A white woman was recently captured on video verbally accosting a Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican woman while the two waited in line at a grocery checkout in Philadelphia.
During the heated exchange, the white woman repeatedly tells the Latina customer that she should be deported and accuses her of using “drug money” to pay for her groceries.
Johanny Santana took out her phone and began filming the unidentified white woman after she cursed at a young boy.
Santana, who was born in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, told NBC Philadelphia that the boy had been conversing to his grandfather in Spanish, catching the unwanted attention of the racist customer who had also been shopping at the Abington market.
It’s not uncommon to see bilingual children helping their older family members out like this.
“[He] comes back and asks another question [to the cashier] and that’s when the woman, who was next to me, started cursing,” she recalled.
In the video, Santana communicates in Spanish with the boy to help him convey his message to the cashier.
It’s at this point that the white woman, visibly annoyed by their exchange, interjects and begins a racist rant against Santana.
“Any century now,” she begins flippantly while the cashier attempts to help the little boy with Santana’s assistance.
We all know what it’s like to be stuck behind a slower customer in the checkout line. It could be a person arguing about an expired coupon or the longest price check ever recorded, but most of us aren’t going to turn it into a scene.
Santana then addresses the woman and asks if she has a problem with them speaking Spanish.
In response, the woman says, “‘Can you stop talking to me?” and adds the Spanish word meaning “b****”.
Um, lady? You spoke first, so you can’t get uppity about a response.
Shocked, Santana tells her not to say this because that word is “no good”, but the woman ignores her and repeats herself for good measure.
As their interaction continues, the woman decides to take aim at Santana by getting President Trump involved.
“You don’t belong here, you came here illegally,” she tells her at one point. “You should be deported.”
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Just a few moments later she adds, “I hope Trump deports you,” alluding to the POTUS’ crackdown on illegal immigrants in the country. As a Puerto Rican, however, Santana is legally an American citizen and is free to move around the U.S. as she pleases.
When the argument really begins to escalate, Santana begins firing back at the woman with her own insults.
She first tells the woman to “[expletive] off”, and then later calls her the same offensive Spanish word she used earlier when she decides to use it once again.
“I regret it because I didn’t want to tell her that,” Santana admitted after the fact. “I felt powerless because I didn’t speak English well enough to be able to properly respond to her.”
As the white woman prepares to pay for her groceries, she waves a dollar bill at Santana’s face.
“I’m paying cash with legal money, not drug money,” she said.
Fed up with the situation, Santana heads for the exit as the white woman calls out behind her, “Have a nice day.”
Watch the full video below.
The incident took place on June 30, and Santana uploaded the video of their exchange to her Facebook around this time, too.
The post currently has over 170,000 views and nearly 1,000 shares. In the comments, other Facebook users have expressed their outrage at the woman’s blatant racism and unnecessary rants towards Santana.
America has seen a steady rise in hate crimes in the last several years.
According to a 2017 FBI Hate Crimes Statistics report , there was a 17 percent increase in hate crimes reported in the U.S. between 2016 and 2017. Of those hate crimes, 59.6 percent reported were found by the FBI to have been motivated by race, ethnicity or ancestry.
Just this week, a woman was kicked out of a Burger King restaurant for telling the Puerto Rican manager to, “Go back to your Mexican country.”
h/t: NBC Philadelphia