A Univision news anchor, who has the patience of a saint and a will of steel, somehow managed to get through an interview with the leader of a Ku Klux Klan chapter who called her a nigger and threatened to burn her, all while she was doing her job.
The incident started when Christian Barker, the imperial wizard of the Loyal White Knights of the KKK in Pelham, N.C., and his wife, Amanda, agreed to do an interview with Univision. According to a producer, in the segment that later aired, it was explained to him that he would be interviewed by a Hispanic woman of color and he readily agreed.
Things apparently went awry when Ilia Calderón, a black news anchor, greeted him.
As Calderón pressed Barker on his views, the ugliness of his racist, white supremacist views started to flow.
“Why don’t you go back?” Barker said in the interview, which aired Sunday night. “We have nothing here in America; y’all keep flooding it. … We’re going to chase you out of here.”
“Are you going to chase me out of here?” Calderón questioned.
“No, we’re going to burn you out,” he said.
“How are you going to do it? How are you going to do it with 11 million immigrants?” Calderón, with a blissful roll of her eyes and a classic side eye, asked.
“Don’t matter. We killed 6 million Jews the last time. Eleven million is nothing,” Barker said. (Yes, he went there.)
When Calderón referred to probably being the first black person on Barker’s property, Barker again made his feelings very clear.
“To me you’re a nigger. That’s it. That’s it to me,” Barker stated.
“I find that offensive,” Calderón stated with remarkable calm. “My skin color doesn’t define me.”
The most fascinating part of this was when, in the most blatant show of cognitive dissonance, the couple were asked if they represented a hate group and they insisted that the KKK is not a hate group and they don’t hate anyone.
When asked if they were racist, Christopher replied immediately, “No. I think everyone deserves the right to live.”