Black Georgia fisherman goes viral for filming ‘prejudiced’ neighbours calling police on him for using lake

A Georgia fisherman who is Black has gone viral on TikTok for posting a series of videos showing white people, including his neighbours, questioning whether he is allowed to fish at a lake in his own neighbourhood.

In a series of three videos from Anthony Gibson, who goes by the TikTok username fishingbay2ga, a variety of different white people – a neighbour, a member of the homeowners association board, a police officer – all questioning whether he has the right to fish in a private lake a short walk from his house in the outskirts of Altanta in the city of Newnan.

“Are you guys residents here?” one neighbour asks in one of the videos. “This is supposedly for residents only,” she adds.

When she realizes she is being filmed, she begins to walk away and threatens to report the fisherman’s licence plate numbers.

“Y’all see what I go through,” Mr Gibson then says into the camera. “This is the third person. I’m in my own neighbourhood and a white person came and bothered me while I’m fishing.”

Mr Gibson said he’s regularly harassed when he comes to the fishing spot, even though it is popular with local people, and that he has never seen the numerous white people who use the fishing hole face the same treatment.

“I’m numb to it,” he told The Independent.

The former teacher and aspiring actor said he was happy to move into the Windermere at Springwater Plantation neighbourhood because it was quiet and had a nice fishing lake.

“It’s in a good neighbourhood, there’s no gun shots, we’re living good, we’re living the high life,” he said, adding, “The high life comes with a price if you have a whole bunch of privileged people around you.”

Mr Gibson, who grew up in Oakland, California, believes that local residents have singled him out because he is Black.

“California was never a slave state,” he said. “It was a free state. You don’t have that long history of segregation, of people feeling like they’re better than someone else. Georgia, the South, prejudice, there’s a lot of it.”

The former teacher said he’s frequently targeted when he goes to the fishing spot, whether it’s white residents walking up with dogs to harass him while ignoring his white friends, or fellow locals once calling the police, saying they were perturbed because they heard him laughing at a spot on the lake he chose specifically to be as far away from everyone else as possible.

The videos have attracted millions of views on social media. Since going viral, Mr Gibson has heard that one of the women featured in his clips lost her job, which he said was never his intention. He also said he got a social media message from the owner of the lake’s daughter, noting the man was fine with anyone fishing there so long as they are respectful.

“I’m not trying to get anybody fired or hurt or anything. If we could all have fun together, that would be great. I’m a hippie kind of guy, I’m from California,” he said. “If you choose that lifestyle, that’s your fault. I hope you learn from it … I’m not going to stop posting videos unsless God tells me to. This is good awareness of what’s going on.”

Mr Gibson said since going viral he learned the word “Karens,” a derogatory term for an angry white woman attempting to wield racial privilege, often in a petty situation.

In a widely seen 2020 incident, the “Central Park Karen” falsely claimed a Black man was threatening to kill her and called the police when he asked her to put her dog on a leash in a protected area of New York City’s Central Park.

Recreation sites including pools, beaches, and parks have a long and sordid history of racial segregation in the US.