Why JCPenney Shopper Has Been Banned for Life From Mall

2 Hispanic women in Kentucky were objects of her rant
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 22, 2016 10:07 AM CST

Last-minute holiday shopping is usually stressful, but for two Hispanic women in Kentucky, a trip to the local mall proved even more so—and now everyone's watching the video of what happened. Per NBC News, a shopper at JCPenney in Louisville's Jefferson Mall laid into the women Tuesday when one of them joined the other at the register with items to pay for, making the third shopper irate. "Go back to wherever the f--- you come from, lady," the white shopper can be heard saying in the video, shot by customer Renee Buckner. "Get in the back of the line like everybody else does. … You’re nobodies." She went on to accuse the pair of being on welfare and told them to "speak English. You're in America. If you don't know it, learn it." Buckner posted the video on her Facebook page Tuesday with a short explanation of what had happened and the hashtag #exposingTheRacism.

"If we ignore it, it will never go away," she wrote. "This is what America has come to." Timothy Findley, a Louisville pastor who spoke to the Courier-Journal on Buckner's behalf, says she's been overwhelmed by response to the video and that "we all shared the same reaction: shock, disappointment, but not surprised." Findley tells NBC that after the camera was turned off, the ranting shopper mentioned how President-elect Trump "is going to 'fix' this." Reaction has come in in support of the two berated customers, with the Jefferson Mall noting on Facebook it will ban the perpetrator for life once she's IDed, and JCPenney looking to ID the two customers to apologize and "reimburse them for their entire purchase." Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer tweeted Wednesday about the incident, writing: "I am sad and disappointed to see conduct like what happened at Jefferson Mall, when one person so dehumanizes another human being." (A racist rant in a Chicago Michael's.)

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