Rochester, Minnesota racial slur video

In early May 2025, a video clip showing a white woman being accused of using a racial slur against a five-year-old black child at a public playground in Rochester, Minnesota, went viral.^[1] The video showed a man confronting the woman about her use of the slur. The woman defended her actions by saying the child had stolen from her own child's diaper bag.

After the incident, a woman named Shiloh Hendrix set up a GiveSendGo fundraiser and identified herself as the woman in the video. She stated on her campaign page that her personal information was leaked and that she has been receiving online threats and needed to relocate for her family's safety. As of June 12, the fundraiser had raised more than US$800,000.^[2]

Incident

Video

During the week of April 28, 2025,^[3] a video was recorded at Soldiers Field Memorial Park in Rochester, Minnesota, by a 30-year-old man named Sharmake Omar.^[4][5] The video showed a white woman being confronted by Omar for allegedly calling a 5-year-old boy of Somali descent a "nigger". When Omar, who is also of Somali heritage, asked the woman if she had called the child the slur, she responded "Yeah," adding that the child had taken items belonging to her child from a diaper bag. Omar then asked if the child's actions justified the use of the slur against the child, to which the woman responded, "If that's what he's going to act like."^[5] The mother, who was carrying her 18-month old baby on her hip, laughed, gave the middle finger, and stuck her tongue out at Omar at various points in the video.^[6][4] At one point, Omar asks the woman, "Why don’t you have the balls to say it right now again?" to which she responds by saying the slur again several times.^[6][5] Omar later said to her, "We’ll see about that, what the internet has to say about you."^[4]

Later developments

In an interview with NBC News, Omar said that he knew the parents of the Somali child from the video, who were in a different part of the park supervising their other children. He also said that the boy was autistic and was "visibly upset by the incident." He further alleged that the woman told him he was a drain on the welfare system.^[5] In an interview with KIMT-TV, Omar said he did not believe the woman's accusations of the child stealing from the diaper bag.^[7]

The family of the 5-year-old child requested privacy,^[8] and the parents stated that they wanted the woman to be prosecuted, if possible.^[5]

A spokesperson for the Rochester Police Department stated that they have received calls related to the video and are "gathering information and actively looking into the matter".^[4] They have concluded their investigations into the matter and forwarded their findings to the city attorney's office for review.^[7]

Fundraiser

Soon after the video went viral, a Minnesota woman named Shiloh Hendrix publicly declared herself to be the woman in the video and set up a fundraiser on the crowdfunding website GiveSendGo in order to raise money to "help protect" her family. On her campaign page, Hendrix wrote that her family's address and her Social Security number had been leaked in the aftermath of the video, and she said that she had received online threats and needed to relocate her family for safety reasons. Hendrix defended her actions by writing, "I called the kid out for what he was."^[6]

By May 6, the fundraiser had raised over $700,000.^[9] Many of the donations were accompanied by comments expressing alt-right and racist sympathies, including references to Holocaust denial and white nationalism.^[6][3] Some donors wrote that they were defending free speech.^[4] In response, GiveSendGo decided to mute comments on the fundraiser.^[6][10] Some conservatives said they saw the campaign for Hendrix as a "form of backlash" to the funds raised for the accused in the killing of Austin Metcalf, a black student who had been charged with murdering a white student in Frisco, Texas, the month prior; the accused's fundraiser, also on GiveSendGo, raised more than half a million dollars.^[11][12] Some supporters of Make America Great Again also viewed it as a protest against anti-white racism and cancel culture.^[12]

Reactions

Omar stated in an interview with a local news outlet that he received death threats from social media users after Hendrix "called attention to" Omar's police record on her campaign page.^[6] The Minnesota branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local law enforcement to protect Omar and the family of the five-year-old.^[7]

The Rochester chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held a town hall on May 7, condemning the actions of the woman in the video, and launched a GoFundMe fundraiser for the child in the video; they ended the campaign at the request of the family after the fundraiser surpassed its goal, raising $341,504.^[6][8] Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called the hate speech unacceptable while family members and civic leaders demanded that Hendrix be charged with a hate crime.^[13] The City of Rochester called the footage "deeply disturbing" in a social media post.^[6] The state legislature representatives for Rochester^[a] released a joint statement commending Omar for "standing up and protecting one of our youngest community members" and condemning the actions of the woman in the video.^[5][14]

Media critic Parker Molloy called the fundraiser for Hendrix an example of "vice signaling," a form of virtue signaling for negative behaviors. Conservative political commentator Matt Walsh supported Hendrix's campaign and commented that, "The latest race-baiting story followed the cancel culture script right up until the twist ending" and that this was about "destroying the 'cancel culture' mob once and for all."^[12] Red Scare podcaster Anna Khachiyan said, "I will support [Hendrix] on principle because of the importance of not letting the left dictate speech codes and torment everyone with gay race communism."^[15][16]

Notes

1. Consisting of Liz Boldon, Andy Smith, Kim Hicks and Tina Liebling.^[14]