A heartfelt gesture shared online has gone viral, triggering a hateful avalanche of racist comments.
High school students Madison Duke, 16, and Christian Hunter, 17, have been a couple for 11 months.
The two found Internet fame after posting a video on Twitter on Saturday, Dec. 9, showing her parents and her giving Hunter a car as a surprise early Christmas gift.
Duke wanted it to be a surprise early Christmas present and told Hunter they needed to make a pit stop on their way to a lunch date. The two went to a garage, with the gifted car inside.
The footage shows a surprised Hunter taking in the sight of the car with a big red bow on the hood.
“Merry Christmas,” Duke’s stepfather says in the video, and hands the young man the keys.
Overjoyed, the teen gives everybody a hug.
‘It’s yours, Chris!’ the girl’s mother said as she filmed his reaction. ‘Go check out your car! We can hug later!’
The clip went viral after Duke posted it on Saturday.
But they didn’t expect to see an outpouring of race-tinged hate among the 730 plus comments on the video.
Some commenters called it “disgusting,” “gross,” and “hideous.”
Duke herself said on her Twitter feed “More hate than love, which is surprising tbh and it’s disgusting.”
The backlash has been so severe, in fact, that national and international media have taken note.
Local television station NBC DFW interviewed the pair about the incident.
“Many people were saying I was destroying my lineage,” Duke told NBC DFW. “Every racist comment you could think of, it was there.”
While Duke and Hunter find the hurtful comments repugnant, they say they aren’t letting the negativity get to them.
And judging by the 36,000 plus likes on the video and counting, plenty of people find it wonderful.