An official with the South Carolina Automobile Dealers Association was fired late last month after messages in which she allegedly used a racial slur toward a Black woman were posted online.
Fitness studio owner Tim Goodwin posted to Facebook on July 30 a text message conversation with former SCADA employee Meredith Little containing the N-word, which Goodwin said Little directed against his wife.
“It would be nice to think that stuff like this doesn’t happen because it’s 2021 but unfortunately that’s not the truth,” Goodwin said in his post, according to a Newsweek report. “We’ve come a long way but apparently we haven’t come far enough.”
Goodwin, who tagged the dealer association in his post, also claimed that Little used the derogatory term again while she was picking up her daughter from his studio in Columbia, S.C., and that she said her employer, the dealer association, would not care about her using offensive language because they don’t “hire black people anyway.”
The association responded a few hours later with a statement posted on its Facebook page.
“SCADA was made aware this morning of an incident involving one of our staff members, that took place on her personal time, unrelated to anything SCADA sanctioned,” the association’s post said. “SCADA would like to make it clear that we in no shape or fashion will tolerate any discriminatory behavior or language.”
Little is no longer employed by SCADA nor has any ties to it, the association said in that post.
The association didn’t respond to requests for comment from Automotive News.