A continuing trend of videos capturing White people harassing people of color, particularly Black people, continued this week when a woman decided she had to detain a fellow shopper.
Shaneeka Montgomery-Strickland went live on Facebook after a White woman blocked her car from pulling out of the parking lot and refused to move after being asked.
The video of the interaction went viral.
Montgomery-Strickland was shopping with her children at a Kroger in Wayne County, Michigan. In the store, there was an innocuous interaction with another shopper, when her son stepped on a shelf to reach a Gatorade higher up.
As Montgomery-Strickland explains it, this was what set the other shopper off.
"She said, 'Oh my God, they went up to get Gatorade and I'm trying to shop here'."
"I told her, 'Please don't yell at them,' and then she started yelling at me. And I said, 'You don't have to yell at me, they got the Gatorade'."
The shopper was "irate" with Montgomery-Strickland and escalated things further in the parking lot where she insulted her and then refused to let her leave while she called the cops.
This was when Montgomery-Strickland started livestreaming the incident.
There's been a whole slew of these instances going viral online, especially recently. They just keep happening.
The woman in the video just sits behind Montgomery-Strickland's car, with a stroller that has her child in it using the stroller as a blockade.
"I have a woman standing behind my car telling me I cannot leave. This is ridiculous."
Eventually, the police are called.
While they waited for the police to arrive, Montgomery-Strickland has a few interactions with the woman detaining her. Despite preventing her from leaving, the shopper also tried to tell Montgomery-Strickland to delete the video.
When the police finally arrive, they try to defuse the situation, and ask the woman to leave.
But 'Kroger Karen' will not soon be forgotten.
What makes this one so weird is the confusion. Montgomery-Strickland couldn't understand why this other shopper would take this action.
As dumb, and sometimes dangerous, as these 'Living while Black' moments can be, there's at least a certain sense of logic. The person calling the cops over some petty bjllsh*t—or trying to force Black people to leave a park BBQ—thinks they don't belong or are doing something illegal for simply existing in the space the White person feels is theirs.
But this shopper just got annoyed with a woman's child using a shelf to reach an item and decided to detain her and her family? Why? What was the plan?
Kroger Karen doesn't even think to call the police until later in the encounter.
What in the world is going on with Karens?
These interactions happen all the time, but in today's age of everyone having the ability to record them, they're now being exposed. They're now able to be seen, when before they might have been dismissed as paranoia on the part of BIPOC.
If you're thinking of calling the cops on a person of color just living their life, it might be better to rethink that idea.