This is the shocking moment a black woman studying for a PhD at Yale who is walking down the street in New York City is branded a “n*gger ape” by a white woman carrying a box of beer.
The footage was shared on Instagram by victim ‘Kat Graves’ where it has been viewed 150,000 times in one day.
Graves, whose full name is Kathryn Graves, is a 27-year-old PhD student at Yale University, and said on Instagram: “So this just happened to me…in NYC of all places…for context I was walking down the street with my headphones in and a BLM shirt on, and didn’t even realise she was yelling at me until I stopped my music.”
In the footage, the woman is seen shouting about “Barack Obama’s f*cking ape wife” to the black woman in the street while apparently holding a box of Natural Ice beer.
She then makes offensive ape sounds before repeatedly shouting “n*gger ape” to the woman.
Graves told Newsflash: “I was just walking down the street. I can’t say whether or not it was because of my shirt, in the moment I thought it might have been a contributing factor, but I’m also black and I walked past several people of different racial identities wearing BLM shirts and it seemed like she kind of singled me out.
“I didn’t even realise she was yelling at me until I started to cross 47th Street and could hear her over my music. I thought to film her immediately so once I got out of the street I just stood there recording and letting her go off.”
She added: “We did not have any kind of interaction that pre-empted this, she just started yelling racist things at me. I don’t know this is woman, but I’m now in contact with another woman of colour who we think she similarly attacked earlier this year.”
Graves told Newsflash: “When she got in my face I started trying to figure out how I would respond if I needed to physically defend myself, but other than that I really think I was in shock for most of it.
“Rewatching the video, what honestly upsets me more is the number of passersby who didn’t intervene.
“Racism thrives where no one speaks out against it, and several people refused to speak out.”
Graves admitted that she is unsure whether to report the racist woman to the police.
She told Newsflash: “I’m not sure at this time, but given she’s likely homeless and may have a mental health issue, it’s not my wish to just see her locked up.
“I would like her to receive institutional help so she’s off the streets and not attacking other people. There needs to be some kind of response, nothing excuses racism.”
After the footage was widely shared on social media, netizens claimed the white woman was the same ‘person filmed abusing an Asian-American man holding a baby outside his home in March.
Netizen ‘Hiphopfunk’ said: “Your friend shared this on Twitter and I posted it on my FB only to discover that this is the same woman that harassed my friend’s husband while he was holding their baby outside their building.
“She had already filed a police report on this incident that happened a few months ago right in front of her building and they also have security video. My friend saw my post and she now plans on filing a complaint with the New York City Commission of Human Rights (NYCCHR).”
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Story By: Lee Bullen, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash
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