A Georgia state lawmaker has walked back — then doubled back down on — a significant part of her viral claim that a white man told her to “go back where you came from” during a testy argument in a supermarket checkout lane, after the man denied the encounter unfolded the way she described.
The episode, hot on the heels of a national controversy over President Trump’s remarksdirected at four progressive Democrats, quickly made the rounds on social media.
Multiple news organizations on Sunday portrayed the episode as a plausible instance of racism using the lawmaker’s original claim, though she already had tried to clarify her accusations.
State Rep. Erica Thomas herself acknowledged in an interview with local media on Saturday that she did not recall exactly what the man, Eric Sparkes, had said to her.
“He said, ‘go back,’ you know, those types of words,” Thomas said on Saturday. “I don’t wanna say he said ‘go back to your country,’ or ‘go back to where you came from,’ but he was making those types of references, is what I remember.”
“So, you don’t remember exactly what he said?” a reporter pressed.
Thomas answered: “No, no, definitely not. But I know it was ‘go back,’ because I know I told him to ‘go back.'” – READ MORE