In a world in which identity politics reigns supreme and the race card is routinely played to counter arguments and excuse bad behavior, one Portland woman, cut off in traffic by a rude driver, has had enough.
When both angry drivers exited their cars, stopping traffic on a busy road, she decided to turn the situation into a learning moment and refused to budge until the man who swerved into her lane either took responsibility for his actions or drove away.
The entire incident was caught on video and posted to Instagram, where it quickly earned nearly 70,000 views.
What unfolded is a lesson to us all on how to keep your cool, make your point, and stand your moral ground.
“I’m Native American!” a man who looked to be of Millennial age could be seen shouting as the video started. “She told me to go back where I came from!”
The woman explained that, as a native of the city, she’s just “so tired of people driving like you just did.”
“Get out of my face!” the man yelled.
“Admit that you’re f**king wrong,” she demanded.
And that’s when things really went off the rails. Rather than apologize for cutting her off, the man accused her of being a “colonizer.”
“Admit that you’re white,” he shot back. “Admit you have a colonizer mindset.”
The woman balked at his reaction.
“It’s not about race!” she exclaimed, as he insisted that it is.
“If you want things to change,” she stated, “when you f**k up, do not play the race card!”
Meanwhile, as cars began to back up, drivers, forced to watch the show, began to get antsy.
“Oh, so it’s on me?” the man asked, as the argument moved to the driver’s side of his red car, in which a passenger was apparently seated.
“Shut up!” the man screamed. “And don’t even get in her space. Do NOT get in her space!”
“You’re taking out your pain and oppression on me right now,” the woman calmly stated.
Offscreen, an irate driver tired of the show and started yelling for the duo to take their business elsewhere, but the woman was undeterred.
“It’s f–king important,” she told the impatient commuter. “Give it a moment!”
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Turning back to the blustering man, she began again. “If you want things to change–”
But the dude doubled down on his racist claims.
“Shut up!” he shouted in her face. “It’s not on me to change… You and your colonizer mindset! So get the f**k out of my face now you white lady! You white lady!”
“I’m as angry as you are,” she calmly responded.
The more gently she tried to make her point, the more unhinged the man became.
“Then get out of my face because I’m done with this conversation!” he screeched. “You f**ing colonizer! You f**king– It’s not on me! It’s on you and your people!”
“Then you’d be walking away when you know there’s work to be done here,” she said gently. “You’d walk away now.”
“I’m not taking any directions from a white lady!” he declared.
“Everyone needs to hear how angry you are,” she said reassuringly, “but it’s not about this. It’s not about what just happened.”
“You’re in my space!” he screamed.
“You got in my space –” she reminded him, referring to his cutting her off.
That irrefutable fact was far too much for the furious man to handle, so he kicked the claims of colonization up to eleven.
“You’re breathing my air, you f**ing colonizer!” he screamed as the city looked on. “Get out of my face! And don’t give me those white tears and that fake white guilt –!”
“I’m not,” the woman stated boldly. “Just drive away.”
“You don’t know the pain of my people, so get out!” he demanded. “Get out!”
And then the woman made her intentions clear.
In a steady voice, she rejected his invocation of his people and stood her ground.
“I’m going to stand here with you until you walk away, because what you did was wrong and then you made it about race, and that’s f**ked up,” she stated plainly.
The man then tried to appeal to the captive motorists witnessing the extraordinary scene.
“She told me to get back to where I came from!” he shouted to the crowd. “She told me to go back to where I came from just because I made a simple mistake.”
Off-camera, another voice chimed in, illustrating the absurdity of the man’s claim: “I don’t think she meant–”
“You pulled in front of my car from another lane,” the woman stated. Clearly, she had meant “get back in your lane.”
“You won’t take responsibility for it and you made it about race, and that is wrong,” she stated firmly.
Exasperated and sensing the other drivers were not going to come to his defense, the man stated, “Alright. I’m out.”
“Then go,” she replied, “but I hope that you have a conversation about this.”
It became apparent the man, who by now obviously saw that he was in the wrong, was having none of it.
“I hope you shut the f**k up,” he shot back. “And I hope that you go back to f**king Europe, you b**ch.”
Unfazed by his insults, the woman said, “And I hope you channel your anger. Channel your anger in a productive way, because this is not it.”
“It’s not on me!” the defeated man insisted weakly. “It’s not on me to channel my anger!”
“[This] is not a good example of the human being that you are,” she told him, to which he replied, “You b**ch!”
“Admit when you are wrong,” she advised him.
After the man drove off, the woman calmly walked back to her car.
Emblazoned in white paint on her back window was a message for all to see: “Interdependence.”
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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