Nancy Goodman
Raleigh, NC — Nancy Goodman is showing no remorse for using the n-word towards Chanda Stewart and Lakesha Shaw, two Black women, because she said they were rude and “too loud” in a restaurant in Raleigh, North Carolina. She said she would even say it again given the chance.Stewart and Shaw said they were with another friend at Bonefish Grill for a dinner last week when a white woman suddenly complained that they were being too loud and rude.
“We’ve had people come to our table and say, ‘Hey, you girls look like you’re having fun. We want to join you,’ but never to come to my table and tell me I’m rude,” Shaw told WRAL.
Irritated, Stewart grabbed her cellphone and took a video of Goodman while she could be heard in the background saying, “We’re paying for our food just like everyone else, and she told us that we are the rudest people.”
Goodman is then seen taking out his own cellphone from her purse and coming over to the women to confront them.
“I’ve got real good friends who are Black, and I love them,” Goodman tells the women.
“We never said anything about color,” Stewart replies.
“You’re too loud,” Goodman says.
“In your opinion,” Shaw responds. “Let me show you my money. It’s just as green as yours.”
“Why are you so stupid n—-?” Goodman calls them the racial slur as she walks off.
“Do you call your Black friends [that]?” the women ask her.
Goodman shakes her head and says, “They’re not like you.”
Shaw and Stewart said they were hurt and disappointed from what happened.
“[I’m] still trying to wrap my head around it all,” Stewart said. “It’s disheartening, it is. But this is the society that we’re living in right now.”
“I don’t care how you feel like we should have been acting,” Shaw said. “If I was standing on the table with three heads in a purple jumpsuit, nothing justifies you to come to my table and call me a stupid n—-.”
Meanwhile, Goodman admitted that she was out of control at that time. She said shouldn’t have confronted them herself and just asked for the management to ask the women to be quiet.
Goodman also knew that the slur was offensive but she wasn’t sorry she said it. She said, “I’m not going to say I’m sorry to them because they kept pushing at it. I would say it again to them. They are the rudest individuals I have ever seen.”
Despite that, Goodman claims that she is not racist.
“I have many Black friends, and I have never encountered three people that ugly in a bar,” she said. “I wish those women well, and maybe there’s a lesson learned for them, too, that you don’t disrespect an elderly person.”
Moreover, Goodman said in a Facebook post that she is suffering from extreme anxiety and is “ashamed of her actions.” She apologized to her “family, friends and other patrons in the bar at North Hills Bonefish,” but not to the women she described in her post as “rude, loud obnoxious black women.”
Shaw and Stewart said they have no plans on ever going back to Bonefish Grill, which they said mishandled the situation. They said a manager never tried to intervene and a waiter even blamed them and told them they should have handled themselves differently.
Bonefish Grill officials are reviewing the incident, according to Elizabeth Watts, a spokeswoman for the restaurant chain’s parent company, Bloomin’ Brands Inc.
“We are a place for all people to gather for good food in a comfortable atmosphere, including positive interactions among guests. We do not tolerate hate speech or disrespect in our restaurants,” Watts said in a statement. “We are reviewing the incident to see how we can do better at de-escalating something like this in the future.”