Saturday, April 23, 2011

Violent Beating In McDonalds Baltimore County; McD's Responds

This update in the story of the video showing the violent April 18, 2011 beating of a 22-year-old woman by two teenage girls at a McDonald’s Restaurant on Kenwood Avenue in the Baltimore suburb of Rosedale, Maryland. A story that has not only gone viral, but because it involves someone white, and two black teenagers, has seemingly brought out every racist animal in existence. Moreover, how it happened has provided a platform for the problems McDonald's Corporation faces with the patrons it serves and hires, regardless of color.

If you've not seen the video, here's this blogger's video commentary and the incident itself:



McDonald's Corporation was quick to issue this statement on its website:

Our Concern Regarding the Baltimore Incident

We are shocked by the video from a Baltimore franchised restaurant showing an assault. This incident is unacceptable, disturbing and troubling. McDonald’s strives to be a safe, welcoming environment for everyone who visits. Nothing is more important to us than the safety of customers and employees in our restaurants. We are working with the franchisee and the local authorities to investigate this matter. We are doing everything possible to make sure the right thing is done.


Indeed, as this space reported in the video, and in the first blog post, there's a larger problem of violence at McDonald's by teenagers regardless of color. In McDonald's fight video, after video, whites, Latinos, and Asians, mostly young women and girls, are getting into fights at McDonald's Restaurants.

That's too much for people who are already racist to hear; they want to use the McDonald's Baltimore Beating as a reason to support their own home-spun racist ideas on blacks, and have took to YouTube videos to vent their issues. But fortunately, their voices are countered by many who see the real problem, and it's not race, creed, or color.


Some say this incident is a hate crime, but a second review of it looks like it's actually a report of two girls who say a man dressed as a woman, but a man, not a tranny, had got into the woman's restroom.

The video was made by McDonald's Restaurant employee Vernon "Charm" Hackett, who explained, on his now-removed Facebook page, that the "woman" in the video wasn't a woman at all, but a guy with a wig trying to sneak into the woman's bathroom, and did so. The fight reportedly started in the women's bathroom.

Moreover, Hackett said the woman who was on the ground shaking with a seizure, got up when police arrived. But the video version with sound reports that the woman was "Bleeding, YO," by the Hackett, the cameraman.

Even if that's the case and the teenage girls though they were protecting themselves, the beating was still the wrong answer: calling the police was. In fact, what's galling about the video is no one is shown immediately calling the police at all. But there are people in the video who try to intervene and stop the teenagers, who seem intent on carrying out their anger.

ut, given the unfolding evidence, it's hard to believe what some racists want to think: that the two black girls were beating the white "woman" or man just because she or he was white.

There's more to this story; let's hope the truth isn't blocked by racists.

Stay tuned.