this is "nightline." >> tonight, recording racism? >> no, i want the cops here right now. >> the viral videos of everyday life. >> get out. >> interrupted by what many are saying is everyday racism. white people calling the cops on black people. >> illegally selling water without a permit. >> for doing the most ordinary things. >> you see my keys in the door. >> a man trying to enter his own home. >> it made me feel really uncomfortable, made me feel less of a human. >> a little boy's backpack accidentally bumping into a woman. >> don't cry, little man. >> the lasting repercussions and the lessons to be learned moving forward. plus, sole survivor, the haunting image of the loan house still standing from hurricane michael in one community, how it

weathered the storm. and -- >> the autopsy found that it wasn't a heart attack. >> the conners' closure. why they chose that ending for roseanne's story line. and what's in store for the fiery family this season. but first, the "nightline" five. five. number one

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good evening. thanks for joining us. tonight, it's the latest in a string of viral videos capturing what many feel is casual racism. burning up social media and grabbing outraged headlines. they all begin with a nonthreatening encounter, then they escalate in discomfort, and many ending with a phone call to police. could these conflicts be avoided? here's abc's lindsey davis. >> reporter: when it comes to people accused of everyday racism, the internet has no mercy. >> i'm being followed and harassed. that's what's up. two white kids being with one black male. it's suspicious. >> reporter: doling out viral nicknames. >> you can film all you want. >> reporter: intended to brand any perpetrator forever. >> you want to call the police on them for having a barbecue. >> reporter: stephanie arrested for assaulting a black teen at a community pool became pool patrol paula, her attorney later

saying there are two sides to every story. and allison eddal who called the police on an 8-year-old girl selling water now known as permit patty. she later said she regrets the way she handled it. and now, just this past tere teresa kline became corner store carolyn. when she accused a 9-year-old boy of groping her at this brooklyn corner store, surveillance video would proven her wrong, clearly showing it was the boy's backpack that accidentally grazed her. but outside the store, she confronted the boy and his family, saying she was calling the police. the boy, jeremiah, terrifyed of going to jail, sobs outside the store. his mother, aghast. one witness, jason little john, immediately began filming. >> make it go viral. >> i knew something wasn't right. that's when i pulled out my phone and started recording. after that, i saw little jeremiah crying.

and that was the saddest thing of my life to ever see a little kid like that crying. >> reporter: after viewing the surveillance footage, the woman apologized to the boy. >> i'm sorry. >> reporter: but for little john and many others, sorry is not enough. >> i gave her the name. it's corner store carolyn and i was like, please make this go viral. you know? the world had to see what was going on. >> the cops are right down the block. >> reporter: the video evantubeviewed more than 7 million times. >> there is racism going on everywhere around the world. it's not just in the south. it's not just midwest. it's happening even in brooklyn, new york. >> reporter: littlejohn views his phone as a tool for justice. >> being a black man in america, your phone is your biggest weapon. you need that because just in case anything happens, you have to have some kind of proof. so much stuff going on right now, especially as you can see in all the viral videos. >> reporter: these videos are so ubiquitous that there's a

hashtag, living while black, to describe the prejudices. just this week, hillary brook mueller tried to block a man from walking into his own luxury apartment building in downtown st. louis. he immediately began filming. >> i don't like the fact that you're blocking me for what i paid to live in. >> all i'm asking is what unit. >> i don't need to tell you that information, ma'am. >> if you want to come into my building. >> it's not your building. you're not the owner. you're not security. >> reporter: when he ultimately moves past her. >> no. >> excuse me. >> no. are you kidding me? >> reporter: she gets in the elevator with him. >> i want to know who you're going to see. >> reporter: and then follows him to his apartment. >> you just followed me all the way to my door. and you see my keys in the doorment door. it immediate me feel really uncomfortable and i felt like i was being judged. >> reporter: hillary defending her actions, telling fox she was merely trying to follow the condo's guidelines for residents. >> so when i noticed an

individual that i did not know, my only intent was to follow the direction that i had been given by our condo association board members repeatedly. and that is to never allow access to any individual that you do not know. >> reporter: the living while black hashtag exploded after perhaps the most publicized of these events occurred back in april. >> they didn't do anything. i saw the entire thing. >> reporter: when two black men were arrested in a philadelphia starbucks after a manager called the police on them while the men were waiting on a potential business partner. >> hi, i have two gentlemen in my cafe that are refusing to make a purchase or leave. >> they weren't doing anything, you know, like, violent or angry. they were basically, like, perp walked out of the store and put in a police car. >> how long were you in custody? >> about eight hours. there was no reasoning. they had nothing. they just kept using defiant trespassing. that's their excuse for putting us behind bars. >> the bias that we saw on that

