A JCPenney customer's racist tirade was caught on video Tuesday, when a white woman was seen and heard telling two Latina customers to “go back where they belong.”
The video — captured on a cellphone — showed the woman in line waiting for a cashier when she began to blurt out racist and discriminatory remarks to the two customers who had allegedly cut the line, The Washington Post reported.
At the JCPenney store, which is located in the Jefferson Mall in Louisville, the woman screamed at the customers saying, “go back to wherever the f*** you come from, lady.”
“Hey, tell them to go back where they belong,” she said to the cashier. “If they come here to live, then act like everybody else. Get in the back of the line like everybody else does – and be somebody. And that’s the way I look at it.”
The roughly 75-second video received nearly 8 million views after it went viral on Facebook and YouTube, according to USA Today.
“It don’t bother me if I say it, and I hope everybody hears me,” the woman said. “I think everybody here probably feels the same d*** way I do.”
According to the Independent, the woman even implied that the customers were on welfare.
“Just because you come from another country it don’t make you nobody,” she said. “The taxpayers probably paid for all the stuff. … Paid all the food they get and everything else. It’s OK speak English, you’re in America. If you don’t know it, learn it.”
Louisville resident Renee Buckner, who was also waiting in line at the time of the incident, is the individual who posted the video, USA Today reported.
“smh (Shaking my head,) this is what America has come to, openly and proud to be a racist,” she wrote to introduce the video, USA Today noted. “People tried to let her know it was out of order, but she wasn’t hearing that.”
Buckner’s pastor, Rev. Timothy Findley of the Kingdom Fellowship Christian Life Center, offered additional sentiments on her behalf, as she’s become overwhelmed with all the feedback.
“We all shared the same reaction: shock, disappointment but not surprised,” Findley said, according to USA Today.
Officials at Jefferson Mall say they intend to ban the woman from the mall once they can identify her.