BBQ Becky: Trumpification Gone Loco

Jennifer Schulte AKA "BBQ Becky" calls police 
on two California men for "BBQing While Black"

To glimpse an example of defiant unity in the face of the toxic divisiveness of the Trump era, look no further than Oakland, California.

Arguably one of the more innovative and positive responses to the petty, garden-variety bigotry which has blossomed in different parts of America in this second spring of the Trump administration, the "BBQing While Black" picnic was held in Oakland, California on Sunday.

As Laura Holson reported on Monday for the New York Times, hundreds of people came out to a picturesque section of park next to Lake Merritt in support of two black men who were quietly minding their own business enjoying a modest cookout on a sunny Sunday in April when "BBQ Becky" showed up and totally freaked out. 

The hundreds of folks who showed up last Sunday had an old-school American-style cookout complete with food, drinks, music and dancing - and in doing so made the not-so-subtle point that all people, including people of color, have the right to be in the park in Oakland.

Now the person who sparked this business a month ago, Dr. Jennifer Schulte, is a bit of an enigma.

If you read her biography, she would seem to be a highly-educated individual steeped in science who specializes in "air quality and climate change" and has a Ph.D. in philosophy with a focus on chemical engineering from Stanford University.

Kind of makes her sound like a progressive-leaning liberal on paper.

(FYI - Stanford was quick to distance themselves from her but acknowledged she is a graduate...)

But if you take a few minutes to watch some of the highlights of the video (caught on cell phone) of her strange and loopy public confrontation back on Sunday April 29th (which has been viewed millions of times on Youtube), she almost seems the polar opposite of highly-educated.

In fact, in the video she comes off as obstinate, ignorant, uninformed, remarkably self-righteous and unabashedly racist.

"BBQ Becky"in Ph.D. mode

Dr. Jennifer Schulte, or "BBQ Becky" - which is the real person? Or are they in fact, one in the same?

She approached two African-American men in a public park setting up for a BBQ in broad daylight and began confronting them about BBQing with a charcoal grill.

The afore-mentioned biography says that Dr. Schulte is "a recognized expert in the fields of air quality, emission estimation, air dispersion modeling" etc.

So was she viewing the use of a single charcoal grill in a public park from the perspective of a scientist concerned about the impact on air quality?

Or did she confront the two men about their cookout and call the police because of some kind of conscious or unconscious ethnic or racial bias on her part?

The woman in the video directly questions Schulte about why she's so concerned about two guys having a BBQ.

Schulte's answer is odd to say the least.

"Because it causes extra money from our city to do things when children get injured because of improperly disposable..." (that's what she said, watch the video.)

The clearly-flustered BBQ Becky kinda trails off after that completely nonsensical explanation, almost as if she knows it sounds like the total bullshit it is.

Becky is on her cell phone throughout the video and at some point as she's speaking with a police dispatcher (who must've been incredibly annoyed), she says's she's been waiting on the phone for two hours. Two hours.

Because two black guys are grilling food in a public park where it's permissible to do so.

So think about that, this woman confronted two men she doesn't know minding their own business, harasses them at some point, and then is on the phone with the police for over two hours trying to get an officer to drive out there and stop them from BBQing?

By the time Becky starts having a meltdown and whimpering like a traumatized child (falsely telling the police that she's being grabbed and followed even though SHE is wandering around the two men's BBQ area) and retreating into this weird kind of victim-act, it's pretty evident that something else is going on there.

Not something scientific, but something psychological.

My initial reaction seeing the video was (to borrow a phrase from writer Stephen King) to dismiss Becky as being "as crazy as a shit-house rat", but it's much more than that.

Many have characterized her actions as being a product of the white gentrification of the local Oakland community that has driven many long-time African-American residents out of the area due to skyrocketing rents in nearby San Francisco.

Personally I think Schulte's actions are rooted in something deeper, darker and much more sinister in the "primordial-American" sense.

Susan Smith's 1994 arrest photo

Remember Susan Smith?

She was the white mother from South Carolina who locked her two sons, three-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander inside her vehicle on October 25, 1994 then intentionally let it roll into John D. Long lake.

The vehicle was submerged under water 120-feet from the shore of the lake and both boys drowned inside as she watched.

Smith initially told police that a black man had carjacked the vehicle at an intersection and driven off  and abducted the two boys.

Her hysterical pleas for their safe return were all over national television news for over a week.

She later admitted drowning the two boys because of her desire to initiate a relationship with a wealthy local older man and she apparently didn't want her "fling" to be encumbered by the two lives she'd brought into the world.

One of the things that always fascinated me about this story was that Smith's very first instinct was to try and cover up her heinous crime by claiming that a black man did it.

While it was later revealed that local investigators were skeptical of her story from the start, for more than a week that racist narrative played out on national television.

For those who may be too young to remember, when Smith murdered her two sons in the fall of 1994, this was at a time when parts of urban inner cities had been decimated by a brutal combination of high unemployment, underfunded schools, the crack-cocaine epidemic, a flood of readily-available firearms and rising youth gang violence resulting (in part) by the lack of economic opportunities.