starbucks tape is not isolated to coffee houses. black and brown people all across the country experience this type of inequality. this is why people call the police on us more quickly. all of these things are part of the kind of implicit biases that people have against black and brown bodies that see them as more dangerous, more criminal, less moral, and more likely to commit a crime. >> reporter: after that starbucks incident, the company mandated anti-bias training for their 170,000 employees. you were part of the training after starbucks. what were your recommendations? >> we co-created the curriculum for starbucks when they shut down the stores on may 29th. what we built into training was a set of practices that would help people. we were trying to find the stop, drop, and roll with respect to racial anxiety. how do you stop and pause and really kind of ask yourself a series of questions that would help you understand how bias is operating. >> reporter: johnson says we're all carrying bias. >> we're not as color blind as we purported to be. it's sometimes even if you have the best intentions, it's hard

to override. your automatic response to them. so, awareness can only take you so far. you really have to have a set of strategies. >> reporter: there was, of course, this infamous case in oakland, california. >> is there a reason why we're calling the police? >> reporter: this woman, dubbed barbecue becky, called the police on a family hosting a barbecue in a public park. >> it's illegal to have a charcoal grill in the park. >> no, it's not, actually. >> reporter: this past week. >> i'm baby sitting. i got two kids in the backseat with me. >> reporter: cory lewis, a black babysitter, was watching two white children in georgia when an unidentified white woman approached them in a walmart parking lot. >> her pulling up to my vehicle, asking if the kids were all right and which i responded with, why wouldn't they be? girldsive police pull him over.

>> i'm being followed and harassed. that's what's up. >> reporter: some of these videos have had real world consequences. the woman who blocked a man from entering his own apartment lost her job. >> some employees might say, well, free speech matters, and so i should be able to say whatever i want to. the first amendment certainly protects you to do that. it does not guarantee you a job. >> reporter: but for some, erasing centuries of institutional racism won't happen overnight. >> it's really impossible to train people not to be racist or to get rid of their implicit bias in one day, one week, or one year. but what you can do to start things is to at least get employees to recognize that they have biases, not just white people, all of us have biases because to be honest, many black managers and black employees would have done the same thing if two black men came in. so we need to find a way to get people to recognize that we all have racial blind spots and we all have work to do to end any kind of discrimination.

>> reporter: back in new york, jason littlejohn said his decision to hit record has turned him into an activist. >> i'm going to keep fighting for justice. >> reporter: at a community rally last night, jeremiah had an impassioned plea for us all. >> friendship is really the key. >> reporter: for "nightline," i'm lindsey davis in new york. up next, the conners' new chapter, carrying on sentiments and sarcasm. >> well, that's why i'm here. i know roseanne would want me to step in and watch over the family. >> no, it would kill her. but she's already dead, so carry on. on. with moderate to severe crohn's disease, i was there, just not always where i needed to be. is she alright? i hope so. so i talked to my doctor about humira. i learned humira is for people who still have symptoms of crohn's disease after trying other medications. and the majority of people on humira saw significant symptom relief and many achieved remission

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the conners kicked off their new season without theirer thee behind the character's death has a lasting impact. here's abc's chris connolly. na yet, you kind of check in with your cast mates and say, are you struggling here? >> reporter: tonight, the stars of "the conners" grappling with the departure of the woman so central to their careers. >> i called sarah and i said, our mom died. you know? our mom died. it is psychically like that. there's a loss, creatively, that's a big loss. >> she has been a sense of humor and force in my life for so long and to kind of take the stage without her was strange. >> it's been three weeks since granny rose's funeral. why are people still giving us

>>epor specation, following roseanne barr's real life implosion and exile from the sitcom that once bore her name, there were answers at last on the roseanne-less series "the conners. " >> the autopsy found that it wasn't a heart attack. roseanne od'd on opioids. >> reporter: with that revelation in tonight's premier episode, the show not only explained the fate of roseanne conner, once among america's most popular tv characters but also set in motion the kind of fresh from the headlines story line and darkly humorous observations that once fueled roseanne's rise. >> she got them from marcy bellinger. >> damn. that's the only thing from mom's closet that i wanted. >> the first week was really weird. yeah, it was -- it was like there was a death in the family. >> because our show has always done a lot of drama along with the comedy, so we got a chance

