A Macon, Georgia, football coach and trainer is under fire after posting several racist videos on social media.
The clips feature the man joking about getting someone to hunt and hang Black people in Atlanta, a city he implies has too many Black people in it.
Three videos of Mark Taylor, the owner of Speed Edge Sports, have been uploaded on social media and have gone viral.
In all of the clips, Taylor speaks casually about his disdain for African-Americans, despite many of the students he trains being people of color.
The University of Georgia alumnus appears in one video driving through downtown Atlanta on his way to his lodgings at the Omni Hotel, which adjoins CNN’s headquarters. While driving, he makes remarks about how the city has changed over the years.
“I ain’t seen a white person in sight. Homeless ones on the street,” he complained.
Continuing, “Every restaurant looking in here is Black. Every car beside them is Black. They can have Atlanta.”
He explains to someone named “Ro” that Atlanta used to be a “fun place,” but now, with such a heavily African-American liberal-leaning population, it’s a location he would rather not frequent.
Taylor then says, while driving down the street, “You and [unclear] need to come up here and go hunting. Ain’t nothing here. Ain’t nothing but Blacks. Atlanta done gone down.”
In a follow-up video, a car driven by a Black woman appears to cut him off in the street. Taylor gets so upset that he mentions it to his friend, Ro.
“Ro, look at this n##ger trying to pull out right in front of me right here,” he said, panning over to a young Black woman.
He rhetorically asks her from his car, “Do you see that tree right there?”
As he pans up to the tree on the side of the city street, “Ro will hang you from that tree.”
In the last video, he is filming from his hotel room. At first, the video seems harmless, with him bragging about the $129 UGA 2021 national championship jacket. However, it quickly became bigoted and soured with racist banter about getting a “redbone” prostitute and Atlanta being “n##ger town.”
“Room service,” he barked into the telephone. “I need you n##gers to bring me some chicken wings and two hoes: a redbone and a white girl.”
He explained, in the clip, he wanted the white girl for himself, but his friend Ro would like to “try the redbone.”
He explained his other friend [Bouf] was not interested in having relations with a “redbone” because he tried one before. He followed up by insinuating after Ro was through having sex with the light-skinned Black woman, he would throw her out of a 14th-floor window.
Before hanging up the phone, he said he wanted this experience at a “cheap rate” and said “Atlanta … Atlanta … N##ger town. Got me a nice new jacket though.”
Ironically, on his Facebook profile, Taylor paints himself as an upstanding Christian who selflessly trains athletes, which he sees as a ministry to God.
The Georgia High School Association’s six times Track Coach of the Year and former defensive back for the University of Georgia boasts about his accomplishments in his Twitter bio. He says has coached over 60 athletes in Division I schools and 16 of his students have made it to the NFL as players.
Still, many were not surprised that he said the things in the video.
“So one of the local coaches in the area, that we knew was racist, finally got caught being a full-blown racist that WE knew he was,” Gamer Decardo tweeted.
One Twitter user said he heard the trainer was going through a divorce with his wife, and she leaked the video.
Some responses on social media believe he will soon hire a publicist to help him salvage his career.
“He’ll be checking himself into rehab later today and will release a statement about how his recent addiction has caused him to step out of his character and exhibit behavior that does not reflect his true feelings and that he loves his grandchild wholeheartedly,” one person said, referencing his biracial grandchild.
Another person commented, “Wait for the… I had a bad reaction to my meds… I was high… I have an addiction… I have Black people in my family blah blah blah.”
This is not the first controversy Taylor has been a part of over the past 20 years.
According to Macon Telegraph, in 2007, the former Northside Middle School seventh-grade science teacher and former Warner Robins High School track and field coach was found guilty of stalking a woman. He was sentenced to probation in 2009.
Taylor was already convicted of domestic violence and for making harassing phone calls to his ex-wife and was previously on probation for interfering with witnesses by intimidating his former fiancée. These convictions overlapped, causing one probation to be revoked and Taylor to be sent to prison, where he stayed until 2012.
His probation was partially lifted in 2016 by Chief Judge George Nunn and fulfilled by 2017.
Atlanta Black Star reached out to Taylor regarding the recent videos but has not received a reply.
