Influencer and NFL player receive racist abuse over inter-racial marriage: ‘This still exists’
Some hateful comments include references to end of ‘bloodline status’ and ‘dysgenic’ children
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Your support makes all the difference.Allison Rochell, a TikTok influencer who married Indianapolis football player Isaac Rochell earlier this year, shared racist comments she received on Instagram following a post about her inter-racial marriage three weeks ago.
In the 10-second TikTok video captioned “reminder that this still exists,” Rochell shared comments such as “abomination”, “vile”, “say NO to interracial marriages” and “burn the coal pay the toll.”
“Coal burning” is a derogatory term for white women in relationships with Black men.
Some hateful comments included references to the end of her “bloodline status” and the “wipe out” of a lineage, while others chose to remind her about her “European ancestors” or claim that “race mixing is communism” and that “her kids will be very dysgenic.”
The video has been viewed more than 457,000 times.
Users on Instagram, however, also pushed back against the racist commentary and extended their support to the couple.
“[You] all are so cute, and these comments are horrific i’m so sorry,” wrote a user on Ms Rochell’s Instagram post.
“This comment section is truly horrific, I just spent the last 30 mins reporting accounts,” commented another person as they urged others to do the same.
“Some of these comments are truly horrific, I’m so sorry you have to deal with that. You’re a beautiful couple, love your tik toks,” wrote another user.
More than 150 years after slavery was abolished in the US, racism continues to impact Black people. According to a 2021 research by Pew, nearly eight in ten Black adults felt that “a lot more needs to be done to ensure equal rights for Americans” of all racial and ethnic background. About 58 per cent said that in order to achieve this, “nation’s laws and major institutions need to be completely rebuilt because they are fundamentally biased.”
Among white adults participating in the survey, about 42 per cent felt a lot more needs to be done to ensure racial equality.
About 64 per cent felt that US has made “little” progress on the issue in the last 50 years, while 56 per cent of white adults said that the US “has made a lot of progress on the issue of racial inequality.”
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