Atlanta Man's Racially-Charged Facebook Comments Go Viral

Credit: Sydney Shelton/Facebook

An Atlanta man was fired shortly after he and his friends made allegedly racist comments about a photo he took with a black child at his workplace, actions that spurred a social media backlash.

Gerod Roth, formerly of Polaris Marketing Group, was terminated on Sept. 29, about two weeks after making a Facebook post which included a picture of Roth with black coworker Sydney Shelton’s 3-year-old son Cayden, FOX 5 Atlanta says.

Several of the comments attached to the post were racist in nature; one called Roth a slave owner and others called Cayden ”Kunta Kinte” and ”Sambo,” FOX 5 reports. Roth, for his part, called Cayden “feral,” The Huffington Post says. He later told FOX 5 that his comment was not meant to be hurtful and said that Cayden was wandering around the office, and therefore “feral.”

The comments made by Roth and others caused a huge backlash on social media, with the #HisNameIsCayden campaign created by the boy’s mother being taken up by anti-racism activists on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets.

Polaris Marketing Group told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Roth’s firing was unrelated to the Facebook post, and said that the company only learned about the post on Oct. 2.

“We are above all of this nonsense that has been going on,” Shelton said on her personal Facebook page on Oct. 3. “Cayden and I truly appreciate all of the love that we have been shown in the last 24 hours. You guys warm my heart, more than words could ever express.”

“It breaks my heart that Sydney and her adorable son Cayden were subjected to such hateful, ignorant and despicable behavior. Cayden visits my office almost every afternoon after daycare, he’s sat at my dinner table and I consider him a part of the PMG family,” wrote Polaris’ president Michael Da Graca Pinto on Oct. 2.

“PMG has terminated the employee responsible and will ensure that none of the businesses that we associate with will ever do business with him again,” the president added.