The Ouroboros that is racial (and religious) dog whistles
Do you
wonder why Obama hasn’t endorsed Biden yet? Before I answer that, lemme lay
some groundwork…
As you
probably remember, most of the racist attacks against President Obama weren’t
directly attacks on his skin color. Racists are too milquetoast to do that. A
good portion of that racism was aimed at Obama’s supposed religion, Islam. They
called him a secret Muslim so much that republican candidates still thought it
was a good strategy as recently as last year’s midterms.
Now, calling
Obama a Muslim did a few things. First, it singled out his race, sounding the
alarm that he was not white, because we think of Islam as exclusively non-white
in this country. Secondly, it declared him an enemy of America, a story we have
consistently told ourselves about Muslims in this country for nearly 30 years.
Lastly, in doing those two things, they doubled-down on the idea that to be
non-white in this country is to be an enemy of the state as well as an enemy of
the (white) people. If we can learn anything from the republican response to
the Obama administration, it’s that if a dog whistle hits the right pitch it
can get all the dogs barking.
Believe
it or not, another president went through something surprisingly similar.
It
wasn’t long ago that people of Irish and Italian descent were not considered
white in this country. One of the ways white people would dog whistle about the
Irish and Italians was to talk about “Catholics.” John F. Kennedy was of course,
of Irish descent and so his Catholicism became a major talking point against
him. Many white Americans openly said that, if elected, JFK would not represent
the American people so much as work as an agent of the Vatican. Really. So many
people believed this that, in an era of scarce screen time, Kennedy was forced
to make a televised
speech addressing his Catholicism. But since the actual problem was his
Irishness and not his religion, that wouldn’t be enough to persuade the (white)
American people. No. In order for them to leave their prejudice outside of the
ballot box, JFK would need to be vouched for.
Enter:
Lyndon Baines Johnson, a definitively white senator from a former slave state,
with a reputation built on segregation and racism. With LBJ as the VP, JFK would be vouched for, his
Irishness put in check, and white America would be put at ease, allowing the
duo into the White House.
So, if
you wonder why Obama hasn’t endorsed Biden yet or why Obama tried to talk
Biden out of running in 2016, you will probably find your answer in 2008. Looking
back at the difficulties involved in attempting to be the first Black
president, you are likely to see a similarity between him and the first
“Catholic” president. If you were to look at Biden in 2008 you would likely find
a definitively white senator from a former slave state
with a reputation built on segregation and racism and the perfect person to vouch for Barrack Hussein
Obama.
Unfortunately,
that vouching goes both ways as now Biden is thought of as far more progressive
than his record shows and far more contemporary than he exclusively
behaves. And if that’s not enough of an Ouroboros
for you, you should know that if elected, Joe Biden would be the second of only
two Catholic American presidents.
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Calling All White People, Part 36: Media is complicit in white supremacy
Calling All White People,
Part 36
(A periodic attempt to mobilize
white people for something other than supporting just
other melanin-deficient folks and maintaining a status quo of a nation geared
toward whiteness as the baseline and the norm)
By An Average White Guy
TODAY’S EPISODE: The media
help prop up white supremacy and racist systems, and it’s not just Fox News
[To find other installments of
“Calling All White People,” click here]
We—and
by “we” I mean we who are white more so than others—tend to put a lot of trust
in the prevailing systems and structures of society in the United States. A lot
of trust. Even when we say or act like we don’t. But rarely do we look
critically enough at those systems and structures and the people and
institutions that comprise them. Because of that we perpetuate, though both
action and inaction, racism (as well as sexism, rape culture, Islamophobia and
a host of other nasty things).
Media
is one of those things we trust and which is a big part of the problem.
Oh,
I know a lot of people say they distrust the media or look
at it with a critical eye, but that’s not necessarily as true as we think.
After all, we say we don’t trust politicians but many of us continue to trust
that “the system” will work out and rebalance itself to remove Donald Trump
specifically or reverse the darkly uber-conservative turn it’s take in recent
years. Many of us still vote, and often without all that much research into
candidates or issues. So too do we look to the media to tell us what’s going
on, and that’s fine—just as voting is important—but we don’t look often enough
or deep enough at what’s wrong in the media and, for example, how is
perpetuates and props up racism—how the mainstream media is very much complicit
in upholding white supremacy.
