Mariah Carey Says Her Mother Has a Habit of Calling the Police Unnecessarily
Mariah Carey has a lot to say about her career, life, and her mother. One of Carey’s allegations is that her mom often involves law enforcement when it’s not necessary. Here’s what the singer had to say about what she describes as her “cop caller mom.”
Mariah Carey says her mother calls the police whenever she feels scared or offended
According to Carey, her mother relies on the police to come to her aid when she feels scared or offended. In her book, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, she also says there have been times her mother called the police when she didn’t feel she was in any danger. The singer says her mother has called the police on her own children and other family members.
“When my mother feels scared, her complete assurance in the historic evidence that whiteness will always be protected activates—and she often calls the cops,” wrote Carey. “At various times, she’d called the cops on my brother, my sister, and even my sister’s children. My mother called the cops even when she didn’t necessarily feel threatened.”
Mariah Carey recalls the day her mother called the police on her
Carey says her mother was upset after she yelled at her, so she called the police. The singer says she was exhausted from working and not sleeping for almost a week. According to Carey, her mother woke her up after she went upstairs and finally got some sleep. She was upset that her mother was telling her to get back to work, so she began to scream at her. Carey says this made her mother upset, so she called the authorities.
“The police arrived quickly, as they tend to do in white, affluent neighborhoods,” wrote Carey. “My mother opened the door. I heard an officer ask, ‘Is there a problem, ma’am?’” Carey says her mother told the police officers she was having a problem, and she gave them a “weird” look.
‘Yes, we are having a problem,’ she replied, welcoming the two white policemen into the house. She gave them an odd, knowing look, which felt like the equivalent of a secret-society handshake, some sort of white-woman-in-distress cop code.
She had been defied, and I had dared to be belligerent. I was being aggressive toward her. I was scaring her. And they received her signal loud and clear. It was in their training. The code was in her culture. This was her world, her people, and her language. She had control. Even Mariah Carey couldn’t compete with a nameless white woman in distress.
Mariah Carey, The Meaning of Mariah Carey
Mariah Carey says no one came to her defense
Carey says the incident with her mother was simply a family argument and that it wasn’t necessary to get the police involved. However, she says no one made an effort to clear things up and explain what happened.
“No one tried to explain to the police that it was just a family blowout—that everything was okay, and I was just overworked and had lost my temper,” wrote Carey. “I needed care, not the cops. But no one defended me. The only thing the cops saw was a scared white woman in a big house full of nonwhite people.”
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