The Media Is Villainizing A Black Woman Who Stood Her Ground In A Walmart Parking Lot

There’s an old bit from the 1986 standup special “Robin Williams: An Evening at the Met” in which Williams discusses the crazy gun culture in the United States (because, yes, it’s been a problem for a long time). 

“It’s in the Constitution! You have the right to bear arms or the right to arm bears. Whatever you want to do!” Williams quips. 

I have never been able to delete that from my brain, and whenever I hear or read the phrase “the right to bear arms,” my mind immediately fills in “or the right to arm bears.”

Because although Amurikkkah loves her guns and you will have to pry them from her cold, dead hands, “Americans” would rather arm a bear than a Black person. 

The rights given to gun owners apply to everyone on paper, but their application to Black people is always subjective, and we are seeing that play out right now in the case of the Black woman who shot and killed a white man in a Florida Walmart parking lot. 

Video: Black woman shoots and kills white man repeatedly advancing on her

In case you missed it, on Friday, I wrote about the Black woman who shot and killed a white man in a Florida Walmart parking lot following an argument over a parking space. 

As I noted then:

A Black woman in Broward County, Florida, stood her ground in the parking lot of a Walmart shopping center on Tuesday. She was involved in a verbal dispute with a white man over the parking space she had just pulled into. 

As the woman, who has not been identified by authorities, backs away from who authorities identify as 62-year-old Bart Diguglielmo, the video shows he continues to move toward her, even as she points a gun at him as she backs away. 

ABC News reports that witnesses say the woman told Diguglielmo repeatedly that she would shoot him if he continued walking toward her. Diguglielmo reportedly walked away, then quickly returned to walk toward the woman again. That is when she shot him.

Diguglielmo later died from his wounds.

The woman told law enforcement that she acted in self-defense, and according to ABC News, witness accounts seem to corroborate her story. 

Anyone who watches the video can see she defended herself against a white man who can be clearly seen advancing toward her even as she raises a gun and asks him to back off, warning him of what will happen if he does. 

It sounds like a pretty cut-and-dry case of Florida’s  Stand Your Ground law, right? 

She was backing away. He followed her around a car. She kept backing up. He kept advancing at her, even as she pointed a gun at him and told him she would shoot him if he kept advancing. 

He kept advancing, so she shot him. 

She then stayed at the scene and waited for the police to arrive. She had nothing to hide. The point at which he continued to walk up on her, after she had repeatedly warned him, was the point at which she no longer had a duty to retreat. 

She protected herself. 

That should be the story. The framing and the narrative are just as important as the outcome. 

White media always needs a non-white villain

As I was looking at stories about this incident, I noticed a pattern.  

While “Man shot in Walmart parking lot after dispute over parking space” or some variation thereof was the prevailing theme, another spin on the narrative is dog whistling its way through a certain type of media. 

People magazine’s headline reads, “Veteran Fatally Shot After Argument with Woman Over Walmart Parking Space in Florida.” A local Fox station in Alabama wrote, “Veteran shot, killed after argument with woman over Walmart parking space, authorities say.”

“NJ Army veteran killed over a Walmart parking spot in Florida, cops say” is the headline from a local New Jersey radio station. 

Headline after headline, both local and legacy media are doing the job of whiteness: finding a way to paint the Black woman who defended herself as the villain. 

They boldly proclaim that this poor veteran, who also happened to be a nurse, was shot by this angry Black woman over a parking spot. 

The headline tells a tale as old as America itself. 

The New York Post, in a most egregious display of white media bias, published the story with the headline, “Shocking video shows Army veteran being fatally shot in fight over Walmart parking spot.”

Oh, but there’s more. From the Post:

Shocking video shows the moment an Army veteran was gunned down, seemingly in a petty argument over a parking spot in a Florida Walmart.

The horrific cellphone footage begins with the 62-year-old victim, Bart Diguglielmo, seemingly exchanging angry words with an unidentified woman in the parking lot of the North Lauderdale store around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, according to Local 10 News.

Diguglielmo slowly walks toward the woman as she backs away, with a vehicle pulling out from where they were arguing.

Suddenly, the woman pulled out a gun and shot Diguglielmo while he was still several feet away from her, with the footage showing him clutching his stomach before falling to the ground.

Suddenly? Suddenly, she pulled out a gun? You can plainly see in the video that she gets out of her car with the gun, and she gets out of her car with the gun because Diguglielmo had already been yelling at her, blocking her car with his and making other threatening actions that caused her to fear for her safety.

Accountability is like kryptonite to whiteness, and when whiteness is called into question, the answer is always to deflect and reframe the narrative. 

Bart Diguglielmo and perfect white “victims”

Bart Diguglielmo kept advancing on a woman who was not only pointing a gun at him but repeatedly asking him to back off. She was backing away from him. He followed her around cars, continuing to try to get in her face. 

In an interview with Local 10, Diguglielmo’s daughter, Amanda, said her father was a “good man” who had previously served in the Army.

Amanda told Local 10 that nobody “deserves to lose their life over a parking spot.”

