Racism Is a Poison That Spreads Faster Than Wildfire

By Wayne T. Dowdy

On Friday night, November 6, 2026, at about 8:37 p.m., a Ring doorbell camera outside an apartment in Oxford, Mississippi, recorded three white female students walking past the door of an apartment shared by three Black students at the University of Mississippi. Two of them turned toward the camera, beat their chests, and made monkey noises and gestures at the door.

There was no dispute. There was no prior interaction. The whole thing lasted 13 seconds.

One of the young women who lives behind that door, Ole Miss freshman Jakiyra Metcalf, posted the clip to TikTok on Friday evening, about two hours after it was recorded, asking what her school had to say about it. She said the women in the video were her upstairs neighbors.

By Sunday, the video had passed 11.5 million views, according to The Daily Mississippian. By early Monday it had passed 12 million, according to ABC News. That same Sunday, the university answered. Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Shawnboda Mead wrote to the campus and called the conduct “deeply troubling, hurtful, and unacceptable.” The university called it racist, in plain words. Two offices are investigating: the Office of Conflict Resolution and Student Conduct, and the Office of Equal Opportunity and Regulatory Compliance. Staff reached out to the students who were targeted, and counseling and the university’s UMatter advocacy service were offered to them.

ABC World News Tonight reported on it too, on November 9 — the university had launched an investigation after two students made racially offensive gestures outside a Black student’s apartment, and the university condemned the video.

No discipline has been officially announced. The university will not disclose names or sanctions, citing the federal student privacy law, FERPA. The three women in the video have not been named by the university. No one has been arrested or charged, and there is no police report. This is a campus conduct matter, not a criminal one.

That is what happened. What happened next is what I want to talk about.

The wave

Eleven and a half million views in two days. That is not a conversation. That is a wave, and it carried everything with it: anger, demands, arguments, and a lot of people saying things they would never say to another person’s face.

The wave also carried harm of its own. The university confirmed that at least one student was wrongly named online as being involved, a young person who had nothing to do with what happened. The university also confirmed that no members of the sorority community were involved, after rumors online said otherwise. The Alpha Phi chapter at Ole Miss said the women in the video are not members of the sorority and have never been affiliated with it, and condemned racist conduct of any kind. So before the facts were even settled, innocent people were already getting hurt.

That is how it works. One act happens in a hallway in Oxford, and by the next morning thousands of people are involved in it. Some are angry at the students in the video. Some are angry at the people who posted it. Some are angry at the university. Some are angry at everybody. And every one of them is feeding it.

I am not going to feed it.

Personally, I prefer not to feed into the negativity generated from such events, and to not allow external events to control my thoughts and behavior. I have said this before and I will say it again:

👉 I cannot control people, places and things!

I cannot control what three students did outside a door in Oxford on a Friday night. I cannot control what eleven million strangers do with a video on a Saturday. I cannot control what the university decides, or what the news says, or what the next person types in a comment section. The only thing I can control is what I do with it. And what I am going to do is not let it control me.

When an incident like this occurs, regardless of why it happened, or who is to blame, the results are the same: people feed into it and generate more of the same types of behavior that was apparently behind the incident. That is the part nobody wants to look at. The anger that answers the anger looks just like the anger it is answering. The shouting that answers the shouting sounds just like the shouting it is shouting at. And the poison spreads anyway.

One act harms thousands

What happened at this university will lead to thousands of other people being harmed because of what those students did, regardless of the reason.

Start with the three young women behind that door. They are college freshmen. Their home is the place they are supposed to feel safe, and a camera on their own front door caught people mocking them where they live. That does not go away when the video stops playing. It stays with you. It changes how you walk down your own hallway.

Then their families. A mother had to watch a video of strangers making monkey noises at her daughter’s front door, then go on Facebook and demand answers from a university. No parent should have to do that.

Then the student who was wrongly named online. She did nothing, and her name was dragged through it anyway. That is a harm too, and it happened because people shared what they had not checked.

Then the whole campus, and every Black student at Ole Miss who watched that clip and wondered if that is how they are seen. The Black Student Union’s president, Demetrick M. Stringer Jr., said the video left Black students feeling “unwelcome and unsafe.” And every white student who had nothing to do with it and now has to carry the weight of it anyway.

Then the millions of people who watched it. Every one of them took a little of it home. That is how poison works. It does not stay where it started. It spreads faster than wildfire.

This is not the first time this has happened at Ole Miss. On May 2, 2024, during campus protests there, a white student named James “JP” Staples was filmed making the same monkey noises and gestures at a Black graduate student, Jaylin Smith. His fraternity, Phi Delta Theta, expelled him the next day. The White House called the behavior “undignified and racist.” The university opened a conduct investigation, and the outcome was never made public. Two years later, the same gestures showed up again outside a young woman’s front door. The faces change. The poison does not. It waits for the next open door, the next camera, the next chance to be passed along.

