you’re a man of color living in America.”
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It’s supposed to be less of an everyday thing in San Francisco now, however. As the SFist article noted, racially-motivated 911 calls are against the law as the result of the Caution Against Racially Exploitative Non-Emergencies Act (or, awesomely, the CAREN Act for short), “which makes it easier for anyone who’s had the cops called on them in incidents like this to sue their harassers in civil court.”
*First Published: June 6, 2021, 9:28 am
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