Yet another disturbing video of a possible racist incident is going viral in a post made by an African-American Facebook user going by the name Carle Wheeler. Unfortunately, this latest instance of people allegedly being harassed based on their race involved a young child. According to Carle Wheeler's Facebook post, the racist incident took place on June 11 at the Westin Hotel in Pasadena, California. The video she shared, along with the post, shows the confrontation between her, the man, and the hotel's staff.
The video in question
Wheeler explains in the post that while on vacation and enjoying the hotel's pool, a Caucasian man approached her and her five-year-old daughter.
She says that the stranger began to ask them if they had bathed before using the pool while insinuating that the two African-American guests carried diseases. He allegedly later approached them again, pretending to be a health department worker. "I think it's awful that ANY man would think it's okay to essentially ask a woman and a little girl if we took off our clothes and scrubbed our naked bodies before getting into a hotel swimming pool," Wheeler wrote in her post. Other guests were enjoying the pool as well, but the man had allegedly singled out Wheeler and her daughter.
As shown in the video, the incident continued to escalate when a Westin Hotel manager, Ofelia Dolliver, and the hotel's general manager, Carl Sprayberry, got involved.
In the viral video, the white man appears to be amused by the confrontation and continues to be condescending to the Wheeler family.
Dolliver agreed that the man's actions were inappropriate, but when Sprayberry arrived, he immediately let the Caucasian guest leave and he seemed to be putting blame on the black victims. Wheeler wrote that only after other bystanders corroborated the story did Sprayberry ask the other hotel managers to review the tapes to find the man.
This is one of several recent incidents against minorities in public
Incidents like these happen too often in the United States, and victims of racism have recently taken to cell phone videos to document these cases. Only yesterday, on June 13, CBSN shared a video of a white woman's racist tirade toward Asian nail salon workers.
"If they don't understand the language, they should go back to their own country," the woman said to the workers.
Earlier this year, New York lawyer Aaron Schlossberg went viral after he was recorded threatening to call ICE on Fresh Kitchen employees who were speaking in Spanish. Schlossberg has since been kicked out of his office building.
Those are just two examples of the recent Viral Stories of racism in the United States that have come out. Fortunately, technology makes it easier to identify these hateful individuals and can lead to active changes in society. Starbucks implemented unconscious-bias training after a manager called police on two black men who were sitting in one of their stores. Hopefully, the results of these viral incidents will deter others from harassing people.