It’s above all of us now in 2019. And a Black family proved that after expeditiously [insert T.I. voice] firing a White contractor who showed up for a job with a huge Confederate flag flying from the back of his car.
As Yahoo! News reports, Allison and Zeke Brown, who live in Atlanta, hired the contractor, identified only as Michael, to replace the brakes on their golf cart.
However his arrival—which featured him rolling up in his vehicle with a giant Confederate flag affixed to the back—promptly put the family off, as Allison kindly explained to him before he even had a chance to approach the front door.
“Hi, you know what, I do apologize, I know you’ve come from a very long way, but we’re going to use someone else,” Allison could be heard telling Michael in the video that was taken from her Ring app.
“She’s upset with the flag,” Zeke chimed in.
“No, I’m beyond upset with the flag,” Allison insisted.
Michael apparently offers to remove the Confederate flag, but as we said in the beginning, it’s above us now, especially Allison.
“No, you don’t need to take it down. You can continue to believe what you need to believe, sir,” Allison politely said. “But no, I cannot pay you for your services. Thank you. Have a good day.”
With nothing left to do, Michael gets back into his vehicle and drives off, the obnoxious flag waving in the background.
Allison, who is a radiation therapist, told Yahoo! News that she was cleaning out her closet, unaware of the Confederate flag and Michael’s arrival when Zeke appeared in the couple’s bedroom quipping, “God is testing me.”
“When my husband told me about the flag, I said, ‘Let me handle this,’ ” Allison said.
“I didn’t want to be the ‘angry Black woman,’ but I wanted him to learn and feel that bottom-line loss,” she added. “You don’t go to Germany and wave the Nazi flag. It’s the same thing.”
Zeke called the flag “absurd.”
“[Michael] hadn’t been disrespectful prior, so seeing the flag did not fit my preconceptions,” said Zeke, who is a manager at a health care tech company. “The flag was absurd—I had to walk back into the house to calm myself down.”
Michael had been communicating with Zeke over Facebook before showing up. After he left, Zeke said Michael messaged them, saying, “I didn’t know the flag offended y’all.”
“Yes, it is extremely offensive to anyone of color. I understand it is part of American history, but that flag stood for a time in history where people such as myself had a very bad way of life…Micheal, I hope this small interaction causes you to do a little research on how several Americans feel about the Confederacy,” Zeke wrote back. “I know it’s part of history, so is Nazi Germany….”
Michael, for his part, told Yahoo! News that he is a “redneck” and he was carrying around the flag for the Fourth of July.
My little siblings bought it from a flea market,” he said. “I don’t support slavery and neither do my siblings. But I am not going to take it down when my siblings asked me to fly it. If [the family] wants to take offense, they can.”
So much for learning the lesson that the Browns hoped to impart. But hey, if Micahel wants to sacrifice coin to be ignorant, so be it.