Amanda also said that she wanted her dad “to be remembered for who he was and not who the media is portraying him to be.”

“I heard one news site say it was over a parking spot,” Amanda told Local 10. “Another says it was because my dad was making some type of advance towards the woman, which I will completely debunk because my dad is not that person. He’s not perfect, but not someone that would do this to this extreme.”

Buried down at the bottom of the story is the revelation that Amanda is an unreliable narrator. 

Amanda and her father, Bart Diguglielmo, have been—by her own admission—estranged for many years. 

Not that it matters in the grand scheme of things. 

Bart could be a veteran, a nurse, a puppy rescuer, a devout Christian who goes to church every Sunday, and any number of other things. 

None of that mattered in the moment that Bart got shot because in the moment that Bart got shot, you know what Bart was doing? 

Bullying a Black woman who was repeatedly asking him to leave her alone as she backed away and tried to get away from him while holding a gun up as protection. 

Bart Diguglielmo ignored the gun in her hand. He ignored her pleas to back off. He kept menacing her even as she was backing away from him. 

Bart Diguglielmo did not get shot and killed over a parking spot. 

While the parking spot may have caused the initial verbal dispute, what led to Bart Diguglielmo’s shooting and ultimate death was his inability to control his emotions and actions. 

What led to Bart Diguglielmo’s shooting was his decision to not walk away. 

Stand Your Ground laws in Florida

Under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, the Black woman in the video had no duty to retreat once Bart Diguglielmo kept advancing on her. 

The law reads as follows:

776.012 Use or threatened use of force in defense of person.—

(1) A person is justified in using or threatening to use force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force. A person who uses or threatens to use force in accordance with this subsection does not have a duty to retreat before using or threatening to use such force.

(2) A person is justified in using or threatening to use deadly force if he or she reasonably believes that using or threatening to use such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony. A person who uses or threatens to use deadly force in accordance with this subsection does not have a duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground if the person using or threatening to use the deadly force is not engaged in a criminal activity and is in a place where he or she has a right to be.

The Black woman warned Diguglielmo more than once. Witnesses on the scene noted that. He chose to ignore her. 

Stand Your Ground laws work for white people when Black people are killed

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the blatant hypocrisy that comes along with this case. 

In 2012, white vigilante  George Zimmerman, a regular, degular citizen who was out minding the business of a 17-year-old Black teen named Trayvon Martin, approached Martin to confront him (even after he was told by 911 operators not to) because he wanted to know what Martin was doing walking around his neighborhood. 

Martin was visiting family in Sanford, Florida, but that was none of Zimmerman’s business. Trayvon Martin didn’t owe George Zimmerman any explanation, yet Zimmerman demanded one. 

Zimmerman confronted Martin, an altercation ensued, and at the end of it, Trayvon Martin was shot dead, and George Zimmerman claimed self-defense. 

Zimmerman was acquitted of Martin’s murder. 

Whiteness can always understand the right of white people to defend themselves, but when it comes to Black people, there are always questions. 

Remember the case of Marissa Alexander

In August of 2010, another Black woman in Florida named Marissa Alexander fired a warning shot at her abusive husband. In her own words, Marissa described the incident that led to her arrest and ultimate conviction. She was subjected to repeated physical abuse from her husband, yet neither Stand Your Ground nor self-defense claims helped her in her case. A jury convicted her after 12 minutes of deliberation.

Marissa’s conviction was later overturned, and her case raised the alarm about the disparity in how Stand Your Ground Laws are used as an effective defense. 

 What if the shooter were a white woman?

If the woman in the Walmart parking lot shooting were white and the man involved were Black, we would be having an entirely different conversation right now. 

The cries of “she did what she had to do” and “this is clearly self-defense” would consume the headlines. 

We would know everything about the man’s past, including the time he stole candy from the counter at the corner store when he was 5. 

Whiteness doesn’t wait for trials, juries, or verdicts. It convicts in the headlines, whipping the racist mob into a lather discussing the injustice of it all. 

A Black man would be described as doing exactly what we see in the video: menacing a woman who is obviously afraid of him. 

But because Bart Diguglielmo is white, we hear stories about him as an Army veteran, a nurse, and a kind person who wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Never mind what our eyes show us in the video. Believe the narrative, not the evidence, is what local and legacy media are telling us right now. 

This is why Black media matters

This story is a prime example of why Black media matters. This is why you need Black journalists telling Black stories and providing context when local and legacy media skip over it.

Context matters. Black stories matter. Black journalists telling Black stories matter. 

Black lives matter. 

This Black woman’s life matters. 

Her actions on that day were done to protect her life. No more and no less. She wasn’t a vigilante. She was afraid, and that matters. 

Police officers get away with killing people every day because they are afraid. 

No matter what the headlines say, the Black woman is not the villain in this story. 

The media is the villain. 

SEE ALSO:

Black Woman Shoots, Kills Man Repeatedly Advancing On Her In Video

What, To The Black American, Is The 250th Anniversary?