There are many troubling videos of “Karens,” usually middle-aged white women, giving Black people a hard time over minor or, usually, non-existent infractions. The Amy Cooper video, in which a white Manhattanite makes a false police call on a Black man, is on the disturbing side of the spectrum. Some, however, are absurd, if still concerning. Such is a TikTok video that went viral on Monday, depicting a “Karen” giving a Black woman a hard time over a…Tigger flag.
https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/status/1424763426111475715
The video shows a mostly peaceful but tense confrontation between an older white woman and the person who wound up posting it on social media. Her name is Ambrosia, aka @tizzybizzy92, and it finds her opening the door to a neighbor, who proceeds to speak her mind about one of the flags hanging on her property, arguing that it blemishes their shared surroundings.
“I want to talk about this Tigger flag,” the woman says. “I don’t like it.” The older woman compliments the other flag she has up, an American flag, which she deems “real nice.” But not so much the one featuring the rambunctious stuffed tiger from A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories.
“It makes it look tacky — it makes the neighborhood look tacky,” the woman claims.
But Ambrosia stands her ground, not by raising her voice or even getting snippy, but by being extremely nice and neighborly — but never coming close to agreeing to take it down. “It doesn’t [look tacky], but that’s okay,” she tells the older woman. “You’re allowed your opinion.”
Ambrosia’s neighbor tries to scare her by talking about allegedly broken ordinances. “And we have rules,” she says. “I don’t want to have to go find out what they are, but I don’t like that.” Eventually she leaves, swearing she’s going to go find out what those rules are, if they do indeed exist.
Ambrosia later uploaded the encounter to TikTok, complete with a shot of the offending flag, showing the Disney interpretation of the character, first seen in the 1966 short Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. The service took it down, but re-uploaded it after an appeal.
The TikTok soon made its way to Twitter, and as it got passed around, people couldn’t believe they were watching a video of a woman so angered by a flag showing Tigger the stuffed tiger that she pestered one of her neighbors.
https://twitter.com/THEEBlackleftie/status/1424772978848505859
Some joked that Tigger is the latest children’s character who’s been dragged into today’s culture wars.
…aaaand THAT was how Tigger joined Mr Potato Head on the endangered fictional character list. https://t.co/VEJrzNYmau
— BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) August 9, 2021
Look out, they comin' for Tigger and Winnie the Pooh next https://t.co/g3Rbfl9olO
— Andrew Pagel (@IchisukeKurosak) August 9, 2021
Some argued that Tigger was now a Black Lives Matter symbol.
https://twitter.com/IsaacStazz/status/1424781232152457218
Others dwelled on the more troubling sides of the video.
Some white people continue to have a strange entitled obsession with rule enforcement and policing other free people, that can be directly traced to their relationship with the police and America's historical legacy of white supremacy.
It's a Tigger flag. https://t.co/Rrp1G5CDUa
— Travon (@Travon) August 9, 2021
https://twitter.com/kazweida/status/1424800083497738242
And others praised Ambrosia for her infinite patience in de-escalating what could have been an even more febrile situation.
https://twitter.com/bellobass/status/1424777353377484810
(Via Yahoo!)