Texas Hotel Employee Goes Viral Standing Up to Racist Woman

An Austin, TX Holiday Inn Express employee has quickly gone viral after posting a video of himself dealing with a woman who called him a racial slur.

Sunday night, Craig Brooks was finishing his shift in Guest Services at a Holiday Inn Express when he received a phone call from a woman who was 10 minutes away and wanted to book a room. After telling the woman she'd need to call another number and use the automation system, the call ended, but not before Brooks heard the woman call him "that f*ckin n*****." to another person with her. Brooks reported the incident to his management, who told him the hotel has a zero-tolerance policy for racism and they did not need to accommodate the woman. When the woman arrived, Brooks began recording the exchange, which he posted to Twitter. *Due to the language used in his post and video, we will not post it directly in this article, but you can view it HERE.

In the video, the woman can be heard apologizing and saying she needs to stay in the hotel as her mother passed away, to which Brooks calmly said he understood, but the decision was above him, as he was directed by management to not give the woman a room. Brooks also suggested the woman get a room at the Best Western next door to the Holiday Inn Express, which she did. After posting the video to Snapchat and Twitter, it quickly blew up, with over 4 million views within 24 hours, celebrity retweets, the hashtags #ItsAboveMe and #BestWestern trending on Twitter, and people turning Brooks' "Its above me" response into memes.

Brooks told INSIDER that the woman's comments were shocking and the first time he remembers being called a racial slur,

I'm in Austin, and Austin is very liberal so you don't have to deal with stuff like that... it amazes me that people still think like that and it's 2019.

Being that I'm black in today's society, we have to know how to deal with racism and combative white people, so we have to look at alternative ways to handle situations instead of being aggressive, because they already see us that way. I look at it like it's above me: you're mad and I'm too good for that. That's how I'm seeing it and how a lot of people are taking it.