As racial tensions in the US continue to climb to new heights, it seems like with each new day, a new viral video surfaces that escalates tensions even more. That’s precisely what’s happened after a Black mother in a Detroit suburb filmed an uncomfortable confrontation with a white mother in the parking lot of a Kroger grocery store. As the video went viral and many say the white mother’s behavior wasn’t just bizarre — it also had racist undertones.
Shaneeka Montgomery-Strickland, 43, said she was simply trying to pull out of a parking space when it happened.
Behind her, an unidentified white woman stood blocking her car, even as her child sat in a stroller beside her.
When Montgomery-Strickland got out of her car to speak to the woman, things escalated.
The Black mom of three quickly grabbed her phone to start filming, and began livestreaming part of the interaction on Facebook.
“Hi,” Montgomery-Strickland said, as she begins the recording. “I’m at Kroger’s here on 8 Mile in Livonia, and I have a woman standing behind my car telling me I cannot leave. This is ridiculous!”
As it turns out, the Michigan mom had crossed paths with the unidentified white woman just minutes before, as they both shopped in the same aisle of the grocery store.
According to Montgomery-Strickland, one of her three sons had stepped on the bottom shelf so he could reach a bottle of Gatorade — something that apparently set off the white woman.
“She’s saying, ‘Ughhh! Oh my God, they went up there to get that Gatorade, and I’m trying to shop over here!'” Montgomery-Strickland told Fox 2. “It was just irateness.”
The Michigan mom said she tried to defuse the situation in the moment — but it didn't do much.
“I told her, I said, ‘Please don’t yell at them,’ and then she started yelling at me,” Montgomery-Strickland recalled. “And I said, ‘You don’t have to yell at them, like, they got the Gatorade …”
“A lot of people, if you’re short, you’re going to go up there and grab what you need,” she pointed out. “There’s not a lot of workers in the aisle, you have to do what you have to do, and you move on.” But apparently, the other woman did not move on.
After Montgomery-Strickland was done shopping, she made her way to her car and was preparing to leave when the confrontation continued.
“She still went to her car, came back with the baby in the cart, called me the B-word, then she stood behind my car because I started videotaping after that,” the mom told Fox 2. “I said ma’am can you please move from behind my car, she told me ‘No, I’m not going anywhere.'”
In her Facebook video, Montgomery-Strickland says she has never experienced anything like this before.
“All this stuff going on out here, protesting and everything, and this is what this woman is doing — refusing to get out from behind my car,” she said.
As the video rolls, the white woman can be heard telling Montgomery-Strickland that she shouldn’t be filming a minor, and Montgomery-Strickland tried to avoid filming the woman’s daughter as much as possible.
Police were soon called to the scene by both women, where responding officers tried to deescalate the situation.
Police took information from both women, and the white woman was ultimately asked to move so Montgomery-Strickland could leave.
But as her video continues to go viral, it’s also causing many people to debate whether the woman’s actions were racially motivated, and it’s drumming up conversations about the many microaggressions minorities face on a daily basis that go unfilmed.
The mother received a flood of comments on Facebook from users near and far who couldn't believe what happened.
A lot of people also accused the white mother of recklessness.
“Wtf is wrong with people???” one person asked on Facebook. “To actually stand behind your car with a baby in the stroller … She needs to be investigated by CPS.”
“If she didn’t want her child filmed she should’ve turned the stroller around or better yet, took her sloppy [expletive] to her car,” another person wrote.
“White privilege is being able to storm up to an officer while he is getting out of his vehicle and vulnerable,” another said of how fast the white woman ran to the officer to tell her side of the story first.
Days later, the mom of three was still floored by the bizarre exchange.
‘I’ve gotten a lot of responses,” she told the New York Post. “People are very angry and upset about it because they say it makes no sense.”
But given all the turmoil the country is going through now, the woman’s actions seem especially shocking to the mom of three.
“Why are they still out here doing this after all that’s going on, all the changes we’re trying to make? After Black Lives Matter?” asked Montgomery-Strickland. “It makes no sense.”
