Mom Shocked By Racist Sample Graduation Announcement She Found On Shutterfly
NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Trina McWhorter was on Shutterfly Tuesday designing an invite to her daughter's graduation party, when she clicked on a particular design.
"I started to read it," she recalls.
In small print, below pictures of a young African-American model, the sample invite listed a fictitious name "Amelia Jane Henderson" followed by details for a fictitious event including its location.
"I saw 'The Coons' Home, 15 Burning Tree Court' And I'm like, 'the Coons' home?'," said McWhorter. "I was furious."
She e-mailed the company this morning and enlisted her family to try to get its attention.
"I said, 'Hey, help me out. Post this on your social media sites – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, whatever – and let's see if we can get them to take this down because it's racist," she said.
Her sister-in-law quickly got a response on Facebook.
"We apologize and are removing it from our site as quickly as possible," the company wrote her.
Hours later, though, CBS11 found it still visible on the website and reached out.
Within minutes it was gone.
A company spokesperson wrote, "We apologize for this design as it is not consistent with our company's values. Due to caching issues, the design was still visible on certain devices after being removed from the site. We have been assured that the issue has been resolved and we are currently investigating the matter."
McWhorter says she's hooping whoever posted the racial slur loses their job and that the company better screens what appears on its site.
She wasn't planning on leading a crusade today, but she's glad she saw results.
"I'm just happy a lot of people gave it attention and got something done," she said.
