Australian Teens Get Swift Internet Justice After They’re Thrown Out of an Apple Store Over Racism

To be clear, I’m not exactly up on how racial relations are in Australia and whether or not people there think racism is something we can talk about in the past tense, but let’s be honest: racism is still a very real thing still faced around the world, and this particular instance just happens to take place in Australia. You’re not off the hook, literally everywhere else.

That said, this one’s a pretty straightforward case of “Dude says something racist, other dude happens to be filming, the Internet intervenes, and suddenly an apology springs up.” The incident went down when a few year 10 students (ages 14-15) of Maribyrnong College in Melbourne, Australia visited an Apple Store at the city’s Highpoint shopping center.

The teens were asked to leave, and one of them, Francis Ose, decided to film the store employee’s explanation to them, which went: “These guys are … just a bit worried you might steal something,” and, “End of discussion – I need to ask you to leave our store.” After Ose posted the video online and received 62,000 Facebook views and the appropriate reaction, the store suddenly felt compelled to apologize. If that doesn’t sound like, “I’m sorry I got caught,” I don’t know what does.

The BBC reports that Ose later wrote, “Simply racism – made them apologise tho (sic),” as well as, “They apologised, so we’re chilling, no need to take it further.” It’s great that they were able to get an apology and let it go—if he’s willing to forgive, then so are we—but this is exactly why the Internet can sometimes do so much good and why we should keep talking about events like this. No matter how many times we’re told to stop being so “outraged” over everything, showing things like this to a wide audience of people who won’t just sit back and put it with it is the only way things are going to change.

(via BBC News, image via Niels Epting)

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