- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
The woman behind an early Facebook post that helped spark baseless rumors about Haitians eating pets told NBC News that she feels for the immigrant community.
The woman behind an early Facebook post spreading a harmful and baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating local pets that helped thrust a small Ohio city into the national spotlight says she had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and is now filled with regret and fear as a result of the ensuing fallout.
“It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, told NBC News on Friday.
Lee recently posted on Facebook about a neighbor’s cat that went missing, adding that the neighbor told Lee she thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.
Newsguard, a media watchdog that monitors for misinformation online, found that Lee had been among the first people to publish a post to social media about the rumor, screenshots of which circulated online. The neighbor, Kimberly Newton, said she heard about the attack from a third party, NewsGuard reported.
You’re trying to save face in the same way this racist piece of shit is trying to save face: badly.
Your comment is a great example of the kind of biases I’m telling everyone to avoid. You misunderstood my initial message, then decided to cling on to that interpretation despite clarifications.
In any case, if you have feedback (e.g. what made the comment unclear, or how you interpreted it), I’d appreciate hearing about it so I can improve my writing. I’m not always aware of the hidden meanings non-autistic people pull out of words that weren’t intended to have any.