Activist speaks out after his 'white privilege' video shot in Louisville goes viral

When a white couple he didn't know walked into the home Shanduke McPhatter was renting last month in Louisville, he followed his instinct — pick up his cellphone and start shooting video.

"If I hadn't picked up my phone and started recording, if something went in a wrong, negative way, even if I would've done something to them and nothing happened to me, the story would've now been incredibly crazy and made me into a monster," McPhatter said Thursday in an interview. "Had they killed me, then they would've been some type of heroes as well."

McPhatter was behind the camera of a video that went viral this week that shows two people entering a rental home in Louisville in late September and questioning why McPhatter, a Black man, was in the Highlands home.

Attorney Ben Crump and social justice activists on social media shared the video as an example of "white privilege," the assertion that white people have inherent, unearned advantages simply because of their skin color.

Read this:Michael Bush's tense encounter with DEA agents in Louisville

McPhatter, the founder of a New York anti-violence nonprofit, said the video was taken Sept. 4 at a residence on Kenilworth Place. He'd rented the home with several other men who had driven from the Big Apple to Louisville for a protest of the killing of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was unarmed when she was shot by police in her apartment.

The protest was planned for the next day, Kentucky Derby Day. Several people in McPhatter's party had left the home to go on a grocery run, he said, and he was at the house with two other men who were upstairs when the couple opened the door, walked in and asked who he was.

McPhatter said this was his first night at the Highlands rental home. In the video, the unidentified couple question why he's in the home before leaving as McPhatter calls out to the two other men who were upstairs. 

McPhatter asked the couple repeatedly in the video if they were concerned because they had seen Black men entering the home, which they denied, and asked how they would feel if he'd come into their home. The woman replied, "Scared."

The couple said in the video that the home had been vacant and they were concerned when they saw men entering it earlier.

No one was hurt. The couple apologized as they left, and McPhatter said the man later gave the group a bottle of whiskey to apologize further for what had happened, which he accepted "out of respect," though he doesn't drink whiskey. 

Opinion:Why I no longer feel safe at home in our country's current climate

The Courier Journal has been unable to contact the couple. No one answered the door at their house when a reporter knocked Thursday evening.

McPhatter said he wanted the public to see what he had gone through. He said he'd met "great people" in his visits to Louisville — he was in the crowd in July at a protest at Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron's house — but wanted to shine a light on an incident he felt could have turned dangerous.

"That's what people need to understand — you can't group everybody into somebody's actions, and you have to hold those somebodies accountable, and hopefully they can be the lesson so those who think they can respond this way to our community," he said.

McPhatter is a former gang member who spent years behind bars before starting his nonprofit GMACC, which stands for Gangstas Making Astronomical Community Changes, in 2012 with the intent to help young people who are involved with gangs and criminal activities turn their lives around.

His experience with deescalation helped him keep a cool head in a tense moment, he said. But even though everyone walked away unharmed, he added, there's an important lesson in the clip.

"Had I been in their shoes ... and I walked into their house, how would they have responded? Even if I walked out with an apology," the police might have been there charging him, McPhatter said.

Opinion:Some of us whites should notice how we have messed up America 

Lucas Aulbach can be reached at laulbach@courier-journal.com, 502-582-4649 or on Twitter @LucasAulbach.