Ashley Williams confronting Hillary Clinton with her
own words during a 2016 campaign event 

In 1994 President Bill Clinton was working across the aisle with Congressional Republicans to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that incorporated "three strikes" laws which sparked a massive surge in mass incarceration in federal and state prisons across the country.

This was just two years before then-First Lady Hillary Clinton gave her infamous speech at Keene State College in New Hampshire when she used the term "Super Predators" for the first time.

Which was in essence, a code-word for young men of color.

At a private fund raising event in Charleston, South Carolina in February 2016, then-23-year-old activist Ashley Williams (pictured above) famously confronted then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton with the cryptic words she used during that 1996 speech in New Hampshire.

So it shouldn't be surprising that Susan Smith understood how to leverage the vilification of African-American men propagated by the media, opportunistic politicians and advocates of the multi-billion dollar prison industry that channels profits from mass incarceration.

And for a short time in the fall of 1994, she bilked sympathetic people and wasted public resources using the police to chase a racist phantom she created to conceal her own crimes.

That's not new in America, and Susan Smith didn't invent it - nor did Jennifer Schulte.

One of the many hysterical photoshopped memes
of "BBQ Becky" circulating on social media

But in my view, that's what lies at the root of "BBQ Becky" standing by a small group of black folks grilling some food, harassing them and sitting on her cell phone for two hours trying to get the police to respond to her own racist phantom.

Conjured up from a place deep inside her own mind where two African-American men grilling some food in a public park becomes some kind of menace to public safety.

For those who view Donald Trump's election to the Oval Office as a titanic step backwards for the evolution of American society, it's hard to forget November 8, 2016.

It's almost as if a swath of the U.S. population suddenly felt empowered or liberated to openly express the most debased kinds of toxic hatred and bigotry against anyone they view as "other".

Sometimes for no reason at all.

16 months into Trump's tenure in office, the kind of divisive racism and irrational anti-immigrant hysteria and vilification that fueled his campaign has clearly manifested inside the minds of some Americans in some truly repugnant and ignorant ways.

Back on April 12th, a white female Starbucks manager called the police because two African-American men were "Waiting While Black" for a third man to join them for a business meeting before placing an order.

On the hallowed grounds of Yale University a white Ph.D. student named Sarah Braasch called campus police when she saw African-American female grad student Lolade Siyonbola "Napping While Black" in the common area of the dorm in which she lives on May 8th.

Back on May 5th, a white woman called police after real estate investor Michael Hayes showed up to inspect a house next door before renovation repairs were scheduled to begin in Memphis, Tennessee.

52% of white women voted for Trump in 2016 so I guess this moronic hysteria shouldn't be a shocker, but now we have "BBQ Becky" freaking out in Oakland over two guys "Grilling While Black".

It's unsettling to watch this rise in incidents of white people calling the cops on black people for doing nothing, and at some point, members of law enforcement are going to have to step up and start enforcing some kind of legal ramifications for those who clog police dispatch lines with this kind of childish nonsense.

There are laws against pulling a fire alarm in a building when there's no fire or emergency - there ought to be laws against calling the police on people for doing nothing.

It's Trumpification gone loco - and it's definitely not Making America Great Again.

Cultural Scapegoating: American Style

Ryan Lochte (L) and Jimmy Feigen (R)

Let's be honest.

From the start, there was something fishy about the strange story of four high-profile members of the American men's swimming team claiming that they'd all been robbed at gunpoint after leaving a party by a group of Brazilian men wearing police uniforms.

As has been widely reported today, their story was a lie used as an attempted cover-up.

As Simon Romero reported for the New York Times earlier today, gold medalist Ryan Lochte's claims that a gun had been held to his forehead during an early morning robbery were pure fiction intended to either cover up the fact that he and the other three swimmers had been out until after 5am.

Or because one or more of them caused serious damage to a bathroom in a Shell station on the way back from an exclusive party thrown by the French in an exclusive riding club in the equally exclusive Lagoa district.

According to Brazilian investigators, witnesses saw the men in some kind of argument or confrontation with store employees over the damaged door at the Shell station - the gun pointed at them was held by a security guard confronting them over the bathroom damage and least one of the swimmers tried to give the employees money; their story fell apart when video contradicted their claims.

After the years of hard work, training and sacrifice these guys put in it's doubtful anyone would fault them for going out and letting loose with some drinks after the pressure of Olympic competition; after all the swimming competition was over.

Aside from Lochte the other three guys were twenty-somethings, all were noticeably drunk and there was something  palpably "frat-like" about the whole affair.

Jimmy Feigen, Gunnar Bentz, Ryan Lochte & Jack Conger

Aside from the legal implications, what's troubling is that these four privileged American's first thought was to cover up their actions rather than to man up and admit it.

Instead they concocted a bogus story to exploit widely-held fears about Brazilian criminal activity.


And tried to blame their own behavior on non-existent people of color; a devious practice with a long history in America - often with far more deadly consequences.

You may recall the horrific case of Charles Stuart back in 1989.

On the night of October 23, 1989, Stuart left a childbirth class with his pregnant wife Carol and at some point he pulled over and shot her, then in an effort to cover it up he then shot himself in the stomach before managing to drive to the hospital.

