Source: Cavan Images / Getty
Much like the unofficial team name of the United States’ Olympic gymnastics team, sometimes when you “f**k around”, you “find out.”
Booooy, there must be a lot of white people who are mad they can’t be publicly racist in peace anymore. I mean, c’mon, Karens and Ken-tlemen of the Klan-ish variety can’t even harass a Black man on the street anymore without catching criminal charges. What has happened to this great country of ours?
I’m being sarcastic, of course, but a white family arrested after a confrontation with a Black man during the Hot August Nights classic car festival in Virginia City, Nevada, would probably share the above sentiment unironically.
According to My News 4, Gary Miller, his wife Janis, and their daughter, Tiffany, were arrested by the Storey County Sheriff’s Office after Gary allegedly responded to Black man Ricky Johnson’s inquiry on whether he was a registered voter by telling him “they have a hanging tree” for people like him, setting off a heated back-and-forth between Johnson, the white family and their equally white friends who chucked and jeered at Johnson while it was all playing out.
How it started (and blew up on TikTok).
How it’s going:
Checkmate!
The video begins with Johnson trying to bait the white man into repeating what he said for the camera, and while the man wouldn’t repeat it, he certainly didn’t deny saying it, nor did his white friends, one of whom was unsurprisingly wearing a MAGA hat.
From NewsOne:
“Keep talking,” Johnson can be heard shouting. “And where the tree at, to hang people at? Where’s that?”
The white man stood their silently for a second with his fists balled up like he was trying to look tough, but he also kind of looked like he was trying to figure out what to say next.
“Where’s the hanging tree at?” Johnson asked again, to which the white man finally answered, “In your backyard.” (Really? That’s what he came up with? “In your backyard?” Welp, it’s not like MAGA racists are known for being clever people.)
A few moments later, a white woman came to try to defuse the situation, but Johnson was clearly already set on not backing down.
“No, no, no,” Johnson protested. “He just said there’s a hanging tree down there to hang people like me. That’s racist!”
The woman agreed that it was, indeed, “very racist,” which didn’t seem to bother the white men at all, presumably, because anti-Black racism is as American as apple pie, baseball and public lynchings.
Johnson kept getting more and more enraged, which apparently started to make his main adversary nervous.
“Oh man, come on, get outta here, get the f—k outta here,” the white man said, but, again, Johnson was clearly invested in standing up for himself.
“Man, you know what, F—k you! And I’m not leaving. Make me leave, motherf—ker! Cause I can’t take it!” he shouted.
“I don’t make trash; I burn it,” the white man responded. (Nah, seriously, this man hasn’t updated his roasting repertoire since he was an 8-year-old telling his friends, “I’m rubber and you’re glue…”)
The back-and-forth went on for a while before the white woman identified as Janis Miller said she owned the property and told Johnson, not the racists, to leave the property and even got in his face in an effort to intimidate him, and because she was seen in the video putting her hands on him, she was charged with misdemeanor battery. Gary was charged with breach of the peace and an unlawful act because of actual or perceived race, and Tiffany was charged with delaying a peace officer. Both charges are also misdemeanors.
“The first thing that this guy said was ‘Get the f*** out of my face with the N-word.’ I said, ‘What the f*** did you say?’ He replied back to me ‘I have a hanging tree in my backyard for n****** like (you)’” Johnson said in an interview with News 4, during which he also declared: “I want them charged. That’s the justice I want — them charged.”
Again, the defendants are all facing misdemeanor charges, and there’s really no telling if they will even stick, but it’s still an inconvenience that would have been easily avoidable if racists weren’t so deathly allergic to leaving Black people alone. This is what f**king around and finding out gets you.
They found the right one that day.