An Afro-Latina journalist’s interview with the leader of a KKK group that marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend devolved into racial epithets and violent threats.
The journalist said the conversation left her fearing for her safety.
At first, Ilia Calderón — a nightly newscast anchor with Univision — watched local Ku Klux Klan leader Chris Barker conduct a meeting of white supremacists on his North Carolina property.
Participants dressed up in robes and marched around with flaming torches, according to Raw Story.
Then Calderón sat down with Barker, who almost immediately attacked the journalist.
“To me you are a n-----. That’s it,” said Barker, a grand wizard of the Loyal White Knights, a KKK chapter in Yanceyville, North Carolina.
Calderón seemed taken aback at first, but quickly shot back a reply.
“I find that offensive,” she said. “My skin color doesn’t define me.”
Earlier in the interview, Barker asked Calderón why she doesn’t “go back” to where she came from. She is an immigrant with both African and Colombian heritage.
Then he threatened to remove her and the millions of immigrants here with physical force, if necessary.
“We have nothing here in America; ya’ll keep flooding it,” he said. “But like God says – like Yahweh himself says – we will chase you out of here.”
“No, we’re going to burn you out,” he added, correcting his last statement.
Calderón, who acknowledged she was probably the first immigrant with African heritage to be on Barker’s property, asked the white supremacist how he plans to forcibly kick out so many immigrants.
“We killed six million Jews the last time,” he answered. “Eleven million is nothing.”
The incendiary language shocked Calderón, who said she expected a certain level of racist vitriol from the KKK leader.
“My team told me that I would be insulted, and I knew, but I never imagined the level," she told Univision. “... At that moment, I felt scared and unsafe.”
The Loyal White Knights participated in the ‘Unite the Right’ rally last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left three dead and dozens injured as white nationalists and anti-racist counter protesters clashed throughout the city, according to Independent.
The interview took place in July before the unrest in Charlottesville and President Donald Trump’s subsequent statements that only seemed to stoke further tension. The full interview, which was teased with a preview earlier this week, will air Sunday at 10 p.m. ET on Univision.
But after the protests — which bore witness to a car mowing down anti-racist protesters, killing one and injuring 19 — the Loyal White Knights praised the driver of the car for “running over nine communist anti-fascists,” according to Independent.
“When a couple of them die, it doesn’t bother us,” Barker said. “They’re always attacking and messing with our rallies.”
lain:
