A Florida woman went into “mama mode” when she jumped in to defend two Black women against a racist woman.
Syreeta Chase told the Atlanta Black Star she was at Sexy Fish Miami in Miami, Florida, on Monday when this happened. She said she was sitting at the bar and saw two other Black women sitting at the other end.
“They looked happy. They were talking. They weren’t loud,” Chase said.
When she was leaving the restaurant, she saw the same two girls standing outside. She noticed they were visibly upset. That’s when she asked the two women what happened.
Bathroom Incident
According to Chase, the two women were in the bathroom touching up their makeup. There were about 15 or 20 people in the bathroom, and the women were the only Black people in there.
At some point, the blond woman in Chase’s video went into a dirty stall and accused the two women of leaving it like that.
“[She] was calling them monkeys and calling them uneducated, and she made a couple other comments,” Chase said. “I was so livid.”
Chase added that the two women only went to the bathroom to touch up their makeup; they didn’t go into any stalls.
“The daughter actually apologized and said, ‘I’m sorry, she does this,’ and she apologized to the girls,” Chase said, adding that the daughter looked mortified.
Going into ‘Mama Mode’
After hearing the story, Chase marched upstairs to confront the blonde.
“It’s funny, as soon as I walked up the steps, she was coming up to the bathroom, and she was kind of like smirking and laughing, like kind of like condescending,” she said.
When Chase spoke to the woman, she switched back and forth between English and Italian. She said she could hear several racist remarks through the broken English.
“You’re all uneducated,” the woman said, according to Chase. That’s when she started recording the video.
“Watch who you are talking to; you look a mess, you look fake,” Chase says in the video, referring to the woman’s makeup and spray tan.
Chase said the woman’s demeanor completely changed as soon as she started recording.
‘Call Out Racism’
Many people online compared the woman to Donatella Versace, who’s known for her extensive plastic surgery and bleach-blond hair.
“Not Donatella Versace,” @ms.xennial wrote on Instagram.
“She looks like she’s constantly in pain,” @heka_noir added.
“Absolutely call out racism every single time,” @jackiechicken1 wrote.
“Wow, looking like a fake Donatella Versace,” @lynnealove5 commented.
Reflecting on the Incident
After the woman left, Chase went to the bathroom, where several women said they witnessed what happened.
“Every last one of them voluntarily said that she was very nasty to me; they actually were hugging me and apologizing that we have to deal with racism,” she said.
Chase said she felt called to stand up for the women because she is actively fighting for justice for her daughter, India Thomas. She was killed in February of this year. No suspects have been identified in the case.
“My daughter was 27. She just got murdered on her 27th birthday,” she said. “This kind of stuff makes me angry, but I’m very passionate about this.”
The women in the video have not been identified.
