A woman who visited a grocery store in Spring Valley, New York, said she was disturbed by what she saw outside the building. A few workers from Huerta Del Eden were standing in the parking lot, and among them was one male employee whose face was covered in what appeared to be black paint. It looked like the guy was being directed on how to act and was also being filmed.
After the group went back inside, the woman followed and approached the employees. She first asked the young man wearing the black paint what the makeup was for. Initially, the staff seemed surprised by her question, but the man eventually replied that it was part of a marketing idea for the store. Unconvinced, she asked again, “With black face?” The employee hesitated and started searching his phone, saying he could show her the video it was based on.
A manager then came forward and repeated that the paint was indeed connected to marketing. The woman watched as the employee showed her a short clip in which a gorilla at a zoo slides toward a protective glass and then turns its back to the viewers. Immediately, the camera transitions to the lips of someone with a painted black face, who then moves back a little and turns around to promote his store products. The whole thing is edited to look like a comedic cutaway.
However, the attempt at humor, which might have been intended as marketing, was unacceptable to the customer given the racial imagery it used. She told the staff she planned to report the incident. In the caption of one of the videos she uploaded on TikTok, she thought it was “a shame,” especially since the apartment building next to the store was “filled with Black customers.”
What People Are Saying About the Spring Valley Grocery Store Incident
Viewers had strong opinions after seeing the clip. One person commented, “Yeah they KNOW they are wrong! Smhhh trying to play dumb!!!” A second said, “He literally started shaking the moment you walked up he knew exactly what he was doing.” A third added, “Absolutely not ok. Ever.” A fourth person urged a boycott, saying, “Nah that’s disrespectful boycott that store & they don’t like black ppl anyway [sic].”
Some did try to see the situation differently. “I get he’s trying to recreate a video but he didn’t have to do a black face 🫤,” one viewer said. Another wrote, “As a black person I think we take too much [sic] things to heart.” A few netizens also believed that the store employees were just ignorant. One wrote, “I don’t think they’re intentionally doing black face, they’re copying that silly video to promote their business and it seems like they were ignorant to how it could be [offensive] until you expressed anger then it clicked. That’s why he rushed to show you the video.”
