Black Teen Speaks Out After White Woman Spit In His Face During Protest
High school junior speaks out after a white woman spit in his face at a peaceful protest
During a peaceful protest in Shorewood, Wisconsin over the week, a 63-year-old white woman spit on a Black teenager and now that teen is speaking out about the traumatic incident he says left him “mentally and physically shaken.” Teenager Eric Lucas organized a peaceful protest in his neighborhood when 64-year-old Stephanie Rapkin parked her car in the middle of the march.
In a video of the incident, Rapkin — a probate lawyer, by the way — plowed past the protestors as it appeared she was on her way into a store because you know how it’s more important to run errands than recognize you are in the midst of a civil rights movement. In the video, someone is heard screaming, “She won’t move her car!” as Rapkin continued to stonewall the protestors.
“She just kept saying we’re an inconvenience and that she had to go to the store,” said Caress Gonzalez, who FOX 6 Now says recorded the altercation.
Eventually, the group of protestors catch up to Rapkin and demand she move her car, this is when she spit on young Eric Lucas.
According to Shorewood Police, she was arrested after the incident and booked at the Milwaukee County Jail, but released soon after. Then, a group of students went to her house on Sunday and wrote on her sidewalk in chalk: “Be better than this.” In a video, she is seen arguing with the protestors outside her home, where she claims that she spit on Lucas because he “attacked” her. She then hit one of the new protestors and was arrested again, this time kneeing an officer in the groin and resisting arrest.
On Monday morning, Lucas spoke at a press conference organized by the Shorewood School District, where he is a junior.
“I continue to be mentally and physically shaken to be assaulted by an adult in my own community during a pandemic — it was traumatic,” Lucas said (via The Washington Post). “Again and again I am viewed not as a child but as a color.”
“Our family harbors no hate but does request that justice be prompt and appropriate,” Lucas said while adding that he feels “unloved by individuals I’ve done no harm to.”
Rapkin is being charged with battery, disorderly conduct, battery to a law enforcement officer, and resisting/obstructing an officer. Shorewood school officials are also calling for Rapkin to be charged with a hate crime and state Representative David Bowen wants Rapkin disbarred.
“This was not only disorderly behavior,” Shorewood School District Superintendent Bryan Davis said during the press conference. “This was racial hatred aimed at disrupting a peaceful demonstration, and it cannot be tolerated.”
