Photo: TikTok
That's some "Karen" behavior.
By Sanika Nalgirkar — Written on Sep 03, 2022
A woman who witnessed a fellow airplane passenger texting a racist rant about her decided to take to TikTok to expose the lady involved.
Riah Elese shared two videos detailing the interaction — the first one was recorded the moment she witnessed what the woman was doing and another video later to explain what went down.
In one TikTok, the woman is seeing typing a racist text after she was bumped into.
"There was a Karen on my flight today," Elese writes in the video, "Read what she sent her family."
In the video, Elese appears to be standing near the woman as she frantically types out a message while seated on a packed flight.
"Landed," the message begins, "And just got whipped with some NASTY dreads/cornrows of a C--N getting her luggage. They have no respect."
"Cattle for sure," she adds at the end of the message.
The TikToker also added the caption, “Now I [apologized] to this lady twice. White [people] are crazy.”
Elese explained the entire story in another video she posted on her TikTok account.
Elese said, “For those of you who don’t know what the message said, the message basically said that she just got hit twice with the dreads/cornrows of a c--n, c--n in all caps and she proceeded to call me disrespectful and she said I acted like a cow.”
The word the woman used is a slur that is derived from the word raccoon and dates back to slavery times when slave masters would use the term to describe the Black people they were forcing to work against their will as lazy.
It was also a common feature in anti-Black caricatures often seen in the Jim Crow era.
Elese explains that, when the plane had landed and was pulling towards the gate, she got up to get her bag from the overhead bin.
While doing so, she accidentally flipped her hair which hit the woman. Elese apologized to the woman and thought things would end there, however, that wasn't the case.
“After she says, ‘don’t worry about it,' here I’m thinking that everything is fine and dandy. So mind you, I’m still standing up and she’s sitting down. So, I’m texting away on my phone and I just so happen to glance over at her phone,” Elese said.
After she realized the message was about her, she started recording the passenger while she was typing the message. However, Elese didn’t want to create an issue so she didn’t say anything to the woman.
But when the woman tried to take a picture of her, Elese decided to speak up.
“That’s when I told her ‘why are you taking pictures of me? That’s so disrespectful’,” Elese said. Upon confronting her, the woman claimed the TikToker was invading her space.
Deciding not to take the exchange any further, Elese exits the plane but still wanted to call out the racism she experienced — hence the video.
She shared this story because she wanted people to know that racism is still an evident problem in society.
Fortunately, she was met with a lot of support so even though it's horrifying to think that people still think the way that woman does, Elese learned from TikTok that there are still good people in the world!
Sanika Nalgirkar is a News & Entertainment Writer based in India. She has a master's degree in Creative Writing. See more of her writing on her website.