That is what racism across America looks like in 2026. It is not always a law or a policy or a speech. Sometimes it is thirteen seconds in a hallway. And thirteen seconds is enough, because the phones carry it everywhere, and everywhere it lands, it grows.

Do not get caught up in it

I am not writing this to pick a side. There are already plenty of people doing that, and it is not helping anybody. I am writing this to say what I have learned in my own life: the thing you feed is the thing that grows. Feed the anger, and you get more anger. Feed the hate, and you get more hate. Feed the poison, and it spreads.

So I am not feeding it. I will not let what happened in Oxford decide how I think, how I act, or how I treat the next person I meet. I will not let a video made by strangers control my thoughts and behavior. That is my choice, and it is the only one I get to make.

👉 Racism is a poison that spreads faster than wildfire. Don’t Get Caught Up In It, Regardless of the Side You Support!

It does not matter which side you are on. The poison does not check. It spreads to everybody it touches. The only way to stop it is to refuse to carry it any further. That starts with each one of us, right where we are, with the next thing we say and the next thing we share.

What is one thing you can do, starting today, to keep from spreading the poison?

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Wayne T. Dowdy wrote this post with AI assistance.

Sources

1. Mississippi Clarion Ledger, “Ole Miss investigating viral video showing racist gestures” (Nov. 9, 2026): https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/education/2026/11/09/ole-miss-investigating-students-after-racist-gestures-caught-on-ring-doorbell-video/92685628007/
2. New York Post, “Ring camera catches ‘white Ole Miss coeds’ making monkey noises outside black students’ apartment” (Nov. 8, 2026): https://nypost.com/2026/11/08/us-news/ring-camera-catches-white-ole-miss-coeds-making-monkey-noises-outside-black-students-apartment/
3. The States Journal, “Ole Miss Investigates Video of Racist Gestures at Student Apartment” (Nov. 9, 2026): https://thestatesjournal.com/articles/ole-miss-investigates-video-of-racist-gestures-at-student-apartment-a942c91b/
4. The Daily Mississippian, as reported in multiple outlets: the TikTok video passed 11.5 million views by Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026. (Direct article link not available; view count corroborated by the Clarion Ledger, New York Post, and The States Journal coverage.)
5. CBS News, “University of Mississippi investigating doorbell video” (Nov. 9, 2026), as cited in The States Journal. (Direct article link not available at time of writing.)
6. ABC World News Tonight with David Muir, Facebook Reel (Nov. 9, 2026): https://www.facebook.com/reel/2393828118020399/ — reports the university launched an investigation after two students made racially offensive gestures outside a Black student’s apartment, and that the university condemned the video. View count passed 12 million by early Monday, Nov. 9, per ABC News.
7. The ShadeRoom, “University of Mississippi Releases Statement After Ring Footage Shows Students Making Monkey Noises” (Nov. 9, 2026): https://theshaderoom.com/university-of-mississippi-releases-statement-ring-footage-students-making-monkey-noises-jakiyra-metcalf-black-neighbors-door/ — full text of Vice Chancellor Shawnboda Mead’s Nov. 8 campus letter, including the misidentification warning and that no members of the sorority community were involved.
8. MadameNoire, “Ole Miss Student Demands Action After 3 White Women Are Caught Making Monkey Noises Outside Her Dorm” (Nov. 9, 2026): https://madamenoire.com/1696518/ole-miss-student-demands-action-after-3-white-women-are-caught-making-monkey-noises-outside-her-dorm/3/ — Alpha Phi chapter statement denying any membership or affiliation.
9. EssentiallySports, “Ole Miss Condemns Bullying After Students’ Offensive Behavior Towards Football Fan” (Nov. 10, 2026): https://www.essentiallysports.com/ncaa-college-football-news-ole-miss-condemns-bullying-after-students-offensive-behavior-towards-football-fan/ — Black Student Union statement by President Demetrick M. Stringer Jr. (BSU’s original Instagram post not directly retrieved; cited via the Daily Mississippian).
10. Mississippi Free Press / Associated Press, “Congressman Praises Clip of Frat Students’ Monkey Gestures: ‘Ole Miss Taking Care of Business'” (May 6, 2024): https://www.mississippifreepress.org/congressman-praises-clip-of-frat-students-monkey-gestures-ole-miss-taking-care-of-business/ — May 2, 2024 precedent: James “JP” Staples, Phi Delta Theta expulsion, White House response.
11. Where Is The Buzz, “Ring Camera Catches White Women Making Monkey Noises Outside Black Ole Miss Students’ Apartment” (Nov. 7, 2026): https://whereisthebuzz.com/ring-camera-catches-white-women-making-monkey-noises-outside-black-ole-miss-students-apartment/ — earliest report; TikTok post went up Friday evening, about two hours after the video was recorded.