And
when I say “media” in this piece, I’m mostly talking about news and analysis
and not entertainment, though certainly other aspect of media like that are
also complicit (look at the overwhelming focus still on white protagonists or “white
saviors” in ostensibly Black-themed movies or the way non-white actors in films
and shows have so many fewer prominent roles yet filmmakers will put white
people in roles intended to be Asian or Indigenous).
But
no, I want to focus on the news media and journalism.
Journalism
touts itself on aiming for objectivity, but biases often creep in and the
wording of articles and broadcasts can shift the way people see reality. The
framing of situations and people can skew how people feel. The choices of who
to interview or allow to comment very much influence the narrative and what
people hear (or don’t) and what they believe (or don’t). And I say none of this
as some person casually spouting off about something I only vaguely understand.
The media business (journalism in particular) has been responsible for paying most
of my bills over the years.
Look,
it’s easy to point a finger at Fox News and waggle said finger judgmentally in
the news network’s metaphorical face. You can say that they peddle twisted
truths and outright lies. Or that they pour poison into the ears of gullible
bigots and people uncomfortable with demographic shifts. Even that they are the
propaganda wing of the Republican far right wing (which is increasingly the
Republican mainstream). And so on and so forth.
And
you’d be right. Fox News is terrible and naked in its willingness to stoke
racial fears and fan the fires of bigotry, among many other awful things.
But
look at the others, too. CNN recently had overt white supremacist Richard Spencer on to address
whether Trump’s recent tweets attacking ‘The Squad” were racist—and CNN
also had a group of white women on to defend Trump as not being
racist when he obviously is and always has been demonstrably so. And lest you
leap to the defense of NPR as a notable bastion of balance and perhaps
liberalism, I’ve noted a steady increase in their willingness not only to give
voice to the far right but not to challenge them when they blatantly deflect
issues or spread lies and—more than that—an NPR executive recently indicated that we shouldn’t call the president’s tweets “racist”
because that’s a label and a judgment. It’s part of the whole debate these days
over the media’s insistence on using phrases like “racially charged” or something
rather than “racist.” At a certain point, though, you call something what it
obviously is. If it’s raining outside, your weather guy will say it’s raining,
not that the air is noticeably wettened.
I
mean, really? If the president had tweeted that a group of white female
politicians should stop worrying their little heads about politics and get back
in the kitchen would we have a problem defining that as sexism? I think not.
BGIM
has had her own encounters with media framing with regard to racist incidents, just this month again in fact with a story that appeared in
the Portland Press Herald. Initial
handling of the article wasn’t done well, and she was subtly cast as a possible
instigator in a racial incident or as someone “claiming” an incident rather
than as the very clear victim, as well as having her safety and well-being
compromised by the way the story focused on her and not so much on the
perpetrator.
The
fact is that even if we don’t regularly watch the news or don’t read the newspaper,
we get a lot of our information from media—and media that is, for the most
part, fairly reliable and honest. We get it from friends, from our Twitter
feeds, from overhearing people talking or playing the radio. Whatever. But
media forms a major foundation for how we find out what’s going on and what to
think about it.
That
foundation is also part of what holds up the house of white supremacy.
When
one gives platforms to extremists on the racist and xenophobic side of things,
whether inviting them as guests or doing puff pieces on their lives (like the New York Times profiling Nazis to give
us a glimpse of their human side) or giving them actual jobs as commentators,
one gives them legitimacy and power. That amplifies their voices and grants
them a kind of authority, and in a world where we have problems calling racist
people and things racist even when they obviously are, that’s a problem.
Because
that’s how you normalize racism and white supremacy. To be fair, white
supremacy has always been the baseline in the United States. But media helps
prop that up and reinforce it by favoring the white voices more often and by
often putting people of color in a worse light. Photos will often make white
people looks better and more wholesome and Black people look sketchy or
thuggish. Headlines written and quotes picked for stories will often cast
people of color as troublemakers.
Most
of this is done without intention to do harm. It’s not as if
the entire media apparatus consciously sets out to reinforce an already white
supremacist system. But like with so many things in this country, we white
people don’t look at it critically enough—certainly not the way Black and
Indigenous and other people of color are forced to as the system repeatedly
puts them through the kinds of obstacles that white people don’t generally
encounter. That is when intention ceases to matter and we need to look at the
impact of what is being done so that we can stop doing it.
