This past weekend, Pennsylvania’s Lieutenant governor’s wife Gisele Barreto Fetterman was a target of a racially motivated verbal assault at her local grocery near her home in Braddock.
On Sunday, in a viral two-second video clip she posted to her Twitter account, a woman lowered her mask to say, “You’re a n—–,” in her half-opened car window. Along with the video, she tweeted, “I love love love this country but we are so deeply divided, I ran to the local grocery store and was met by and verbally assaulted by this woman who repeatedly told me I do not belong here.”
On Twitter, she continued, “the confrontation continued into the parking lot where I was able to finally capture it after the crying winded down.” She added, “This behavior and this hatred is taught. If you know her, if she is your neighbor or relative, please, please teach her love instead.”
Fetterman told the Washington Post that the lady said to her, ‘There’s that n-word that Fetterman married. You don’t belong here. No one wants you here. You don’t belong here.” Gisele added, “The fact that she was so comfortable and bold to just do it to my face with an audience…that was really scary.” She went on to say, “I was just kind of frozen in that moment.” She said, “I was shaking. I was so nervous.”
The woman in the video has yet to be identified but Fetterman told the Post that state troopers are investigating this incident. She said that she called her usual trooper escort and gave him the woman’s license plate number.
According to the Post, Fetterman was a Brazilian immigrant brought to the U.S. by her mother as a child and has since become a citizen.
On Monday, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf called the incident “shameful and unacceptable.” He said, “Racism and hate speech are always unacceptable, and unworthy of Pennsylvanians. No Pennsylvanian should ever be made to feel unwelcome in our commonwealth because of their race or ethnicity.” He added, “Gisele Fetterman spends much of her time devoted to making our state and world a better place and she — and every Pennsylvanian — deserves our respect, not the hatred too often displayed by people who seek only to further divide this country at a time when unity is so desperately needed.”
Fetterman says that she is worried that people are becoming more confident in spreading prejudice because of Donald Trump, who has amplified racism and engaged in racist verbal attacks on his political opponents.
She said, “I think when you have leadership at such a high level that is so openly saying such hateful things, I think that people follow in that example or feel that it’s okay to do so.”
She says that she is lucky to have police protection but she is more worried about her community, which is majority Black.
