A French restaurant manager was subjected to death threats after a woman in blackface appeared in an online video dancing on the terrace of his establishment last week.
The manager of a restaurant in the city of Poitiers filed a complaint with police on Friday after receiving a number of death threats due to a video circulating last week on social media showing a woman dressed up in blackface dancing at the venue.
The woman was allegedly part of a bachelorette party last Wednesday with around 20 guests who all dressed up as various characters, while the bride to be is said to have dressed up in blackface to “pay tribute to her grandmother,” who she claimed is from Martinique, a French overseas territory in the Caribbean, broadcaster France Bleu reports.
Since the video began circulating online last week, the manager of the restaurant claims to have received a number of hateful messages, including emails and phone calls, some of which included death threats.
A member of the anti-hate group SOS Racisme stated that the manager was simply an innocent bystander in the event calling him a “collateral victim” and denounced the use of blackface by the bride in the video.
While incidents of blackface remain a rare occurrence in France, urban violence and insecurity have been a major issue in the country for years and restaurants have also seen cases of severe violence.
In 2019, in the Paris no-go suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis, a fatal shooting took place at a restaurant in Noisy-le-Grand when a 28-year-old server was shot dead by a customer at the restaurant.
According to the staff who witnessed the shooting, the man who shot the server had become angry at how long he had to wait for the sandwich he had ordered and decided to shoot the server because of it.
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