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On Friday, in a suburb of Green Bay, Wisconsin, a Somali American couple was out shopping at an indoor mall when they decided to stop by Cinnabon. It’s not completely clear how the interaction with the Cinnabon employee first became heated, but the TikTok user who uploaded the video said her cousin, the female customer in the video, had asked for more caramel on her cinnamon roll. The worker, a white woman, responded by insulting the woman’s hijab, according to the TikTok user, saying the customer could see her “squeezing [the caramel] through that witchcraft bandana.”
The exchange that followed, as captured on video, turned uglier once the employee, Crystal Wilsey, noticed she was being filmed: “I am racist, and you are a n—r,” Wilsey says, while leaning across the counter. “I am racist, and I’ll say that to the whole entire world. Don’t be disrespectful.” Wilsey then extended her middle fingers to the customers, told them to “suck it,” and called the female customer ugly. “You know damn well you’re fucking evil fucks,” she said. Video of the incident went viral, and Cinnabon has since fired Wilsey.
In a normal world (or even in the world of a couple years ago), that would be the end of the story, or at least pretty close to it. Wilsey’s story is not particularly remarkable: We know there are proudly racist individuals living in the U.S. She’s also not a powerful figure—she certainly can’t set public policy—meaning her firing from a Wisconsin Cinnabon would hardly be newsworthy. A different video of the incident, later published by TMZ, showed Wilsey making irrational claims, accusing the customer of having come up to her earlier in a white-face disguise.
There also wouldn’t be much to debate: There was recently a near-universal consensus that racial slurs were to be met with condemnation. People could still deploy all sorts of dog-whistles to hint at their views, but slurs—and certainly the self-proclaimed racism—were relegated to the fringes of the discourse.
But these are not normal times, and that near-consensus is thoroughly broken: On GiveSendGo, the crowdfunding platform typically used for more conservative causes, “Stand with Crystal” has raised more than $113,000 in donations. A fundraiser for the Somali American couple’s legal fees, in contrast, has raised less than $5,000.
And on social media, large accounts have rallied behind Wilsey, portraying her either as a hero standing up for white Americans or as a victim of Black aggression. “Crystal, a hardworking White mom, was doing her job at @Cinnabon when a Somali couple decided to make her shift horrible with intimidation,” read one typical X post with more than 2 million views.
If there was any doubt about this new phenomenon, this isn’t the first time this has happened. In May, a white woman named Shiloh Hendrix repeatedly called a Somali American child the N-word at a playground in Rochester, Minnesota. The woman, it appears, was set off on her racist tirade when the child took an applesauce pouch from Hendrix’s diaper bag; the child’s father later said his son was autistic and struggled to understand social norms. After the video went viral, portions of the online right rallied to Hendrix’s defense, positioning her as a First Amendment hero. Others said she was a symbol of courage, a woman who finally had the guts to stand up against Somali Americans or against anti-white abuse. Eventually, Hendrix was charged with disorderly conduct misdemeanors, but only after she had already raised more than $800,000 on GiveSendGo. “I called the kid out for what he was,” she wrote on the website. “We cannot, and will not live in fear!”
Hendrix and Wilsey, because of their gender, are particularly useful figures for the campaigns to shift the racial discourse rightward, as their white womanhood allows them to play the part of victims. Hendrix, as a mother, was described by her defenders as looking out for her own child. And many on social media claimed that Wilsey was justified in her outburst because she had been “intimidated” and “sexually harassed.” This argument was based on a moment in the video in which the man is heard asking Wilsey if “sexualizing your body makes you a better person”—presumably a response to her insulting his wife’s hijab, though we don’t know for sure. A right-wing influencer declared the moment proof of the incompatibility of “third world cultures” with modern American society.
But any pretense of this being about protecting vulnerable women is easily debunked by looking at the GiveSendGo for Wilsey, which has an explicitly racist tone: “Meet Crystal: hardworking White mom doing her job at Cinnabon. Two Somali customers decide to make her shift hell with intimidation,” it reads. “No White person should lose their job for refusing to be harassed by Somalians.”
Some of the comments from donors are even more explicit. “Non-White citizenship was ratified by forcing states to accept it in 1868,” one person wrote. “Study the law.” “We conquered this land once before and we’ll do it again,” another wrote. “The sleeping giant is awakening.” Of the people who donated $1,000, more than one praised Wilsey’s honesty. Others were even more direct. “If Somalians must be seen, until they are all removed by our Blessed President’s law enforcement, they must never be heard,” one of them wrote.
Similarly, on social media, many of the top posts relate to race and immigrant “entitlement.” “A lot of this country is DONE with the racism and Islamophobia hysteria,” read one post with 4.4 million views from a conservative media figure. “Put yourself in this woman’s shoes,” another post with 1.1 million views read. “Your community has been flooded with a HORDE of foreigners who scam welfare programs you’re expected to pay for. A couple of those foreigners come in to where you are WORKING, to buy shit likely with YOUR tax dollars, and they give you shit for what you’re wearing.”
This kind of unapologetic racism is shocking to see on display, but it didn’t appear without warning. For one, Elon Musk has fostered white nationalist talking points on his platform, where so much of this discourse takes place, with no repercussions. And, crucially, President Trump’s anti-African racism appears to have become even more unfiltered in the second administration, without any kind of serious pushback; the public has become too accustomed to it to summon any real outrage.
Both the Hendrix and the Wilsey incidents targeted Somali Americans. The latter occurred just a few days after President Trump made some of the most baldly racist comments recorded by a U.S. president, directed at Somali immigrants.
On Dec. 2, during a Cabinet meeting, Trump referenced a fraud investigation involving some Somali Americans to disparage the entire immigrant population. “They contribute nothing,” he said. “We can go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.” He also accused Somali Americans of being lazy. “These are people that do nothing but complain,” he said. “When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country.” He also said Somalia “stinks.”
“Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars,” he said. “And they contribute nothing.”
Unlike Wilsey, Trump is unlikely to face any professional consequences for such flagrant racism. But the president’s assertion that Somalians are “destroying” the country and that violent gangs are taking over Minnesota echoed white supremacist language meant to dehumanize Black immigrants and stir up white fears. It also reflected—in the lack of any real sense of scandal to follow—where we are, as a society, in this reactionary era. As Trump’s comments have shown, we are now in a kind of bigotry free-for-all, with permission from the most powerful people in America. Saying the most vile racial slur—something that once made you an outcast from society—is now an act that, if captured on video at the right moment, can make you a hero in public discourse, beyond just the dark corners of the internet.
Now, in this new era, a portion of the online right has ceded the conversation around race to white nationalists, allowing it to be framed as a matter of tribalism, in which all is fair to defend your own kind, including treating explicit anti-Black racism as a kind of public good worth financially rewarding. The taboo against the N-word used to be the last line of defense. With no barriers in civil discourse left to fall, it’s fair to wonder what it would take for politicians, influencers, tech oligarchs, and the United States president to reckon with the consequences of their recklessness—or if they will own this dark new trend in American hate.
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