Black woman told to leave Texas store for 'swearing', when she was actually speaking Somali

A newly released video shows a black woman being asked to leave a store in Texas after other customers got a security guard to approach her.

Roda Bashe, 29, wrote about the incident on Facebook, along with videos that she had taken. The incident took place in a Dollar Tree store in Texas, where Bashe was shopping.

Bashe says that she was speaking Somali on the phone to her sister when she noticed other customers were looking at her ‘suspiciously’. After this, the security guard came over to her and asked her to leave.

She shared a video to Facebook which shows a security guard asking her to leave the store. The security guard said that the store manager had asked him to do so, but neither of them had given Bashe any explanation about why this was the case.

In the video, the manager of the store tells Bashe that she was asked to leave for using "profanities", which Bashe denies. Bashe also asked the store manager if she had witnessed this behaviour first hand, which the store manager did not – and then the store manager says they tried to approach her about the complaints.

In the video, Bashe says:

This is absolutely racist and is harassment, as well. You’re asking me to leave the store for doing nothing wrong.

After the manager of the store speaks to Bashe, she asks if she can stay and shop without being harassed, but the manager of the store asks her to leave again. Bashe points out in her post and in the video that she was speaking Somali and not swearing, and that the two customers who complained about her were unlikely to speak that language as is.

As reported by the Daily Dot, on her Instagram story, Bashe says that she was lucky she got to leave the store unharmed, and that she was tongue-tied and felt like she couldn’t express herself fully.