Responding to backlash over racist comments made five minutes ago, local mother Winnie Coleman claims that her past behavior doesn’t define who she is in the present.
“It was a different time,” said Coleman in a statement from the dinner table. “While I know it does not excuse my past behavior, this was long before I knew that my daughter would call me out on doing an offensive impression of someone from my work.”
The comments in question resurfaced after she finished making them.
“You have to understand, we weren’t so politically correct back then,” she continued. “All of the changes that our society has gone through over the past few decades, we just weren’t thinking about them back around 7:25 this evening.”
Coleman said she has undergone significant growth since the comments were made and has since spent her life dedicated to improving herself.
“People change over time. I barely even recognize the person I was five minutes ago,” she continued. “That was the old, ignorant me. I haven’t said anything offensive in the past three hundred seconds. Shouldn’t that count for something?”
Coleman followed up her statement saying that attempts to condemn people for past behavior were unfair and unproductive.
“If you dig back far enough, you’re going to find something that’s offensive to someone,” she said. “Am I going to have to answer for things I said half-an-hour ago? At lunch today? This morning to a coffee shop employee? When does it end?”
When asked if she’d been educating herself on anti-racism, Coleman pointed to the works of Ijeoma Oluo, Jane Elliott, and Ibram X. Kendi, all of which her children quoted at her in the span of five minutes.
“I’ve committed myself to consuming the works of these great educators from the mouths of my kids,” she said. “It’s been an incredibly enlightening and humbling few minutes.”
Coleman’s husband worries that the response to his wife’s past behavior may tarnish the good reputation she spent so many minutes building since.
“It was one joke, minutes ago,” he said. “Let’s not forget, this is also the woman who, since then, has passed me the potatoes and gotten up to let the dog out. Are we just going to throw all that away for one mistake?”
Coleman announced that she will be stepping away from her position at the dinner table to “reflect on her actions” and “open another bottle of wine.”
“Does anyone want some more?” she said. “I mean – I’m going to think long and hard about what I’ve done.”
Since this article’s publication, sources report Coleman has said five more problematic things.
