Silke Jasso
A New Jersey woman’s racist rant at the checkout line of a Sears on Sunday was caught on video.
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Simoni Lovano recorded the rant and posted the video on YouTube. The woman can be heard making derogatory comments against a Latino family and an Asian store employee.
“Send them back to their own fucking country,” she said.
A man who was with the woman added, “Let’s drain the swamp. Hurry up.”
The couple was upset with the family for holding up the line to separate their purchases into multiple orders to be able to use coupons.
“You got an Indian waiting on an Indian, that’s what it is,” she said to a store employee. Other people in the video point out neither the family nor the employee are Indian.
“I don’t know what the hell they are,” she responded.
Lovano told New Jersey 101.5 in an interview Tuesday that all the customers he saw in line, as well as the store employees around them, were minorities and appeared uncomfortable and shocked by the rant. He said that no one, including himself, intervened to address the woman’s comments, and store employees never asked her to leave.
“I feel guilty as well that I didn’t speak up,” he said. “I was so angry I was almost shaking, and it was very hard for me to say something.”
Lovano said that his own family immigrated to the U.S. from Sicily when he was a child. He said on Facebook that he monetized the video and plans to donate 100 percent of the proceeds to an immigrant-related social justice/advocacy organization.