Charles and Carol Stuart

He famously told Boston police that a black man wielding a gun had jumped into the car, robbed them then shot them both.

Predictably, the city was in an uproar and members of the Boston PD and Massachusetts State Police tore through predominantly African-American neighborhoods looking for suspects.

During the frenzied search a number of innocent black boys and men were beaten by police; and one man was even reportedly killed while in police custody.

But it was a hoax cooked up by Stuart to collect the life insurance on his wife; Stuart's brother went to the police and admitted that he'd help to dispose of the murder weapon.

Carol Stuart died on the operating table hours after being shot - the unborn child delivered two months premature by Cesarean section died seventeen days later.

The incident sparked outrage, particularly in Boston's African-American community and caused incalculable damage to race relations in the city; and sadly served to reinforce the image of Boston as one of the most racist cities in the nation.

Susan Smith

Almost five years to the day on October 25, 1994, Susan Smith reported to South Carolina police that a black man had carjacked her 1990 Mazda Protege at gunpoint at a rural intersection and kidnapped her two children.

Smith's story went global and she spent days appearing in front of television cameras making tearful pleas for the return of her two sons.

But local South Carolina police were almost immediately suspicious of her story as well and secretly suspected her from the start of the investigation.

Days later her story was exposed as a lie and she finally admitted that she had driven her vehicle to a boat ramp at the edge of John D. Long Lake, and allowed it to roll into the water with her two sons.


The bodies of three-year-old Michael Daniel Smith and his younger brother 14 month-old Alexander Tyler Smith were later found inside the vehicle submerged in 60 feet of water.

She confessed to drowning her sons in order to have a relationship with a wealthy man who lived in the area who apparently did not want a family. She's currently incarcerated in Greenwood, South Carolina and will be eligible for parole in 2024.

From a cultural perspective what's both fascinating and sad about the practice of some white Americans committing crimes or illegal acts and intentionally blaming people of color, is that the awareness of the depth of the racial bias that's embedded within the fabric of American culture is so common, that the perpetrators know that authorities will be all too quick to believe any claim that a person of color committed a crime or offense against a white person.

Nelson lynching, Okemah, OK - 1911

Even though studies show that the vast majority of violent crimes in the U.S are intra-racial - that is whites tend to victimize other whites, and blacks tend to victimize other blacks (which is certainly true in Chicago).

Racial scapegoating was often used during the dark days of lynching in the latter part of the 19th and early part of the 20th century in the US.

Most often by mobs who used non-existent crimes, or even the accusation, or association of crimes not proven in trial to justify lynching innocent African-Americans (and Native Americans and whites) - as in the case of Laura Nelson, a black woman who was lynched alongside her son L.D. Nelson on May 25, 1911 from a railroad bridge in Okemah, Oklahoma (pictured above) after the two were seized from a local jail by a mob of about 40 whites seeking revenge for the death of a sheriff's deputy sent to the Nelson farm to search for a stolen cow.

Yet ingrained prejudices in the U.S. are such that racial perception and bias skewers fact and statistics; and as evidenced by the reactions in the Charles Stuart and Susan Smith cases, makes many white Americans malleable to the mere suggestion of black criminality - to the degree that some whites intentionally employ it as a scapegoat.

Those four American Olympic swimmers were certainly cognizant of the racial bias in Brazil; as if they thought the combination of their stature as athletes, their white privilege and the anxiety of violent crime in Rio would make their lie palatable.

Cultural scapegoating is so ingrained in America that it's even been portrayed in popular fiction.

One of the most famous examples I can think of, is the scene in the classic 1990 film Goodfellas, 
and credit goes to the brilliant director Martin Scorcese for demonstrating how racial scapegoating was used by some members of organized crime.

"Tommy D" and Henry Hill prepare to steal the
complicit driver's truck in Goodfellas

It happens during a scene in which real-life mobster Henry Hill (played by actor Ray Liotta) is describing the various ways that their crew regularly ripped off cargo from trucks going in and out of Idewild Airport (now LaGuarida) in Queens, New York during the 50's and 60's.

The scene opens with a white truck driver stopping in front of a diner and climbing down from his cab.



He casually walks past Henry Hill and Tommy DeVito (played by actor Joe Pesci) and gives them both a nod as he walks in the diner (pictured above).

The two mobsters casually walk to the cab of the truck, get in and simply drive away.

Meanwhile inside the diner, after the truck driver has ordered something to go and walks out, he suddenly runs back inside, feigning surprise and anger as he shouts to the man behind the counter:

"Hey! You gotta phone? C'mon, c'mon you gotta phone?"

The man behind the counter says, "Yeah, over there," pointing to a pay phone on the wall as the truck driver hurries over, intentionally raising his voice for the other diner patrons to hear:

"Two niggers just stole my truck! You believe that shit?"

Watch the scene for yourself, it only runs about 48 seconds.

I think it speaks to the underlying reasoning that motivated four Olympic athletes to import something dark from America to deflect attention on their own actions.

Most definitely not a highlight in American Olympic history, but inexorably linked to American history.