So,
we need to stop blindly trusting or only vaguely questioning the systems in
place, and that includes media. We need to hold all of these systems
accountable and call them out when they fail. More to the point: Demand that
they do better. The more we do, the more likely we can break up the
stranglehold of white supremacy and maybe—just maybe—start building a society
where people really are mostly just treated as people, regardless of the color
of their skin.
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An incident became a story no one needed…and one that harms me
Over the years,
as this site and thus my profile have grown, I have often had to
decide if the racial incidents and microaggressions that are a
routine part of “living white Black” are worth writing about.
Whenever I write about a personal racial incident, it invites a
certain level of racial animus from white people lacking in their
racial analysis—which results in threats, nasty messages, hacking
attempts and basically causes additional labor and mental anguish on
my part.
The culture of
white supremacy works to reduce the humanity of others—to keep us
small—and it often works.
I am not ashamed
to admit that sometimes, speaking my truth is not worth it. I say
that as someone known for my writing and speaking. With exposure has
come the reality that my need to be authentic and write about how
white supremacy impacts me also makes me a target, especially living
in a predominantly white state, and there are days when the weight of
it all is too much.
I cannot always
carry that weight; I am not always that strong.
It means that
while I strive to be as authentic as I can be, I do self-censor as a
way to stay safe while writing on race.
This week, I
experienced a racial incident on the island where I live. While out
at the local watering hole, having drinks with friends, I was talking
about an upcoming work project. Given that my day job is running an
anti-racism organization and my side work is writing and speaking on
race, I was having a discussion about race in public. This is my norm
and frankly, it should become everyone’s norm. Talking about race
and racism is how we start to move the needle and create change.
For me, this is a normal conversation but apparently for a visitor to the island, this conversation was not acceptable. So, as soon as my friends left the bar, while I was finishing up my drink in preparation to head home, the visitor went to the bartender to complain that I was an “inappropriate” Black woman. Unbeknownst to the man, the bartender was a white woman with a commitment to racial justice principles, a background in anti-racism work, and is also an associate of mine.
It took me a moment to realize what was happening from my perch at the end of the bar but it became clear that the man was telling the bartender that I should be removed from the bar because I was Black. The bartender took the man’s drink, told him that she didn’t serve racists and asked him to pay his tab and leave. Without going into a play-by-play, I will just say that the man refused to leave at first, then eventually did depart, but returned with apparent malice in mind, and the police were called. When the police arrived, they found a highly intoxicated white man beating on the door of the bar after being ejected from it due to his racist behavior.
Instead of doing what most sensible drunk vacationers would do when faced with the police, which is avoid escalating and the possibility of getting into trouble, this drunk white man decided to share his racist views about me with the police, become even more disorderly and decided to lay hands on the officers. While the police can’t arrest anyone for being racist, they can arrest you for assaulting them, so the racist vacationer earned a special trip on the island fire boat where he was met by mainland cops who promptly took him to jail.
To say that I was
shaken was an understatement. At no point had I ever spoken to this
man. He had, however, leered at me at the bar and seemed to be paying
an inordinate amount of attention to my conversation before my
friends had left.
After the man was
arrested, I went home shaken and unable to sleep and decided to fire
off some tweets about the situation as a way to blow off steam. The
incident, while jarring, felt like it could have been much worse.
What if I had left earlier? Was this man lurking outside, waiting to
harm me? A distinct possibility, given that he left after he was cut
off but returned. I will never know, but I do know that having a
bartender who recognized the threat and police officers who were
responsive was a good thing.
The next morning, I woke up concerned for my safety, not knowing if this man would return to the island. If so, what would happen if I ran into him on the ferry or at the store? What if I ran into him and was with my child? If a man was that racist, what else might he do? It scared me enough that I went to speak with the police officers on the island about a restraining order. Instead, they explained that the man was visiting from Florida, his vacation rental had just been terminated due to his arrest and as soon as he was released, a notice of no trespass would be issued for both the vacation rental as well as the bar and—given that this is the height of vacation season—armed with that information, I decided that a restraining order was overkill. Especially as the officer assured me they would notify me once he bailed out and picked up his things from the vacation rental. The officer kept his word and later that evening, I was informed that the racist tourist had indeed bailed out, retrieved his belongings and had been seen leaving the island.
