A white woman in North Carolina is defending calling a black woman a “stupid n**ger,” after footage of the confrontation went viral. Nancy Goodman was recorded using the racial slur while confronting a group of black women at the Bonefish Grill Bar & Restaurant.
Chanda Stewart and Lakesha Shaw were dining with a friend when Goodman approached them. “[I’m] still trying to wrap my head around it all,” Stewart told North Carolina’s WRAL. “It’s disheartening, it is. But this is the society that we’re living in right now.”
“I don’t care how you feel like we should have been acting, if I was standing on the table with three heads in a purple jumpsuit,” added Shaw. “Nothing justified you coming to my table and [calling] me a stupid n**ger.”
In the video, posted on Shaw’s Facebook Tuesday (July 23), Goodman is seen confronting Stewart and Shaw, and recording them on her cell phone while they record her. She goes on to state that she has “real good friends who are black” to which Stewart responds, “We never said anything about color.”
Goodman tells the women that they are being too loud.
“That’s your opinion. Let me show you my money,” Shaw says to Goodman. “It’s just as green as yours.”
“Why are you so stupid n**ger?” Goodman replies before scurrying away.
When asked about the incident, Goodman refused to apologize. “I’m not going to say I’m sorry to them because they kept pushing at it,” she told WRAL. “I would say it again to them. They are the rudest individuals I have ever seen.”
Goodman alleges that the women forced her to use the racial, but wishes that she would have let a waiter step in. “I have many black friends, and I have never encountered three people that ugly in a bar,” she said. “I wish those women well, and maybe there’s a lesson learned for them too, that you don’t disrespect an elderly person.”
Before the story went live on WRAL, Goodman took to Facebook to apologize to her family and friends and patrons in the bar. She referred to the women as “rude, loud obnoxious black women.”
“The women taped me and apparently shared the video all over social media,” Goodman wrote on her Facebook Wednesday (July 24). “I suffer from extreme anxiety which is not an excuse. I am ashamed of my actions.”
Shaw and Stewart told WRAL that they won’t be returning to the Bonefish Grill, and that management should have stepped in after Goodman used the racial slur. A rep for the company released a statement maintaining that they “do not tolerate hate speech or disrespect in our restaurants.” The company claims to be reviewing the incident “to see how we can do better at de-escalating something like this in the future.”
Watch Goodman’s interview below.