Battle of the Shiloh Hendrix Fundraisers

C ommentators across the political spectrum — Ibram X. Kendi, Matt Walsh, Piers Morgan — have expressed firm opinions on Shiloh Hendrix, a white woman who admitted to directing a racial slur toward a black child and, in light of receiving serious threats, raised over $750,000 (and counting) to “help to assist in protecting [her] family.” Hendrix has been characterized as a “folk hero” supported by the “woke right,” but the contributors to her campaign don’t necessarily care much about her. Instead, they see this as a proxy battle in the culture war.

First, let’s distinguish the facts from the claims circulating the internet. Sharmake Beyle Omar, a Somali man, confronted Hendrix on camera at a park. He repeatedly asked whether she called a black child (who is not his son) a “n*****,” and she responded that “it’s none of your f***ing business.” Omar then questioned, “Why don’t you have the balls to say it right now again?” She flipped up her middle finger, declared, “F*** you, n*****,” and continued repeating the slur. Hendrix claimed that the boy was rummaging through her things, and she affirmed that she had called the child the slur. (She has since written that the child was stealing from her diaper bag, and states that “I called the kid out for what he was.”) As the profane altercation continues, Omar tells her, “That’s hate speech, and you can be recorded for that,” then asserts, “We’ll see about that, what the internet has to say about you” as she walks away with her toddler.

Omar shared the video with the world, and predictably, people had lots to say — but some of their commentary was expressed through dollars and usernames.

As is usually the case with viral controversies, people started digging up dirt. It’s clear that, prior to the park incident, neither Hendrix nor Omar was a model citizen. A 2012 case between the State of Minnesota and Hendrix ended in conviction for a “disorderly conduct” petty misdemeanor. (That physical case file was destroyed, and no documents are available.) Hendrix was convicted in 2014 for the misdemeanor of “third-degree driving while impaired.” In 2015, there was an eviction case between “Bald Eagle Holdings” and Hendrix. Omar, too, has a record. Since 2012, Omar has been convicted for the petty misdemeanor of “skateboarding in business area,” the misdemeanor of driving after a license suspension, and another petty misdemeanor. In 2021, when he was working for FedEx and earning nearly $7,000 a month, his former wife filed against him for child support. (They were married in 2012, and they had three kids together before separating in 2018.) In 2022, Omar was charged with the sexual offenses of “nonconsensual sexual contact” and “penetration” of a minor involving “coercion,” but those were all dismissed on March 14, 2025, “in the interest of justice.”

But most people didn’t bother rummaging through court documents. Instead, they arrived at judgments based on the brief footage alone, then picked a side. The following comments about Hendrix were posted on Bluesky: “Normalize sending death threats to Shiloh Hendrix,” “Make her famous (and unemployable),” “Shiloh Hendrix, you made your bed. Now die in it,” and “I take comfort in knowing that wherever Shiloh Hendrix goes, she will never find peace.” (Statements of this nature are seemingly endless.) The verbal outrage against Hendrix was complemented by material support for the black child. A NAACP branch launched a fundraiser titled “Help Us Seek Justice for a 5-Year-Old Facing Racial Hate,” which raised just under $350,000 before it closed in response to the “family’s wishes.” (At present, the boy remains anonymous, and there is no publicly available proof of his age or purported autism diagnosis.) Similarly, the fundraiser titled “Stand Against Shiloh Hendrix and Racism: Support the NAACP” has about $4,000 in donations. The fundraiser “Prosecute Shiloh Hendrix” asks for donations to support a legal team that will prosecute her “for assault with an escalation to a hate crime.” (Apparently, some people didn’t read the full description, since a person who gave $40 commented, “While I don’t agree with the villain role she takes, her life does not deserve to be ruined because of this, death to the antiwhite narrative.”)

In response to the onslaught of threats, Hendrix started an online fundraiser to “protect [her] family,” claiming that “My SSN has been leaked. My address, and phone number have been given out freely. My family members are being attacked. My eldest child may not be going back to school. Even where I exercise has been exposed.” Since it launched, she’s raised over $750,000. (Whether she ever sees that money is a different matter. The black activist Kiandria Demone declared, “I didn’t just want to cyberbully, I wanted to take action,” and is targeting the fundraising platform’s payment processor with the hopes that Hendrix doesn’t get a penny.)

But the usernames of the contributors (before the host website prevented comments and anonymized all donations) were more revealing than the actual amounts given on the pro-Hendrix fundraiser. The user named “kill all jews Andblacks” gave Hendrix $5, the user “Nate Higgers” gave $10, and “WhiteLoveWorldwide” gave $15. Other messages expressed in the usernames included “DontUseSlursButDontDOXCancelPeople,” “Tired of One-sided BS,” “EveryoneIsTribal NowWeAreToo,” and “God Bless Shilo and Family.” Additional contributions are given under the names “Karmelo Anthony,” “Kamala Harris,” and “Al Sharpton,” obviously as subversive pseudonyms.

What should we make of all this? I maintain that 1) an individual should avoid saying slurs and expletives, 2) slurs and expletives transgress social standards but, even when said with extreme hostility, do not violate the law, 3) there is a sociolinguistic double standard where the use of a slur is considered acceptable if and only if the speaker is a member of the human group degraded by that slur, 4) the use of a word — any word — shouldn’t ruin your life, and 5) filming someone, even a really bad guy, and uploading the video online to facilitate an intimidation campaign makes you an agent of the Thought Police. Based on these principles, it is easy to guess how I evaluate this incident. I think that Hendrix is a bad person for using a slur, and especially for directing it toward a child — whether he’s five or eleven, whether he’s autistic or not, whether he stole from her or not. I also think that Omar is a bad person because he assembled an internet army to destroy her life — and that’s more aggressive than screaming a slur.

National Review’s Haley Strack argued that “Shiloh Hendrix is not a victim,” and I firmly disagree. Shiloh is, of course, responsible for her language. But the punishment doesn’t match the crime. She and her family members — who aren’t responsible for her speech — now face threats because of it. Just as Shiloh’s language was disproportionately harsh toward the child who supposedly stole from her bag, the unrelenting harassment toward her family is disproportionate to the use of the slur. You can make the argument that a slur inflicts harm, but if that’s your position, then surely you have to concede that death threats are comparatively worse.

But here’s the thing that actually matters: The Hendrix fundraiser is a proxy war that cannot be evaluated independently of recent events, and the donors are sending a range of messages. Some are racist, and they believe they are mirroring the tribalism exhibited by other demographics. Others are trying to counter-signal the recent support for Karmelo Anthony, a black teenager who accumulated over $500,000 in donations as he was charged with fatally stabbing the white teenager Austin Metcalf. Before the comments and usernames were disabled, messages on the Anthony fundraiser included “death to the white man,” “God bless this young man, he had to defend himself from a bunch of rednecks,” and “these crackas need to understand that we are NOT our ancestors, and they will reap what they sow.” Some of Hendrix’s donors are frustrated with the sociolinguistic disparities, and they note there’s a word with Voldemort-like status that warrants either social death or no judgment, depending on the speaker’s racial identity. Moreover, there isn’t a word or phrase that racial minorities can spew toward white people that results in similar consequences. In fact, condemning white people was rewarded just years ago, and authors of “antiracist” manuals to abolish “whiteness” made gazillions of dollars. Perhaps most significantly, the contributors believe they are disincentivizing further cancellation campaigns. The stance is clear: If you summon an internet army to ruin someone’s life, even someone who has done something objectively bad, we’re going to provide significant support, so don’t bother doing it again.