This story speaks for itself (from the Atlanta Journal Constitution):
The Kalonji family had just closed on a foreclosed home and were told by their real estate agent they should go over to the house and change the locks.
But when Jean Kalonji and his wife, Angelica, started working at the home, an armed man and another person who appeared to be the man’s son allegedly confronted them.
“He say to put the hands up and get out from the house, otherwise he would shoot us,” the husband told Channel 2.
The neighbors didn’t believe the couple when they told them they had bought the home and called the Newton County Sheriff’s Office. The Kalonjis didn’t have the closing papers with them, so deputies arrested them, charged them with loitering and prowling and took them to jail.
Hey, at least they weren’t shot by their new neighbors “in self defense.” The local sheriff’s department is investigating the matter. I’m sure we will hear back from them about this little misunderstanding oh, maybe never. Just an educated guess …
Clearly black folks are “oversensitive” and “reverse-racists”.
Who says this had anything to do with race?
Only slightly OT: I was visiting my elderly racist mother in rural Georgia (not too far from Newton County, in fact) last week and she was complaining because “all these people” were trying to make the Tulsa shootings about race. She had the same comment about “that boy Tyrone in Florida.”
This is how these people think. This is also a big reason why, from an early age, I wanted nothing to do with the culture I was raised in.
Didn’t the Tulsa shooters target black people specifically as revenge for something a different black person did?
Even for a racist, it’s hard to not see that it was about race.
He knows. He’s just counting on the Great White Shield Of Silence to back him up.
Boo: Not if you get your information from Fox News.
SFF: Not sure if you’re referring to me (and my post is explicitly ANTI-racist) or my mother (who is not a “he”). Assuming the latter, which makes a lot more sense, you’re wrong. The whole point is that she doesn’t know, because the narrative in her head – that all these cases are non-racial in nature and being “made” racial by the complaints of (fill in your epithet here) – is so established that it’s stronger than any exposure to the actual facts of the case. When I explained the actual facts of the case, she simply shrugged – she didn’t want to argue, because she couldn’t, but I wasn’t going to change her mind with something as irrelevant as facts, either.
Welcome to the neighborhood.
I’m sure the neighbors will become good friends and they’ll look back at this little misunderstanding and laugh.
Or not.
and this is surprising, because??????
I haven’t seen anything like that around here, but I do know of a few instances where black people were outside their homes with white people commenting, “Oh, I guess they have friends visiting?” Or disbelieving that they owned or were renting the house.
Can the home owners get out of the loan or whatever for this house?
I imagine, that they are stuck with it, but damn, I’d damn sure NOT want to be living in a house with those same damn neighbors.
The neighbors did the right thing and called the police when they saw someone inside an empty house. Maybe they should have gone over first, but I can’t fault them for just notifying the authorities.
The police were the ones who overreacted. Although the new owners didn’t have papers with them (who does?). They surely gave the cops the name and phone number of their real estate agent. The cops could have straightened it all out with a phone call. Real estate agents can ALWAYS be reached by phone.
Cancel that post. I just re-read it and saw they did come over brandishing a weapon. Not neighborly at all.
Sorry, too tired to be blogging. You were right.
Still, the cops could have straightened it out with a phone call, so BOTH the neighbors and the cops were wrong.
The police reacted just like they reacted to Dr. Gates in Harvard when he was in his home. Note Dr. Gates lived in the house for at least a year and the cops had to arrest him and he had papers to prove who he was and where he lived.
The cops were called on the perception he didn’t live there, but IIRC that’s not why he was arrested. He was arrested for being uppity and not knowing his place.
On third reading, the Kalonjis have an action for assault. They were not just questioned, they were threatened with grevious bodily harm. At least a peace bond is in order.
I’m in the process of trying to find work in NOLA so I can be back home, but before that I was thinking about moving somewhere else as long as I was out of DFW.
It’s hard enough to find a state/city that seems “safe” enough for a single female to live alone, but then I also had to decided just how comfortable I would have been living in a city/state where there was a really small Black population in other words, would I be comfortable living somewhere where I might be the only Black person and I realized that I just wouldn’t be comfortable doing it. So that limited my search alot.
It’s probably nice not having to worry about it, the idea of just being able to pick up my crap and move anywhere I could reasonably afford to go without thinking about being the only Black person there, but I’ve been Black since the day I was born, so you learn to deal with it or just ignore it, but sometimes it’s just aggravating.
This story just really pisses me off, because I speculate that this family thought about all the things I thought about when deciding where to live and where to buy a home and then shit like this happens and like I asked earlier what can they do now. If they signed the papers for the home they are stuck living with neighbors who actually pulled guns on them.
After the SC’s decision to uphold strip searches I’m surprised that didn’t await them at the precinct.
Is it clear that the neighbors are white?
The only reason I raise this is because foreclosures have caused a lot of neighborhood anger against people who are able to buy at a price that is lower that what the property values were before the recession. And that attitude is not exclusively inter-racial.
Newton County is exurban Atlanta to rural Georgia. So the “owning home while black” is the more likely explanation. The racist assumption that any black male (regardless of age) who was inside the house must be a burglar is likely the explanation of the neighbor’s action.
The sheriff’s response to the call, however, is clearly one of not believing a homeowner is a homeowner merely because he is black. Would the sheriff have asked a white family of the Kalonji’s age for documentation that they actually owned the house?
Yes.
New rule: If they’re black they can’t be burglars. So you’d better just take their word for it, white honkey pig.
Old Rule: if you see someone in broad daylight working on a home that had been foreclosed/sold then you welcome your new neighbor to the neighborhood; baked goods are preferable to brandished guns…