I breathed a sigh
of relief, especially as the management of the establishment had
reached out to check in on me as well. Frankly as awful as the man’s
bigotry was, this was the best outcome, especially in a world where
too often Black women’s concerns are not taken seriously. In fact,
while I was relieved, I was saddened that this type of care and
concern is not normal for Black people. As someone who frankly isn’t
comfortable with the police, I can say that my interactions with them
were good.
I attempted to decompress and shared some more on social media but truthfully, I wasn’t sure this incident felt blog-worthy. While my sharings on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook were substantial, they were more born out of the frustration of being Black and dealing with white entitlement in public spaces. This man felt entitled to a space in a community in which he is a guest; it’s typical behavior rooted in white supremacy. He wanted to exert power over a Black person so he could be a Barroom Barry just like BBQ Becky and other the other very publicly active racists of late. Instead. he was arrested and his vacation was shortened.
Which is why when one of Maine’s largest media outfits reached out to me for comment on the story, I was confused. What story? A racist acted a fool and ended up getting arrested because white entitlement does not save you when you decide to assault a police officer. Or maybe it did since if he had been a Black man, we don’t know how this would have turned out. Local police and others ensured my safety and for once the majority of white people didn’t cause harm to a Black person.
In a moment that
I am now regretting, I spoke briefly with the reporter but was very
clear that this didn’t feel like a story and that I didn’t want
to name the establishment. I also mentioned that I hadn’t even
written about it on my own site as it didn’t quite feel like a
story. Given the times that I have written about incidents, and dealt
with the ensuing harm, as much as I needed to unpack what happened, I
was leaning towards doing that in private.
Which is why when
I received a text hours later from a girlfriend that my situation had
become a story in the Portland Press
Herald, I was stunned. Not only was
it a story but a story with a sensational and inflammatory headline
and lede along with a photo of me. Randall Hunt of Vero Beach, Fla.,
was named as the perpetrator, but nowhere in their story do you see
his mugshot.
A white man assaulted a cop, spent the night in jail and no one could be bothered to get his photo? Surely there is a mugshot. The paper also decided to let everyone where I live, something that while not a total secret is also not something widely known. Then to add insult to injury, the initial piece mentioned that I had been involved in a racial incident in 2015. Thus leaving the feeling that I am engaged in nefarious activities and not the victim of white people’s anti-Blackness and racism. Instead the original piece would lead many to believe that I am stoking the racial flames of the good white people and causing harm wherever I go.
Thanks to the
actions of the many Black Girl in Maine readers who are active on
social media, the paper edited the original digital piece to remove
my photo and a few other details. Your emails and calls mattered.
There is strength and power in numbers. But the harm has been done
because the story wasn’t just online. They decided to put it in the
print edition. In the issue that came out the very next morning after
the online posting, my face is on the front page of local/state
section. Meaning that everyone who gets a physical paper saw the one
with my picture and not the perp’s, suggesting a bit that I am the
troublemaker.
I have heard from several staff members from the Portland Press Herald but frankly the damage has been done. Whiteness protected itself and the perpetrator was shielded while the victim was exposed and left to fend for herself. Given the current racial climate, this is what race-baiting looks like. Readers, especially of the print edition, are left with an image of a Black woman rather than the white man who created the harm and was arrested. If only I didn’t have a history of being involved in racial altercations, if only I had not been speaking about racism, if only… This approach makes racism look like a problem created by Black people with white people as the victims rather than the reality that, since the founding of this country and the abduction and rape of Black people, we have always been relegated to a second-class status. Even now, we are free but are we really?
In less than four days, I have had to deal with a racist man creating harm and now a local media publication deciding that what at best was a newsbrief from the police blotter should instead be a story featuring me rather than focusing on the perpetrator. It only took me a few minutes online to learn that this man works in special education back in Florida—a fact that they didn’t share just as they didn’t share his face—yet it was important for some reason to name in the story that I write a blog called “Black Girl in Maine” where I write about race. Again, I was minding my own business. I didn’t get ejected from a bar and nor did I spend a night in jail. I was the victim but a story was written where you know all about me and nothing about him.
