News has gone viral of a Sephora employee in Boston confronting white teenage girls for putting on blackface with products from the store. A TikToker documented the girls walking around with their faces caked in brown makeup, with their mothers seemingly OK with their behavior.
The since-deleted video showed the employee walking up to one of the girls as her mother attempted to take a photo of her in the offensive makeup. Another user, Reyah The Last Dragon, screen-recorded the original footage to re-upload after its removal.
@reyahthelastdragon #greenscreenvideo #greenscreen ♬ Beat – beaty
“I walked over here, and you were about to send a picture of that. You want to document this? Go ahead,” expressed the employee. “This is the stuff that ruins jobs, college acceptances, let alone how incredibly offensive this is.”
However, the group seemed unaffected by the callout, with one of the mothers walking away as the Sephora worker continued explaining why it was wrong. The original user who took video of the ordeal repeatedly said how “shameful” the incident was, with the employee apologizing to other patrons for having to witness the offensive act.
In her caption, the user described how the
girls were making animal sounds while putting the makeup on, furthering the racist intent behind the action. She then said that one of the mothers, who saw her recording the confrontation, came over to demand that the footage be deleted because she lacked their consent to record the girls.Historically, blackface was a common racist act usually conducted by white people, who slathered their faces in dark makeup in mockery of Black people.
The video was removed from TikTok because it conflicted with the platform’s code of conduct. However, the continuation of blackface remains gravely offensive to the Black community.