Black graduate student records racist rant in New York City

A Yale student is targeted by a stranger on the street making racist comments

Jun 23, 2020

A graduate student in New York City found herself on the receiving end of an unprovoked rant by a white women with some anger and likely mental health issues. The Yale student, Kathryn Graves, is looking to identify the woman to make sure she’s not the perpetrator or victim of someone else’s ire if she continues ranting at strangers.

NBC News reports that Graves encountered the woman at 47th and Third Avenue in the midtown section of Manhattan. She says on her Instagram account that she was wearing a Black Lives Matter tee and headphones, and didn’t realize at first the woman was targeting her. The woman started spewing racial slurs at Graves, who recorded the incident.

“I have never experienced something that was that belligerent and blatant,” Graves said. “My mindset was ‘Keep recording and brace yourself in case she gets violent.'”

The woman was carrying a case of what appears to be an alcohol with one unopened can. Facebook has deleted the video, likely as it’s in violation of their rules on hate speech and racist content.

Graves says that she recognizes that the woman may be mentally ill and/or homeless.

But, she writes: “HOWEVER, neither of these causes or excuses racism, and for that reason there needs to be repercussions. She got in my face, and if this happens again, and things escalate, she could harm someone or herself.”

Despite some leads, Graves has yet to identify the woman.

Despite the protests and the proclamations of Black Lives Matter in the wake of George Floyd‘s death in Minneapolis, racial incidents seem to be on the rise, or maybe just the recording of them.

Several incidents have been caught on camera as of late, including from another New York resident, Amy Cooper, who threatened to call the police on an African American bird watcher and another woman who told a Black cyclist in Alameda to go back to Oakland – which has a larger Black population.

(Photo: Kathryn Graves)

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