Black Woman Calls Out Racist Plane Passenger and 15 Million TikTokers Watched
Look, racism can be sniffed out anywhere but one of the select places where it causes the most ruckus happens to be in the most claustrophobic, suffocating environment: an airplane. In this case, a Black woman claimed the passenger sitting next to her was sending racist texts about her, per Insider.
Most coach class seating permits you barely an inch of personal space between you and the next person. Therefore, if you have your brightness up all the way on your phone and happen to be sending a message, the chances of the next passenger seeing your breakup paragraph or “take the chicken out” reminder are very high.
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A woman named Taila Rouse recorded her experience, catching a white man sitting next to her allegedly sending some absurd, racist messages about her. In the video, Rouse confronts the man about the messages claiming he called her her a “huge Black woman” and complained about being stuck next to Black or gay people on a flight. Additionally, the texts were claimed to suggest airline prices go up to “weed out” those demographics of people.
“I wasn’t gonna say anything but I decided I want you to feel as uncomfortable as I do. I want you to know that I saw your text messages and I think you’re disgusting,” she says in the video.
That must have been the longest flight from Puerto Rico to Atlanta for the both of them.
Basically she said, “How ‘Bout You @ Me Next Time!”
Read more from The Independent:
While the man appears to offer her an apology at the end of the video, Ms Rouse says that he only said sorry because she happened to have seen the text messages.
“You don’t have to be sorry to me. You’re sorry because I saw it,” she said.
Ms Rouse’s co-passenger is not identified in the videos, and his face is not shown. In response to a question from a TikTok follower, she says they “continued to sit next to each other for the next four hours” after she confronted him over the messages.
The TikTok video gathered up to 15 million views and was flooded with over 60k comments - some excusing the racism.
“What the f—? We can’t even send texts to our family about how unpleasant you people are?” read one comment. Rouse didn’t appear to be doing anything unpleasant but rather being Black and minding her business.
In follow-up video to that snarky message, Rouse zoomed in on the messages in question as they were being sent on the man’s phone - out and in the open for anyone near him to read.
Rouse gave him more grace considering how he could’ve been confronted. He’s lucky his name ain’t floating around on Twitter.
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