Shayne Holland, a black Indianapolis, Indiana man, says a woman in his apartment complex racially profiled him on Friday when she questioned whether he had a right to be in the pool of his own apartment complex, WRTV-TV reports. The woman, who Holland later learned was an off-duty police officer, did not believe he lived in the complex even after he showed her his key.
"She didn't introduce herself, she didn't say hello," Holland told the TV station. "She says, 'do you live here?' I'm like, 'yes, I live here, I wouldn't be here if I didn't live here.'" She insisted, but Holland didn’t feel comfortable giving her his full address without knowing who she was. He showed her his key fob, but a police officer snatched it out of his hand.
Eventually, the property manager arrived, and despite knowing and recognizing Holland, he was still asked to leave.
"Honestly, I don't want to jump to racism. I don't want to say she just pointed me out because I'm the only black dude in the pool, but that was the case,” he said.
"If you need to have somebody make sure that it's safe and make sure that there are not too many people that don't live at the pool, I don't mind that. Just let me know that. I don't think that they did that and I think that could have solved it," Holland added.
This summer has seen a disturbing onslaught of similarly racially-charged incidents. (Although, consider the fact that this isn’t a weirdly racist summer, and instead black people are just taking to social media more in an attempt to demonstrate how racism keeps them from doing everyday things, which sometimes includes their jobs.)
The most famous of these incidents include #BBQBecky and #PermitPatty, but a surprising number involve black people being questioned for their right to be at a public pool. In just the past month, the following incidents have made the news: a black mother and her 5-year-old daughter were harassed by a white man in California who was worried about diseases in a hotel pool; a white woman assaulted a black teen at a community pool in South Carolina; a white man was fired from his job after a video of him questioning whether a black woman had the right to use a private North Carolina neighborhood pool even though she did; a Tennessee woman was fired after she called the police on a black man wearing socks in an apartment complex’s pool.
