Main street of the famous gold rush town Virginia City, Nevada, now a major tourist destination. | Source: Education Images / Getty
At this point, it should be obvious that there are a lot of white people who long for the day when they can simply racially harass a random Black person in the street without the interaction being recorded and put on display for the world to see. I mean, KKK members hid their faces under hoods for a reason, but even still, there was a time when a white person being racist to a Black person wasn’t even a punishable offense as it was simply the way of things in America—the America they want to make great again.
On Friday, during Hot August Nights, the annual classic car and rock ‘n’ roll event in Reno and Virginia City, Nevada, a Black man who was reportedly collecting signatures for a ballot measure recorded a confrontation he had with a group of white men, one of whom he said responded to his inquiry on whether he was a registered voter by telling him “they have a hanging tree” for people like him. The video begins with the Black man, identified by the Associated Press as Ricky Johnson, trying to bait the white man into repeating what he said while the camera was rolling, 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, as they joined their fellow racist in mocking and laughing at Johnson just for getting upset over the racism he encountered.
“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.)
The unidentified white man’s white friend in the MAGA hat came up behind him and patted him on the shoulder in an apparent show of support while their other equally white friends chuckled from the sidelines. 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.
“Y’all are gonna take his back when he’s being racist?” Johnson asked the other white men, who all remained unbothered by their friend’s bigotry.
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…”)
“And y’all laughing at this? This is what y’all like?” Johnson said addressing the other men again.
The back and forth went on for a while as another white man approached Johnson, but not the racists, in an effort to get him to move along and do the job he was there to do. A white woman who said she owned the property they were on told Johnson, not the racists, to leave the property and even got in his face in an effort to intimidate him.
“Slap me, hit me! I want you to!” Johnson shouted at the Karen crusader, to which she responded by trying to switch her energy up, saying, “I love you. You’re my brother,” and, “Jesus loves you.”
The woman had also informed Johnson that the racist he was going back and forth with was her father.
“Your dad just said there’s a hanging tree for n—ers like me. What does that mean?” Johnson shouted emotionally. “And I did not disrespect your dad. I asked him nicely, ‘Excuse me, sir, are you a registered voter?’ He said no. I said thank you. And then he turned around and said there was a hanging tree down the road for n—ers like me.”
“Oh, hell no,” the white woman said.
“That’s exactly what the f-ck he said. All of them ganged up on me,” Johnson said. “And everybody is going along with that sh-t.”
Anyway, according to AP, after the video went viral on social media, sponsors for Hot August Nights, which is a 10-day event, said the organizers revoked the registrations of the white men they identified in the video. Meanwhile, Storey County Undersheriff Eric Kern told AP that the sheriff’s office is investigating the incident as a possible hate crime and that the office has completed interviews with Johnson and potential suspects, and the results have been sent to the district attorney’s office, which will decide if charges will be pressed.
“As far as a hate crime, it could be an element,” Kern told AP. “There is an enhancement we are looking at.”
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is Black, offered his support Monday to the Johnson and the sheriff’s office in its investigation of what he called a “hateful, racist incident.”
Whaaaaah? Hate crime charges? Revoked memberships? A Black attorney general? WHAT HAPPENED TO AMERICA? WHY CAN’T A WHITE MAN HARASS BLACK PEOPLE IN PEACE ANYMORE???
MAGA, amirite?
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