https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiexJXKo46c
A white woman and self-described “MAGA brat” in New York City is refusing to apologize after being caught on film calling a Black bakery employee the n-word when she was refused service for refusing abide by the store’s mask mandate. Stephanie Denaro — who the internet has since dubbed “Bagel Karen” — instead doubled down on her decision to throw a racist tantrum in front of multiple onlookers that included her own young biracial children, going so far as to say that when she called the Black employee a “bitch ass n*****” it was a “term of endearment.”
In the video, a maskless Denaro attempted to order bagels at the Essex Bakery in Manhattan, but was told she could not be served unless she put on a mask. A woman off-camera then intervened, saying, “Ma’am, he’s not going to serve you please leave.”
“Why?” Denaro responded, “Because he’s a bitch ass n*****?”
Denaro then mimicked the audible gasps from the crowd of people watching and calmly repeated a slightly censored version of the bigoted insult: “That’s what he is. That’s what he is. Bitch ass n-word. I just said it. You heard it.”
When the intervening woman again told Denaro to leave, pointing out that she just called the employee the n-word, the 38-year-old anti-vaxxer said, “I can call him whatever I want.”
Denaro has previously been filmed denying that COVID-19 exists and asking women if they were “antifa” (which she described as “not MAGA” and “the opposite of MAGA”). She also asked, “How many Black guys have you fucked?” When one woman asked Denaro how many people died from COVID-19, she responded by saying, “How my people died of the flu?”
Denaro offered a defense of her behavior on Wednesday, claiming the true bigotry is denying white people the right to use the n-word freely.
“I’m sorry I said something like that in front of my children,” she told the New York Daily News. “But to say a variance of a word is off limits because of somebody’s skin tone? That’s just a weird way form of gate-keeping. If a Black mother was using these words, wouldn’t it be child abuse too?”
In an interview with U.K.-based news outlet The Daily Mail, Denaro said she believes the entire coronavirus pandemic was concocted as part of an elaborate scheme to prevent Donald Trump’s re-election.
“This was all about President Trump and getting him out of office. It was a hoax—mail-in ballots, everything,” she said. “It’s a satanic ritual and I’m a Christian and I am not going to cover my face.”
She also explicitly refused to offer an apology to the bakery worker.
“I live in New York City, I’m from New York City. [The n-word] is something you hear people say constantly,” she said. “It’s constantly being said. It’s not just Black people who say it. It’s a term of endearment.”
Denaro also said the Black employee was “violating my HIPAA.” That’s incorrect and reminiscent of the lingering “Face Mask Exempt Card” scam.
[image via YouTube screengrab]
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