Mom says group of kids followed her daughter around Walmart while allegedly hurling racial slurs: “This is not ‘kids being kids’”

A mother says her daughter and her friends were followed around Walmart by a group of children who taunted them with racial slurs. She said one of the children had a baseball bat.

Sua Thoj described the encounter in a public Facebook post addressed to parents. According to her account, three boys and one girl followed her daughter’s group through the store between 10 and 11 p.m. the previous night, directing an anti-Asian slur at them.

“This is not ‘kids being kids.’ This is not harmless teasing,” Thoj wrote. She called the alleged behavior racism and intimidation and asked parents to take responsibility for what their children say and do.

She wants parents to ask their children what happened

Thoj opened her post by saying it should not matter whether the children involved were their own, their neighbors’, or children they had never met. She wanted parents beyond the families involved to take the account seriously.

“My daughter and her friends should be able to exist in their own community without being targeted because of the color of their skin or their racial identity,” she wrote. She said that concern should matter to every parent, not just parents of children of color.

For parents whose children had participated in racist harassment, Thoj had specific questions she wanted them to ask. What did their children say? What did they do? Why did they think it was acceptable?

She also asked parents to explain that the effects could last longer than the encounter itself. Calling something a joke, she argued, did not erase what another child experienced.

“We cannot continue telling our children to ‘ignore it’ while hate continues to show up in our schools, stores, neighborhoods, and communities,” she wrote. Her message asked adults to listen to children who reported racism and support them.

Other shoppers have described seeking help during encounters at Walmart. In another account, a man said a woman asked him to pretend they knew each other because two men were following her. Thoj’s post did not say whether her daughter or her friends approached another shopper or an employee.

Her post does not say how the encounter ended

The location, the children’s ages, and what happened afterward remain unspecified in Thoj’s post. She did not say whether store employees witnessed the alleged harassment or whether anyone reported it to police.

She also did not describe anyone swinging the baseball bat, striking someone, or making a specific threat with it. Her allegation was that one member of the group carried it while the group followed her daughter and her friends.

The Mary Sue previously reported on a separate Walmart encounter involving a boy allegedly carrying a fake weapon and using racial slurs toward an officer. Though, that report is unrelated to Thoj’s account, which has not been independently verified.

In a comment beneath her post, Thoj thanked people for their encouragement and said she had read their messages even if she had not answered individually. Her original post asked parents to teach their children to stand against racism as well as refrain from it.

“This is a moment for parents to step up, not with defensiveness, but with accountability,” she wrote. “Not with silence, but with action.”

The Mary Sue reached out to Thoj for clarification and comment but had not received a response by publication. This article will be updated if she responds.

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