Black man gets passive aggressive letter from neighbours, his response is epic
White privilege is so entrenched in the psyche of some Caucasians that many a times they find it difficult to gauge the sensitivity of a given situation and respond appropriately. So when Richard Brookshire, a young black professional living in a Manhattan neighbourhood, received a letter from his white neighbours threatening to call the police on him for allegedly creating too much noise in the wee hours of the morning, he didn’t take it lightly.
The 29-year-old, who works as a manager at a leadership institute, had been advising a friend over the phone on how to pen a resignation letter with the right tone after getting a call at 1am on Thursday. He went back to bed after speaking with him for half an hour while pacing around in his apartment. The next day, he found a hand-written letter stuck to his door that read: "It is extremely rude and inconsiderate to scream and stomp around your apartment until almost 2 a.m. A complaint has been submitted to the management. Next time this will go straight to the police. Please learn your manners."
(Photo: Twitter)
Shocked by the casual threat of involving the police for something that could have been easily solved by a frank chat with the neighbour; Brookshire realised that he needed to give a fitting reply.
Here's an excerpt from his letter:
I, the tenant of apartment 6J, having secured this rental property through earnings I made and credit I earned, have no inherent or expressly stated obligation to accommodate your hypersensitivities or those of your spouse, when occupying my home. As one of the only tenants of color occupying this building at full market rate, I find it personally abhorrent that you'd levy the threat of involving the authorities for an insignificant infraction such as the one you noted in your poorly written and ill-thought-out correspondence. As a Black man, I take these overt actions as a direct threat to my physical and psychological well-being and as an act of violence upon me."
This is a picture of the letter that he wrote:
(Photo: Twitter)
He signed off the note as ‘Your #VeryBlackNeighbor’ before clicking a photo and posting it on Facebook. The letter was soon shared thousands of times online before it was even delivered to his neighbour. One social media user, Towanna Williams Thompson, dubbed it the ‘#ClapBackOfTheSeason’ while Jasz Edward shared it along with the following note: ‘This is a perfect example of how to keep your cool when you confronted ignorance. Don't stoop to their level. . . To quote the FLOTUS "When they go low we go high!" Rock on Richard with your bad self!’
Fearing backlash, the white neighbour known as David O., later claimed that he wasn’t aware that Brookshire was black and that he and his wife just wanted to sleep.
