How a Black-owned business became an accidental target of anti-racist rage and lost thousands of dollars

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As a racist anti-Asian rant went viral, Google directed angry social media users to the wrong Black-owned business. “I literally thought they were gonna burn my house down.”

, people hit the wrong target. And while some social media platforms have sought to limit the fallout of such situations, Mejia’s experience highlights just how difficult it can be to get help as the costs of being a target pile up.

Mejia’s son, Nigel Mejia, a manager of the salon, tried to correct the record online — getting his mother’s phone number removed from parts of the internet and flagging the incident to Google through a help portal on their Google Business page.Nigel Mejia was eventually able to get Google to remove the flood of negative reviews from the salon’s Google Business Profile. It currently has a rating of 4.9/5 stars.

“We couldn’t handle all that pressure,” Nigel Mejia said. “Me, her and the people that were trying to back her up, like, you know, it was like Instagram wars, Facebook wars, people trying to explain to every single comment that this is the wrong person.”As the days went on, things just got worse. At that point, Mejia, salon employees and customers began to fear for their safety. Niesluchowski said she began to carry a gun for protection. Mejia was scared more people would come in to harass them — or worse.

Even with the salon closed, however, people who had seen the video were able to damage Mejia and her business. Two days after the salon closed, it was vandalized with racist graffiti, some of which said “GO BACK TO YOUR CAGE,” “Monkey” and other slurs.Iris Mejia said the stress of it all took a toll on her health, landing her in the hospital for three days. She said she suffers from arthritis, which flared up as pressure from the viral video mounted.

 

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Wokeness at its best

This is the era we're in. And every person who has contributed to 'cancelling' is to blame.

Seriously, it’s not like we watched BLM burn entire neighborhoods down in 2020. I suppose we’ll be investigating Asian supremacy groups next since we look into everything but the actual problem these days.

Posted several times last week.

Google should be liable.

F u c k i n g typical ‼

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