When video of an argument between a white worker at a Cinnabon store and two Black customers began to circulate online last week, it seemed to fall into a troubling but familiar genre.
The employee at the northern Wisconsin shop can be heard calling the customers a racial slur. She makes an obscene gesture. “I am racist,” the worker declares. Cinnabon soon fired the worker, saying her actions and statements were “completely unacceptable.”
But what happened next veered from the way many viral moments of outrage play out online: While many on social media condemned the worker’s words, others leaped to her defense. And for at least the second time in recent months, donors offered money to someone caught being racist. By Tuesday, a campaign for the fired employee, who was not named by Cinnabon, had raised more than $130,000.
That crowdfunding page is hosted on GiveSendGo, a website that says it aims to “share the Hope of Jesus through crowdfunding to everyone who comes to our platform.”
The person who created the page describes the former Cinnabon worker as a hard-working mother, adding that “No White person should lose their job for refusing to be harassed by Somalians.”
Some who donated offered notes of encouragement to the woman, whom they saw as being singled out unfairly. They also promoted white supremacy and condemned illegal immigrants, though the immigration status of the customers was not clear.
The woman believed to be the fired employee did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, Alex Shipley, communications director for GiveSendGo, said that the company did not celebrate harmful speech but was providing a space for expression. “Our role is not to be a place of judgment, but to allow people to turn to their communities for support.”
A rival page on GoFundMe, created by a woman who said on that site that she was the cousin of one of the Somali customers, is seeking contributions to help the Somalis pursue legal action. It has raised about $6,400 so far. The person hosting that campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
GiveSendGo is also the platform for a crowdfunding page to raise money for a woman in Rochester, Minn., who called a child of Somali descent a racial epithet on a playground earlier this year. That incident was also recorded on video, and it appears to show the woman, Shiloh Hendrix, who is white, acknowledging that she used the slur.
Ms. Hendrix was cited by the city in August for disorderly conduct in the incident; the prosecuting attorney said a court date was pending. The fund-raising campaign for her has totaled more than $800,000.
Ms. Hendrix’s attorney, Brian Karalus, said that incident was different than the one at Cinnabon. “My client, in my opinion, was the victim in that case, despite her language,” he said, adding that she was upset at the time because she thought the person filming was trying to instigate a fight. That’s not the same, he said, as someone working in the customer service industry.
“You should treat the client with kindness even if they’re rude,” said Mr. Karalus, who added that he thought the disorderly conduct complaint would be dismissed.
It’s unclear what started the confrontation at the Cinnabon in Ashwaubenon, Wis., a suburb of Green Bay. But the company said in a statement that the video was “deeply troubling” and that the employee “was immediately terminated by the franchise owner.”
Jennifer Chudy, an associate professor of political science at Wellesley College, said fund-raising efforts like these reflect the conservative backlash to the nationwide protests about race that followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd.
“The political winds have changed so undeniably that these kinds of things can happen, and not only happen but receive validation,” she said.
Steven Hahn, a history professor at New York University, said that the funding campaigns show that viral videos and social media can be harnessed by people of varying political beliefs.
“The amazing thing about this is some of the ways in which social media transformed the whole landscape,” Dr. Hahn said. “We wouldn’t know about so many of the brutal assaults on Black men and women by the police and other law enforcement were it not for phone recordings.”
But social media also allows people to organize and financially support the politics of racial resentment, Dr. Hahn added.Some white people, he said, feel that they’re the ones who’ve been discriminated against. “Now they have platforms.”
Video of the slur directed at the Somali pair comes at a time when Somali immigrants have experienced increasing anti-immigrant sentiment. Last week, President Trump went on a xenophobic tirade against Somali immigrants while launching a new ICE operation primarily targeting Somalis in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, saying he did not want them in the country.
Dr. Chudy said views expressed by officials about protecting one group of people and rejecting another can have a noticeable effect.
“There’s a lot of political science research that suggests when elites say things, people follow,” she said.
Kitty Bennett and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Clyde McGrady reports for The Times on how race and identity is shaping American culture. He is based in Washington.
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