America has been discussing for some time now, as a country, the idea of “reparations” — the notion that some measure of recompense is to be made for injustices both real and perceived to black people in the past and present.
It can’t just be limited to slavery, of course, since no one who was an actual slave in the antebellum United States is still alive. Many proponents argue that limiting it to the descendants of slaves will do; others say it won’t go far enough. Their argument: Every black person has suffered some kind of injustice and deserves to be compensated for it.
Now, granted, I’m not sure how these kinds of reparations would even work or where we would draw the line and stop. I wouldn’t even know where to start.
I do know where not to start, however: Target.
Regrettably, Karen Ivery did not reach the same conclusions — and it’ll leave her with a spot on her criminal record.
According to a Tuesday report in the New York Post, police in Blue Ash, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, say Ivery demanded $1,000 in merchandise free of charge for “reparations” in an October incident and was placed under arrest after she followed a loss prevention officer into his office and physically cornered him.
CCTV footage showed the Target security employee punching her in the face.
The confrontation began after Ivery repeatedly talked to a cashier about “reparations” regarding her bill.
After what was described in the police report as a brief encounter, a manager approached the two. The report said Ivery first asked for reparations and then began “aggressively” walking in the direction of the manager.
“Ivery kept berating her about reparations and her privileged life,” the report said.
Zach Cotter, the store’s loss prevention officer, then stepped in and told Ivery to 1) chill out and 2) leave the store, according to the report.
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Instead, she began turning her wrath on Cotter — then, when he retreated, followed him back to his office. When he tried to shut the door, she kept him from doing so by force and, according to Cotter’s own words on the police bodycam video, cornered him “in an enclosed space.”
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“And I hit her in the face,” he told police.
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That he did:
Target security guard punches customer asking for ‘reparations’ https://t.co/GzlVBsRpVs pic.twitter.com/WD23AGitGU
— New York Post (@nypost) April 12, 2023
When the police officer asked Ivery, who was in the office, if she was all right, she responded, “Physically I am OK. Emotionally I am very, very angry.”
According to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, the reparations incident got stranger from there.
The report said the full police bodycam footage shows that when the officer told her to stop talking, Ivery responded, “Do you know who I am? Clearly, you don’t know who I am.”
When the officer asked about the incident, she described it thusly: “I was asking the cashier to reach out to her manager so we could have a larger conversation about how money works, and how provision works, and how it’s been working in our community in a very wrong way.
Ivery later called it “my Rosa Parks moment.”
The police were disinclined to agree. The report said that they “determined that Ivery was the aggressor.” She eventually was sentenced to a day in jail and $110 in fines for disorderly conduct.
Granted, this isn’t the way most people go about seeking reparations, but why the video reverberates is that it has something of the spirit of the movement behind it — or really, the spirit of any woke movement that makes demands regarding the transfer of property, power or authority.
We’re asking nicely, the wokeistas say. Then we’re going to ask a little less nicely. Then it’ll be considerably less nicely. And then things get aggressive. And more aggressive. You don’t want things to get aggressive, do you? So just do what we say in the first place.
Sure, Ivery seems to have other issues. Like, for instance, pulling this reparations stunt at a Target. Pull it at a state capitol or city hall with a few other protesters and she might have had a shot at getting her demands. At the very least, law enforcement seems to be a bit more accommodating in those venues. At a big-box store, acting on her own behalf? Not so much.
However, it’s interesting that when someone like Karen Ivery does this at a Target, we assume she’s not quite right in the head. When a small mob of leftists does it, it’s a protest for justice and equity. Amusing how that works.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
