Parenting

Woman’s Hateful Anti-Muslim Rant In Trader Joe’s Goes Viral

by Meredith Bland
Updated: 
Originally Published: 

Muslim woman records horrible person being horrible

Well, there is some good and bad news for racists out there: the good news is that they have elected a president that makes them feel more comfortable expressing their poisoned views. The bad news is that the rest of us have cell phones.

On Saturday, a Muslim woman shopping at a Trader Joe’s in Reston, Virginia, kindly let a woman go ahead of her at the checkout line. That woman thanked her by saying, “I wish they didn’t let you in the country.” No, she really, really did. The video, which has now been viewed almost 4 million times, was posted on Facebook by a friend of the Muslim woman’s with her permission, as she has chosen to remain anonymous:

The recording starts about halfway through the conversation, but according to the woman’s friend, Jeremy McClellan, it all started after she let this horrible woman in front of her in line because Horrible Woman was in a hurry and only had a small bag of avocados in her cart. (Don’t worry, we’ll get back to the avocados in a bit.) According to McLellan, his friend told him: “…she started talking bad about a different Muslim woman in the store (who was wearing niqab) and asking my friend why she didn’t cover as well. My friend replied it was a choice and the woman didn’t believe her and started talking about FGM….”

As you would. My mother always told me that the best way to thank someone for a random act of kindness is try to engage them in a little racist banter about female genital mutilation.

It’s at about this point that the woman starts filming. We hear Horrible Woman say something about her “playing dumb,” which can only assume is in response to the Muslim woman saying something like, “Why the fuck are you asking me questions about what other people do to vaginas?” The Muslim woman then says, “[I] shouldn’t have let you in front of me,” to which Horrible Woman replies, “I wish they didn’t let you in the country.”

And here’s where we start to lose all of the many shits we have managed to collect over the course of our lives. It’s actually hard to put words together. The idea that Horrible Woman (who is, as is clear from her given name, a horrible woman) is holding herself above this other woman because she’s Muslim is sickening. We don’t know anything about the Muslim woman, but we do know that she let Horrible Woman in front of her in line, which is something nice people do, and Horrible Woman then made the racist assumption that the two of them were not equally American and said she wished the Muslim woman (who was born in this country) had never been “let in,” which is something assholes do.

Do we want to have a conversation about which of these two is “more American” and who we would rather have in our country? Because I have a feeling there would be an overwhelming vote in one direction, and that direction would NOT be towards a certain woman who, for example, would get in a checkout line with a cart that holds nothing but a small bag of avocados.

Brief aside: Generally, when you go to the grocery store, you know what you’re there to buy. You might not have a list, but you’re there because you need something in particular. If that something is a week’s worth of groceries, you grab yourself a cart and hit the aisles. If, on the other hand, that something is a single bag of avocados, you’re grabbing a basket or, perhaps, just holding the bag in your hands. Now, we don’t want to make assumptions about people based on something as silly as the contents of their grocery carts (or their religions) but normal people with lives to live and things to do don’t go browsing through Trader Joe’s with a cart and end up with a sack of avocados. They just don’t. Not when there’s cookie butter.

Horrible Woman then, of course, says that Obama was a Muslim and that he might end up in jail because that’s the first paragraph of The Crazy Racist’s Manifesto, at which point the Muslim woman expresses some concern for her mental health and suggests therapy. Horrible Woman then says, “Oh, I’m fine. I’m very normal.” (Psst — no she’s not.)

But our favorite part has got to be when Horrible Woman says, “What set you off? Obama?”

Yes. Yes, that’s the part that got her angry. The Obama part.

It’s almost like this woman has poor social skills and a black, bitter heart. Then again, we wouldn’t want to make assumptions.

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