A worker at New York’s Davidovich Bakery wouldn’t serve the woman without a face mask, so she exploded in a racist rant that was caught on video.
A white woman who was refused service by a Black New York City bakery worker for not wearing a face mask was caught on video calling the employee a racial slur.
The woman, dubbed “Karen” ― an insult for an entitled white woman ― by viewers of the shocking clip, showed the woman arguing with the worker at Davidovich Bakery in the Essex Market on Sunday as she tried to order bagels.
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A security guard can be seen warning the woman, who appears to have several children in tow, that the employee would not serve her, so she had to leave.
“Why?” she sniped. “Because he’s a bitch-ass n***er?”
As bystanders groaned in outrage and the security guard repeated demands that the woman leave, she doubled down.
“That’s what he is,” she said. “I can call him whatever I want.”
Someone in the clip can be heard saying the woman claimed a medical problem. In an interview with the New York Daily News, the woman, who identified herself as Stephanie Denaro of Queens, griped that “they’re forcing people in New York City to wear masks.”
“It’s political theater,” Denaro told the paper. “I don’t believe in COVID-19. It’s a hoax to convince people to use absentee ballots to steal the election from Donald Trump.”
Asked why she used the bigoted taunt, the woman replied: “All of my children have a Black father. That’s a term I’ve heard them use all my life.”
A spokesperson for the Essex Market said the woman left after police were called, the New York Post reported. “Hate has no place in our city or in the properties that we manage,” the spokesperson said.
The NYPD told HuffPost early Wednesday that no 911 or 311 calls were made from that location on Sunday.
Davidovich Bakery praised its worker. “We want to commend our employee on his handling of the sad incident which occurred at the Essex Market,” the business wrote on Facebook. “As is true with any family an attack on one member of the family is an attack on all of us.”