to put our own feelings into the show. >> we were dealing with something that was a bigger problem in america, something very serious. and the show has always gone after those things that other shows would be terrified to deal with. >> dad. what is this? >> what's it look like? >> it looks like a lawsuit. you can't do this. i just took it off the side of your truck. people are taking pictures. >> that's the point. put it back. >> reporter: after a distraught dan seeks to hold someone responsible for his late wife's od, his perspective changes. >> you give her the pills. she took them, she died, you killed her. >> dad, stop. we just found another stash in the freezer. it's not just marcy. mom was getting pills from lots of people. >> statistically, i think as many as 80,000 people died of opioid overdoses last year. and it's a real problem in this country and you know, roseanne conner was challenged by it last

year. i think we dealt with it in a way that was very interesting. >> i'm in pain so i take a few extra pills. it's not like i'm a drug addict. >> it touches on the health care issues that people are going through and the affordability of prescription drugs. >> i never would have given them to her if i knew she had a problem. i know what it's like to have that problem. >> i think this is one of those scripts that people are going to look back and say, wow, that was really significant and somehow they found a deep, honest, grieving way to still find humor and reach people. >> reporter: you could have sent her off to nevada or done all the things that sitcoms like this one have done in the past. why did you make the decisions you made? >> i think to have the shadow of it continuing to exist doesn't allow the characters to move forward. i always have to make the promise to abc that it will be as funny as it is terrifying. >> it hurts. >> i know, honor, it's going to

hurt for quite a while. >> no, corn holders. my shoulder. >> yeah. sorry. sorry. >> it's such a hard comment to kill off a character. the fact is this is a new chapter in the lives of the conner family. >> reporter: in true roseanne family, barr tweeted after tonight's premier. of course, it was a tweet that pushed her off the air. the commercially successful reboot of her wildly popular show. torpedoed on may 29th by barr's racist tweet about former president obama's senior adviser, valerie jarrett. the tweet got the series cancelled. >> obviously, when i read the tweet that day, i was disappointed. i thought it was regrettable. she's family so i don't really want to touch on it more than that. >> reporter: in a message on social media, michael would denounce the tweet, calling it reprehensible. >> i never commented about her as an individual, but it was very serious to me because i think there's a lot of people in our society who needed to know that wasn't how i felt or where

i stood. >> i felt completely paralyzed when it first happened. i texted sarah gilbert basically, we're screwed. and then i started to think about what it must be like for an african-american person in our society to grow up and to read things like that. >> reporter: by june 21st, the notion of continuing without roseanne barr on board had taken shape. eventually, the conners became a sitcom reality, down to its new opening. >> i appreciate the fact that she's allowing us to move forward without her creative or financial participation, so we were able to hire back 200 toto people who were behind the scenes, and you know, the show goes on. >> reporter: what were your conversations like with john goodman in particular as you shaped this first episode?

>> we had a conversation very early on. i said, you know, we really want you to do this, and he was, like, oh, man, i think i need to. he's already discussed this before. he went through a tough time with this, but he's also a resilient guy. he's just brought the gravitas, the stature that he brings to the show. >> it's really difficult and difficult in real life as well. it's just -- there's a loss there. >> are any of them boys? >> yeah. enrique and joey. >> would you like to talk about death some more? >> reporter: in the conners' debut, each character grapples with grief in his or her own way. its creators foresee more challenges and laughs on the horizon. >> what are you looking forward to playing itself out as the season continues? >> these people have got a lot of problems. so, they got a lot to deal with. people ask me, how's it different? it's more dramatic. it's also funnier. >> we didn't have to come back a year ago and none of us had to come back this time, but we felt that we had more stories to tell. >> and laughing inappropriately

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and finally house in the dt path of hurricane michael surviv here's abc's victor okendo. >> reporter: mexico beach took a direct hit but we're hearing from the homeowner who bullet this impervious house. >> we're on all these regulations and then we toughened them up on our own. >> reporter: russell king and his nephew finished the home last year to withstand 250-mile-per-hour winds with solid rebar reinforced concrete, 40-feet pilings and smaller windows. the homeowners watched the storm come in on several cameras. they saw the waters rising and the camera actually turned. they saw debris and destruction the whole way. one of them telling us that they cay uldn't beato tcitnyre >> irsth jt s these people

losing their homes and we thought we might go down. >> reporter: the family is confident this town they call may berry buy b i ty the sea wi back. >> you got to raise it. you have no choice. and i built a concrete house. >> our thanks to victor. thanks for watching "nightline." good night, america. good night, america. today, life-changing technology from abbott is helping hunt them down at their source. because the faster we can identify new viruses, the faster we can get to stopping them. the most personal technology, is technology with the power to change your life.

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