I have heard from several people today who have mentioned that this is a public interest story given that I have a high profile in the state of Maine. No, these are the types of norms that are created by a white supremacist culture and it is not okay. Part of dismantling white supremacy culture and racism is to question the norms. Who created these norms? Who benefits from them and who is harmed? Had the man not been arrested even after the assault on the police and he had later come in contact with me and harmed me or killed me, that would be a story.
My personal
uncomfortable evening has become a story to be shared across the
state. What was merely distressing for a short time now threatens to
make me a target for weeks or months or more. The print story showing
my photo has some of my fellow island dwellers thinking I did
something wrong when I didn’t.
Once again, just
as in the 2015 incident that the article mentioned, I have become
fodder for the news without my desire or consent to be. I have become
once again very visible to those who already hate me because I refuse
to accept a second-class status in the country of my birth and simply
accept scraps from the table of inclusion.
I end this with a
thanks of gratitude to all who worked to ensure that the harm to me
was minimized. I would also ask that the Portland
Press Herald issue a written apology
in both their print and digital versions explicitly stating that the
reporting on this piece was shoddy and harmful. I imagine this
request will fall on ears that cannot hear me, but I strongly suggest
that the organization receive anti-racism training at all levels of
the organization. This is not the first time that a story involving
race was presented in a manner that left the impression that a Black
victim was not really a victim.
This is
infuriating. It is scary. It hurts. But my work is anti-racism, and I
will continue, even though I now have to grow eyes in the back of my
head once again. But, as Emiliano Zapata said “I’d rather die on
my feet, than live on my knees.”
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The crisis of anti-black racism
People in the city where I live (Portland,
Maine) have been rising to the occasion as a welcoming community for
approximately 300 asylum seekers mostly from the Democratic Republic
of Congo and Angola who have arrived here in just the last few
weeks. Some local folks even organized a picnic on the Fourth of
July. My own spiritual community, the Quakers, have been
on the ground gathering and sorting donations, and doing all kinds of hands-on
volunteering. It’s amazing, and wonderful!
At the same time, across the country
there has been outrage at the inhumane treatment of people crossing the
southern border of the USA. There have been #ClosetheCamps protests,
and the national media is finally sharing the story of the “detention
facilities.” My father’s family came from Germany, so I feel
especially compelled to not look away as so many Germans did before the
Holocaust; the concentration camps there were established before the
“extermination” or “death camps.” It may not be exactly the same, but we can’t
pretend it isn’t similar.
So, believe me when I tell you I’m not
here to yuck on anyone’s activism yum, so to speak. It’s true that our mostly white
town here in Main has done the right thing and has been welcoming our newest
neighbors. And, it’s true that activists are kicking it into high gear to get
the government to change their policies, reunite families, and let the people
out of the CPB prisons at the
border.
But it’s also true that we white people
are very, very good at avoiding even talking
about anti-Black racism, let alone taking action to change our anti-Black
racist systems.
It’s been my experience that speaking
about anti-Black racism to my fellow white people can be so fraught with
feelings of guilt and shame that we will do anything to distract from the
topic. Just bringing up anti-Black racism very frequently leads people to tell
me they don’t think they should feel guilty. And, um, no, I never said you
should. I never mention “guilt,” but someone almost always brings up that word.
To me, that’s revealing.
The reason I identify this common need
to change the subject or make statements about “not feeling guilty” as feelings
of guilt or shame is mostly because of my own experience learning about racism
as well as the experience of other white people I know who have really dug into
this crap.
First, I didn’t know how bad it was.
Then, I started to know how bad it was and I felt really bad-sad-mad feelings,
peppered with feelings of what I now think of as “white guilt.” I didn’t want
to be a bad person, and racists are bad! The next phase, that I’m in now, was
that I realized my feelings aren’t the point: anti-Black racism exists and I
benefit from the white supremacist society that depends on it. So, sure, I
think it’s awful and ideally I’d love to not be a part of the problem. But
there’s not a lot I can do, realistically, to get myself out of the
benefitting-position of the systems around me so “guilt” is a waste of energy.
