A white woman in Florida apparently thinks it’s illegal for a Black father to talk to his son playing soccer. Meet “Golf Cart Gail,” the internet’s latest racist dialing the cops on Black people going about their everyday lives.
According to a Facebook post from eyewitness Ginger Williams, a white field marshal in a golf cart called St. Johns County sheriff’s deputies on a Black father during a soccer match in Ponte Vedra, Florida, this weekend. After the man’s son became agitated with a referee’s call, his father yelled, “The ref is right,” and that’s when Golf Cart Gail “decided to spring into action and rapidly approach this parent and remind him that harassment would not be tolerated.”
“For whatever reason, Golf Cart Gail just would not let this go,” Williams explained. “She continued to harass and beleaguer this parent. The gentleman offered to leave in order to avoid a situation. As he began to pack up his things, Golf Cart Gail informed him that she was calling the police because she no longer felt safe with his threatening behavior. This man was peacefully leaving his own son’s soccer game to avoid exactly this situation.”
https://www.facebook.com/amy.l.williams.777/posts/10215213353340959
In video footage recorded by Williams, the field marshal claims the Black father responded in a “nasty” way toward her, according to local outlet First Coast News. Another witness who recorded the incident, Maria Morales-Walther, said that the field marshal “kept circling and agitating” the father and his wife, and that the field marshal told the sheriff deputies that she “feared for herself and the children because she didn’t know what [the father] was capable of.”
“She never announced herself to parents,” Morales-Walther said, according to First Coast News.
Golf Cart Gail has since gone viral amid a growing and documented history of white women calling the police on Black people for everything from barbecues to campaigning against Trump.
https://twitter.com/mergerson_jms/status/1052557206812577792
https://twitter.com/DollyVol/status/1052556919918010369
The people who make these calls should be prosecuted for harassment https://t.co/QkGI6FGEPs
— LSpear37 (@LSpear37) October 17, 2018
https://twitter.com/NewDay64671264/status/1052583776180670464
We need to stop giving them cute names because now they are doing it for the attention. And they need to be charged!
— Sharalyn Bailey (@iactup) October 17, 2018
‘Golfcart Gail’ filmed calling cops on black man cheering on his son at soccer game https://t.co/YibEoY1UML
READ MORE
- What does Latinx mean? What you should know about Latinx identity and history
- Breaking down the difference between gender identity and sex
- What is the difference between race and ethnicity?
As Williams points out, white people like Golf Cart Gail “have the privilege of not caring” that a police altercation could end in violence for Black people. She thanked the officers for “listening to everyone and making sure the situation was dissolved safely” and vowed to “continue to speak out.”
“What makes this even worse is that a parent had actually been ejected from this game during the third period,” Williams wrote. “There had to be a delay of game due to the disturbance yet Golf Cart Gail didn’t need to call the police on him. Why weren’t the police called? What was the difference? I’ll give you a guess. Shame on you Golf Cart Gail for what you did to this man and to the children who had to see this.”
H/T Daily Mail