Viral video of the moment a Black mother exchanged words — and a few blows — with a white shopper who allegedly encroached on her daughter’s personal space has the Internet talking, many about their own experiences with white folks who refuse to say excuse me.
Twitter page @NYScanner shared a clip of the melee, which unfolded inside a Target store in Brooklyn, New York earlier this week. The mother, visibly angry after the white shopper allegedly reached over her daughter to grab a shampoo, is seen shouting at the woman before rushing over and smacking the phone from her hand.
“You should’ve said excuse me! Point blank simple,” the mother says. “You shouldn’t have went over her. You have no manners!”
The shopper, who filmed the incident, continues provoking the woman and threatens to send video of the assault to police. She then brings the woman’s daughter into the mix, saying the young tot is clearly “terrified” by her mother’s antics.
“I don’t care! Do what you have to do!,” says the Black woman, unfazed.
Things continue escalating as the two women go back and forth. At one point, the enraged mom threatens to “knock your whole head off” as the shopper continues filming.
“Because I didn’t say excuse me? Because I didn’t say excuse me, you’re knocking people out?” the woman asks.
She proceeds to call the mother “violent,” and insinuates that she’s abusive: “What do you do to [your daughter] at home if this is what you do to strangers?”
The mother later explains that had the shopper simply said “excuse me,” she would have gladly moved her daughter out the way so she could get what she needed, adding: “I didn’t know what you were capable of. You could’ve done anything to her.”
The confrontation racked up more than 4 million views and garnered plenty of reactions from Black folks equally frustrated with the white woman’s lack of common courtesy — a trend some argued was true for most white people.
“You do NOT touch NObody’s kid. For any reason. You say ‘Excuse me, Little One,’ ” one Twitter user wrote. “Ain’t nothing in Target that damn important to jostle/reach over/reach around someone’s kid.”
“Now Becky know damn well if it was the other way around and somebody would have reached over Toby she would have lost her marbles,” another chimed in.
One critic said they were immediately put off “just by the way the woman says, ‘… so because I didn’t say excuse me to reach for something I needed’ said enough for me [and] tells the entire story,” describing the shopper as an “entitled ass yt woman.”
Another agreed, arguing that the incident was about much more than white people not saying excuse me.
“This is about white people — white women in particular — treating us as if we’re not visible and are not owed common decency and respect,” they wrote.
“They will act like you are literally not standing there, and people are tired of it,” a fellow user added. “Black people have so many stories about this from them damn near running you off the sidewalk to reaching over you in stores. I may not have reacted as she did, but I understand.”
The Yeshiva World reported on the incident and cited a witness who said the NYPD refused to press charges against the Black woman and instead assisted her in filing harassment suit against the victim she assaulted.
Atlanta Black Star hasn’t confirmed this detail.
Watch more in the video below.
BROOKLYN: Woman assaults another woman in Target because she didn't say excuse me and reached over her child to get something. pic.twitter.com/ZeFNqUSn8j
— NYC Scanner (@NYScanner) September 16, 2019