Apparently you can’t even make deliveries while Black, as one Oklahoma appliance and furniture deliveryman learned last week after he was blocked from leaving an Edmond gated community by a White man who demanded to know where he was going.
According to The New York Times, Travis Miller, Sr., an employee with J.B. Hunt Transport Services, found his only way out of the gated community located in Ashford Hills blocked by a man in white car, clearly frustrating Miller, who had just finished his last delivery of the day last Monday.
“I’m trying to leave, and I got Super Neighbor over here blocking me in, so I’m going live,” Miller quipped at the beginning of a Facebook Live that he started recording. “This is what I’m dealing with right now.”
“I think things would have gone differently if I was White,” he told the Times. “His issue was with the people inside the truck.”
Both Miller and his coworker who was with him at the time are Black.
Miller is heard repeatedly asking the man, who identified himself as David Stewart, the president of the homeowners’ association, to move. Stewart refuses. In fact, another man joins Stewart, further demanding that Miller reveal why he was in the neighborhood and who had given him the gate code that would be needed to enter the community.
Miller insisted that it was none of their business.
In the video, Miller can be heard saying that he refuses to get confrontational, never moving from his vehicle and even saying that he has kept his seatbelt buckled.
As the men continue to block Miller’s path, he asks them if they realize their actions constitute an unlawful detainment.
“You have absolutely no reason and no right to hold me here and block me with your car,” he insisted.
Again, the man identified as Stewart asks Miller what he was doing in the neighborhood.
“I own one eighteenth of what you’re sitting on,” Stewart argued. “This street is private. This is not city property. This street is maintained by the people that live in here.”
“You’re being nosy,” Miller countered. “That’s all you’re doing. You’re trying to use privilege, and you’re not getting it from me. Just move your car. Unlawful detainment.”
Eventually, the customer who had received the delivery from Miller came outside and presumably explained the situation. Stewart, who had called the police, then called back and told police that they no longer had to come.
“I bet you he won’t apologize,” Miller quips in the video.
Sure enough, Stewart gets in his car and drives away without further acknowledgment.
However, the customer did call Miller to apologize for the incident. Miller, who in the video said he has “too much going on mentally,” could be seen wiping away tears from his face.
He was left so shaken by the incident that he actually called police himself to make sure he could leave the premises without further incident.
“It was a lot of tears,” Miller told the Times. “At the end of the video, you see where I broke. Once the gate closed behind me and I was off the property, a wave of emotions flooded me.”