In “How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River
Collective,” edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor,
#BlackLivesMatter co-creator Alicia Garza points out
that “anti-Blackness is the fulcrum around which white supremacy works.”
So as these good and right protests and
volunteer efforts have been happening, I’ve been glad to see it and participate
in them. But I’ve also been angry and frustrated. Anti-Black racism, the
fulcrum of white supremacy, has been a crisis all along. It’s a set of systems
that morph to keep Black people at the bottom rather than an enormous
bang-splash crisis *event.* Because it creeps along, it’s easier for us white
people to avoid seeing it. Most of us white people aren’t ready or willing to
dive in as real allies, accomplices, or just generally good human beings to see—to
really face—the crisis that includes but is not limited to mass incarceration
(slave labor) and housing/healthcare/education/wealth disparities. As
Black Girl In Maine Media’s Shay Stewart-Bouley has written about extensively,
simply existing in our country as a Black person puts people at risk of
punishment or death.
I’m not suggesting we should stop
supporting asylum seekers, or stop taking action to free the people imprisoned
at the border. I am suggesting we white people need to notice how we are not
doing the same for Black Americans, despite the ongoing crisis of white
supremacy. We white people need to notice, learn (skip the guilt!), and do
something about it.
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Photo by Tess Nebula from Unsplash
July 4th isn’t really the jam for Black folks
I saw a tweet recently that went something like, “We Black
people celebrate the BBQ, the fireworks and the summer shorts. We don’t
celebrate Independence Day.”
That isn’t true about all Black people but it’s pretty
prevalent and, for the record, it isn’t about hating the country or being
anti-American. Because, for better or worse, we’re Americans too.
But July 4th as Independence Day doesn’t sit well
with a lot of us. You see, white people in the colonies got independence from
Britain but that’s about it, and most of that independence was really for white
landowners. It sure wasn’t for Indigenous or Black people.
For a lot of us, celebrating “independence” is a bit of a
slap in the face when we can’t even enter or leave our own apartments and
houses without neighbors calling the police on us for simply living. Or shop
without being followed. Or go for a doctor-ordered walk hooked up to an IV drip without being arrested
for “stealing” hospital equipment. Hell, even the BBQ thing, so appropriate a
metaphor on July 4th, is the rallying point for us to complain about
“BBQ Becky”
types who call the police on us for no reason and thus put our freedom, health
and even lives in danger.
One of my great joys during my time as executive director of
the anti-racism organization Community Change Inc. has been to be a part of the annual reading in the Boston Common of the Frederick
Douglass speech “What To the Slave is the Fourth of July.” (Note, the article I
link to above totally got the title of the speech wrong in the headline AND in
the article; maybe it will be corrected by the time you read this but boy does “What
Is the Slave to the Fourth of July” change the meaning…). In any case, I
would highly recommend reading the speech, which you can find here and many other places, too.
But if you don’t, at least take this part of the speech to
heart:
“I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common—The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
Douglass wrote and delivered that speech 76 years after the
United States declared its independence. Now the nation is more than 240 years
old and still we’ve got the same kinds of problems that Douglass talked about.
We still aren’t equal. Black people still don’t enjoy full independence.
I don’t ask you to ignore July 4th because a lot
of you have the day off and I feel you should be able to enjoy your BBQ food
and fireworks just like many of us Black people do. I don’t expect you to shred
your shirts and roll around in ashes like some Old Testament penitent.
But it would be nice if you would take a moment (or a few
hundred of them) to remember that the United States has never fully made good
on the promise of liberty and justice for all, and Black and Indigenous people just
happen to be the most aggrieved folks. We ain’t alone.
I might suggest that it’s time to give Juneteenth a place as a national holiday, though. It would
probably mean a lot more than Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday to Black people
who still don’t feel very free. Though to be fair we deserve both at this
point, among a lot of other things. And I think starting next year, I might just
resolve to stay inside on July 4th and celebrate Juneteenth instead—at
least until it starts getting more love and attention like it deserves. Then
maybe I’ll feel better about celebrating both.
So, as you enjoy your festivities, let us Black people and others enjoy our BBQs without police or other nasty interruptions. And if you see any BBQ Becky types headed toward us, kindly take their cell phones out of their hands and shoo them away.
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