Video Of A Woman Harassing A Korean Woman For Speaking Korean At Starbucks Goes Viral
The latest viral video intended to publicly shame someone for acting the fool comes out of Walnut Creek, California, where a woman was captured harassing two college students for speaking Korean to each other, The Sacramento Bee is reporting.
South Korean international student Annie An, who is in town to study at community college, met up with her tutor, UC Berkeley student Sean Lee, to go over an assignment. The two spoke to each other in their native language – and it appears that this upset an unidentified woman to no end.
“This is America. Use English only.”
As you’re no doubt well aware by now, this is the age of social media. That means that, whenever someone is acting up in public, it’s easy to whip our your cell phone and start filming them, so you can post their shenanigans later on social media. And that’s exactly what Annie did: she recorded the woman’s rant and then posted it on Facebook.
The woman’s rant continued: she told Annie that she (the woman) would be OK with Annie speaking quietly, but that she (the woman) hates hearing “Oriental.” Annie responded that she has the right to speak in whatever language she wishes.
https://www.facebook.com/100009072681713/videos/1876417779337293/
By this time, Starbucks employees had had enough; they asked the woman to leave. The woman, however, vaguely threatened the employees that they would be “in trouble” when she finished writing a letter that she was supposedly working on. Employees pointed out to her that she was just randomly tapping keys on her keyboard.
Eventually, the police showed up and escorted the woman from the premises. She continued to complain about Annie and her friend speaking Korean as she was led away.
On Facebook, Annie wrote about what a disturbing event this was for her.
“This is the most unexpected and unbelievable day for me this entire 2017.”
Lee also wrote about the incident in a Facebook post of his own.
“In our day-to-day pursuits and responsibilities, it’s all too easy to forget that racism and anti-immigrant sentiments are a real thing in this country, even in the Bay Area that so often touts ‘diversity.'”
As of this writing, Annie’s video has been viewed over 783,000 times.
This is not the first time someone has been publicly shamed on social media for harassing strangers for being “foreign.” As The Louisville Courier-Journal reported at the time, a similar video went viral this time last year.
In the Louisville incident, a white woman publicly berated two Latina women at a JC Penney, telling the women to “go back to wherever you came from.” The incident prompted a public apology from Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer.
