A Black woman called the police after finding herself in a standoff with a white man who refused to move out of her way.
Carmenlita Welch, who goes by @_.carmenlita on TikTok, was walking down a Minnesota sidewalk when the nutty pedestrian almost ran into her. The two ended up in a standoff.
“I’m on the correct side of the sidewalk,” he told her, as he stood nearly nose-to-nose with a shocked Welch. “What is your problem?” she asked. “You see me walking and walked right in front of me.” Welch was listening to music while she waited for a bus.
The man believed people should walk as they drive: pass on the left, and walk on the right. Apparently, he ignored the part about staying in your lane.
At one point, the man asked Welch if she had a driver’s license, and at another point he barked at her to wait for the bus somewhere else. He also called her “sweetheart.”
While the man presented it as a matter of etiquette, Welch called out his intimidation tactics in a scathing dress-down.
“I don’t have to move!” she said, panning her phone over his face and his female companion. “I can stand right here all day. And post you on my page. F**k around with you.”
She added, “White people and their f**king entitlement.”
He responded, “Oh, it’s a racial thing now.”
“Oh yes, it is! Because you see me minding my business with my headphones in just walking minding my business,” she said. “You gotta walk on, boy.”
The two stood in silence for several seconds, neither moving.
In the caption of her July 1 video, Welch said she called the police; It’s unclear whether she filed charges or whether the incident meets the threshold for disorderly conduct under Minnesota law.
The video has racked up tens of thousands of views, and the comments make clear why it’s striking a nerve.
One person wrote on the original post: “That is so deeply rooted in Jim Crow where black people were expected to get off the sidewalk when a white person comes by! Honey, we are not our ancestors. I’m so glad you didn’t move.”
Atlanta Black Star commenters picked up on the same history. “If people are unaware of history – there used to be a [code] that we had to move when they walked. So yeah, I don’t move either,” one top comment read.
Another person pointed to a pattern of white men confronting Black women specifically: “Love to mess with women. Bring that same energy to a grown Black man.”
