How we talk about race. Or don’t.
President Trump’s racially charged rhetoric has changed how neighbors see one another, said journalist Greg Jaffe. In one South Carolina suburb, a swimming pool confrontation left an integrated community badly divided.
B EFORE HE HEARD from neighbors about the confrontation at his subdivision swimming pool, Jovan Hyman saw a shaky video of it on his phone, where it was quickly going viral. He clicked the link, which opened on turquoise water and a white woman walking quickly toward three black teenage boys, one of whom is filming her with his cellphone. “Get out!” the woman yells, slapping at the phone in the teen’s hand. “Get out now!” As the three boys head for the pool exit, the woman follows and takes another swing at the boy and his phone. Hyman called his wife, Tameka, over and played it for her. “PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me this was NOT where I think it is,” she typed in a Facebook post that linked to the video. At that point, the video, shot in late June, had only been online for about 10 hours. “In my neighborhood!” her husband added on Facebook a few minutes later. “This is totally uncalled for and downright embarrassing!” The video rocketed around the country and the world—one of more than a dozen online clips from the summer that captured whites accusing blacks, often improperly, of trespassing, loitering, and in one instance involving an 8-year-old black girl, selling bottled water without a permit. At least six of the videos took place at neighborhood swimming pools in places such as Indianapolis; Winston-Salem, N.C.; Pasadena, Calif.; and the community pool in Summerville, S.C., just a few hundred yards from Jovan and Tameka Hyman’s house. Hyman’s first post, reacting to the video, had been online for only 20 minutes when he received a private message from Stephanie Sebby Strempel, the woman in the swimming pool video. The video was rapidly piling up views, and Strempel’s Facebook inbox was filling with threats and insults from around the country. “You’re a hotheaded racist,” read one that she forwarded to Hyman. “Love to see y’alls getting your lives ruined.” told them that he and two friends had been invited to the pool by a family that lives in the subdivision. They were just sitting down at a table and kicking off their shoes when Strempel approached them, asked them if they lived in the subdivision, and then accused them of trespassing. Darshaun’s mother took him to the Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office to file an assault complaint. His aunt looked Strempel up on Facebook and dashed off a quick message. “Good evening, Stephanie. Is this you in the video?” she asked. Hyman and Strempel had never met, though Hyman and his wife had hazy memories After four hours passed without a response, of seeing her around the subdivision Darshaun’s aunt posted it to her Facebook and at the pool. She lives less than a block page, tagging local activists, two television away from him. Now she had an important news stations, the NAACP, and the message: “Jovan if you live here. You Coast Guard unit where, she had learned, don’t know what happened .... Please let me Strempel’s husband was serving. explain. I need someone to know what happened “This kind of behavior is unacceptable .... This is out of hand.” and we WILL NOT TOLERATE IT !!!! The Summerville video, shot in late June, PLEASE SHARE !!!! ” she wrote. “...Racism spanned only 19 seconds. Darshaun at its best.” Simmons, 15, who was holding the phone She hit post at 11 p.m., flipped off her computer, that day, waited 24 hours before he showed and went to sleep.
O the video to an adult. The confrontation at
NLINE, STREMPEL WOULD soon be the pool had taken place on the same day
dubbed “Pool Patrol Paula,” joining that his great-grandmother was rushed to “ID Adam,” “BBQ Becky,” the hospital. She died the next morning.
“Permit Patty,” “Coupon Carl,” and others Because his parents were busy with family branded as exemplars of racism and white and the funeral arrangements, Darshaun entitlement. first played it for his aunt. His phone
It was 10 the next morning when Strempel, screen shattered when Strempel knocked
who declined to comment for this story it from his hand, he said. So it was hard
through her attorney, sent her first message for his aunt to make out exactly what was to Jovan Hyman. She denied hitting happening.
Darshaun—even though the video showed She could hear Strempel screaming “Get her doing so—and defended herself as an out,” threatening to call 911, and disparaging involved member of the community. the three boys as “little punks.” She
“I have children,” she wrote. “My husband could see Strempel draw back her hand to
is a respected Coast Guard officer. I have slap Darshaun two times.
a special needs son .... My husband and I “Is this you?” his aunt recalled asking her are being threatened and slandered all over nephew. He replied quietly that it was. social media [and it] is not okay.” Darshaun’s aunt said she noticed that none By this point, Hyman had watched the of the adults at the pool seemed to be video several times and he had no doubt doing anything to help him. She called over that Strempel had targeted the boys at the Darshaun’s mother to watch. Darshaun pool because of the color of their skin.