Nobody wants to be stuck defending white people who use the N-word at black people. Since the 1970s, if not further back than that, to do so indicates poor breeding, poor manners, and poor character. We should all know better.
And in Rochester, Minnesota, last year, a woman named Shiloh Hendrix committed exactly that social transgression.
BREAKING: Shiloh Hendrix found guilty by a MN jury for “using the n-word” pic.twitter.com/CDdhhWvbuF
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 24, 2026
Yes, this is terrible. And why is it always the people with the arm full of tattoos?
Ms. Hendrix isn’t a particularly sympathetic defendant. On the video showing the incident for which she’s become infamous, she comes off as vulgar, unpleasant, and low-class. As such, she isn’t up for any civic prizes.
It’s the opposite end of the spectrum, actually.
Because last week, after a trial which — to be charitable — could have been better-run, Shiloh Hendrix was convicted on a misdemeanor count of disturbing the peace for having dropped an N-bomb on someone who was filming her.
And now we’ve got people talking about Shiloh Hendrix and having a debate over the use of the N-word and just how unacceptable it is.
Do we need this debate? Maybe a little more than we thought. And the vagaries of Minnesota’s judicial system and the people who populate it have foisted this on us. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: Minnesota Goes to Hell (Again))
The facts of the Hendrix case make for a bit more complicated story than that of the angry fishwife spouting invective at dark-skinned bystanders, which was originally pitched to the public by the corporate media.
The setting? A public playground, where Ms. Hendrix and her young child were enjoying an afternoon along with others in Rochester.
But a 9-year-old Somali immigrant boy, whom we’re told is autistic, was caught rummaging through Ms. Hendrix’ diaper bag for a portion of applesauce. It was alleged, and likely, though apparently not proven given the jury’s verdict, that she dropped an N-bomb on the autistic Somali kid as she chased him and recovered the stolen food.
This occasioned objections from the Somalis in the park, including one who turned his camera on Shiloh Hendrix and followed her around. It’s fair to say she didn’t handle that well, flipping him the bird and dropping N-bombs on him as well, as you can see on the video above.
She was the only one charged with disturbing the peace, in two counts — one for supposedly using the N-word on the applesauce thief, and the other for dropping it on the cameraman — and the jury convicted her in the second incident. The judge levied a 90-day suspended jail sentence, strict probation, a $1,000 fine, and 200 hours of community service; Hendrix’s attorney, the exceptionally colorful Brian Karalus, immediately vowed to appeal the case on what he said were multiple grounds, in one of the all-time greatest post-trial rants delivered outside of the courthouse…
Brian Karalus, defense attorney for Shiloh Hendrix, shares just some of his thoughts on the case. https://t.co/bT3o1HgQv8 pic.twitter.com/srh7N8l6gB
— Tom Hennessy (@Tomhennessey69) July 24, 2026
The GiveSendGo account for Hendrix’s legal defense has now run near $900,000, following word that she’s been doxxed and repeatedly harassed after the incident; that’s nearly triple the $330,000 the NAACP raised for the boy’s family.
Karolus’ post-trial explosion centered on the “victim” of the conduct Hendrix was found guilty of — namely, dropping N-bombs on the cameraman, a Somali named Sharmake Beyle Omar. As Karolus noted, Omar had set up his own GoFundMe, which would point toward a juicy little scam.
We don’t know this to be the case, but the basic contours aren’t hard to spot: send a kid out to rob the white lady, and either she does nothing, and you make off with a little bit of swag, or she fights back. And if she fights back, you escalate the confrontation, a camera running, until you can get her to do something to incriminate herself — which Shiloh Hendrix did. Once that happens, you create a media incident you can monetize. Or, if she turns out to have any money, you extort or blackmail her using the video you have.
And when you find out who Sharmake Beyle Omar is, you realize that the scam is as likely as not to be the case here.
Why?
Per The Federalist’s reporting, in January 2022, a 16-year-old girl who had run away from foster care alleged that Omar and another man, Mohamed Hussein Omer, picked her up, brought her to a trailer, held her there for days, and sexually assaulted her — charges included third-degree criminal sexual conduct and use of coercion. The Federalist reports the Olmsted County Attorney’s Office dropped these charges “in the interest of justice” in March 2025 — about a month before the playground incident.
And Omar has raised some $40,000 from his own GoFundMe.
And while it’s usually poor form to make assumptions about people based on their heritage, let’s just say that it’s not unknown for Minnesota Somalis to exhibit dishonesty in pursuit of monetary gain. (RELATED: Keeping Up With the Congresswoman)
None of that made it into the evidence in the Hendrix case. Karolus and the judge, a woman named Christa Daly, clashed repeatedly over that refusal.
Karolus also vigorously objected to Daly’s refusal to include a jury instruction involving the First Amendment; namely, that … people do have the right to use words to express themselves…
Karolus also vigorously objected to Daly’s refusal to include a jury instruction involving the First Amendment; namely, that whether you think the racial slur Hendrix used is extremely bad manners or not, people do have the right to use words to express themselves, and that has to be taken into consideration in a legal case which could involve their physical freedom.
The question here isn’t whether Shiloh Hendrix was justified or upstanding in her actions. Hot debates generally don’t come from blameless conduct. At minimum, she’s an idiot for having said that word in front of somebody who was filming her.
But had she called Sharmake Beyle Omar an “asshole” or a “sonofabitch” while flashing her middle finger at him, there isn’t a person in America who would believe that to be plausible criminal conduct under the concept of disturbing the peace. The “fighting words” exemption to the First Amendment is, after all, exceptionally narrow in what’s fairly settled law.
No, it’s the presence of that magic word, a word which only carries magic when uttered by people vaguely resembling Shiloh Hendrix. And that, according to leftists like Judge Christa Daly, must be punishable at law. On the video which started this fiasco, Omar is also using the word.
Equal protection under the law either means everybody gets to use that word without judicial consequences, or nobody does.
Equal protection under the law either means everybody gets to use that word without judicial consequences, or nobody does. As the latter is impossible to enforce, it’s obviously the former which constitutes the correct outcome.
Which is absolutely not an endorsement of its use. We’ll be better off as a society if everyone agrees to leave off with the racial slurs.
And in this case, Sharmake Beyle Omar appears to be something a whole lot worse than the N-word.
It would be great if we don’t hear anything more about Shiloh Hendrix and her community relations exploits in Rochester, Minnesota. But it’s an excellent bet that this case will continue up the appellate process, and it might well impact our understanding of free speech in America.
Which doesn’t have as much to do with Shiloh Hendrix’s trashy playground behavior as it does with Christa Daly’s trashy performance as a judge.
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