While discussions about racism often focus on subtle discrimination and microaggressions, much of it is overt and downright unhinged.
A wildly bizarre encounter with a Georgia woman at an undisclosed gas station was one example, and a video posted to Instagram demonstrates just how unpredictable and shocking a 30-second racist encounter can be.
But sometimes, the online backlash is even worse.
Podcaster and social justice crusader Robbie Harvey highlighted the video on his Instagram account on Oct. 23, turning up the audio so we couldn’t mistake what was said.
“These people aren’t going to be ashamed. They’re not going to be embarrassed,” he said during the video. “This is what they are. This is who they’ve been, and it will never change.”
In the video, an older white woman is cruising out of a gas station when she begins heckling a Black man. Sitting comfortably behind the wheel of her large, extended cab truck, the woman inexplicably yelled out the window, “Go back to the plantation, boy.”
“Hey, how you doing? How are you doing, boy?” she called to the man and waved, seeming to beckon him over. The man, who filmed the disturbing encounter, walked toward her open driver’s window only to find that she had grabbed her pepper spray and was ready to use it. She warned, “Don’t come near me.”
Within 24 hours, the brief clip had amassed more than 12,000 comments, most of them piling on the woman, critiquing everything from her appearance to her suspected politics. “We can find this person, we can identify them,” Robbie told his viewers, “But they don’t regret what they said.”
The comments have flooded in, critiquing everything from her appearance to her “vile” behavior, demonstrating the power of a video when it goes viral.
“American Horror Story: MAGA Edition,” wrote one, followed by advice to “get back to the swamp. What an embarrassment to humanity.”
“This is exactly why I keep a carton of eggs in my car 😂” joked a commenter.
“This racist behavior is taught at home. What a shame, as old as she is, she had an opportunity to stop that bigotry from continuing, so sad.” Some of the comments zeroed in on her appearance. “Where is her hair?” asked one. “She’s got too many struggles to be picking racism.
While she may not experience any fallout for her actions that day, the internet is certainly “sending all the karma that she deserves.”
