He had a racist rant in 2018 over a parking space. The clip went viral thanks to Trey Songz.
The audio clip is just under 30 seconds.
A man and a woman can be heard arguing over a parking space when, all of a sudden, he hurls the N-word at her.
The dispute happened two years ago but resurfaced Thursday when R&B singer Trey Songz shared it to his 12.1 million Instagram followers, according to Local 10. As of Friday morning, the clip had already accumulated more than 250,000 views.
WARNING: AUDIO CLIP CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE
The man’s voice belongs to John Porter, who co-owns the Fort Lauderdale-based Apollo Lighting with his wife, Brandi. In a recent interview with WPLG Local 10, Brandi said that she and her husband have received death threats ever since the video went viral.
People are “threatening employees, telling them they’re gonna kill us, they’re gonna shoot us, they’re gonna blow our business up,” she told Local 10. “We’re not racist people.”
She added that the video, which shows John repeating the N-word five times, doesn’t show the full story, claiming that the unidentified woman also said disrespectful things to her husband as well.
People have since taken to the company’s Facebook, Yelp and Google pages to call John Porter racist and unprofessional. His wife told Local 10 that she’s deleted the accounts but ultimately hopes the incident won’t affect potential customers’ judgment of their business.
“I don’t condone using the N-word by any means, and I know I’ve spoken to John and he’s apologetic and wishes it never happened,” Brandi Porter said, later reiterating “I’m not racist. I have employees of all nationalities.”
The clip reemerged at a time when many have started to acknowledge the systematic racism and unequal treatment of Black Americans that have long existed in the United States. Protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd have continued across the country for more than a month. Even the most neutral of companies were essentially forced to purport messages of equality after the widespread demonstrations.
A recent Civiqs study published by the New York Times found that the nationwide protests appear to have shifted perspective with the majority of Americans now supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.
This story was originally published June 26, 2020 at 9:49 AM with the headline "He had a racist rant in 2018 over a parking space. The clip went viral thanks to Trey Songz.."
