A woman who was seen in a viral video hurling racial slurs at a Black child on a playground in Minnesota has raised over $300,000 after the incident.
Video shows the woman using the N-word in reference to a 5-year-old Black child at Soldiers Field Memorial Park playground, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
The woman repeats the slur to the man recording the video, at one point telling the man the Black child was “digging through my shit” and took something belonging to her child.
When the man says “and for that you call him a [N-word]?” she says “Yes. If he acts like one then he’s going to be called one.”
Social media users say the Black child is on the autism spectrum, but the Tribune was not able to independently verify that claim.
The woman who attacked the Black child was identified on social media as Shiloh Hendrix of Rochester, Minnesota.
A woman using that same name set up a fundraising page on GiveSendGo, a Christian crowdfunding site, claiming that the video has put her family into a “very dire situation”. She justified calling a kid “n*gger” by saying he stole from her 18-month-old’s diaper bag at the park and she “called the kid out for what he was.”
“I fear that we must relocate,” Hendrix wrote. “I have two small children who do not deserve this. We have been threatened to the extreme by people online. Anything will help! We cannot, and will not live in fear!”
The page was set up Thursday seeking $250,000. She blew past that goal the next day and has now set a new target of $1 million.
The Tribune reported that one of the many anonymous donors posted with the name “Dylan Roof,” a white supremacist who killed nine people at a Black church in South Carolina in 2015.
Several anonymous donors also left racist messages.
“White Lives Matter!! I hope you find a safe home away from all the Naggers…Come to north FL,” one donor wrote.
“We should have picked our own cotton!” another post reads.
Wale Elegbede, the president of the Rochester branch of the NAACP said the incident is “deeply disturbing and unacceptable” and Hendrix fundraising off it is “abhorrent and totally unacceptable.”
“[The NAACP] will be investigating and will be responding to this. We will hold this person accountable for this despicable racist act against a child,” Elegbede said.
