In Minnesota, Words Matter More Than Rape

The N-word is very much the ultimate trigger-word right now. Despite this being a full article about this precise epithet, I am unable to easily use it. Just to be safe from malicious prosecution or algorithmic suppression, even free speech websites like the Daily Sceptic will generally use asterisks to obscure it as ‘n****r’, even though you all know perfectly well what full word the typography indicates. It’s not ‘number’ or ‘nectar’ (‘neuter’ might be quite appropriate, though).

But the term N-Word is undoubtedly immensely prim and annoying. So, throughout, I shall instead adopt the novel obfuscatory tactic of substituting in an alternative word beginning with a capitalised N for each individual usage. I estimate the closest word to the actual N-word we can get away with using here is ‘Nigerian’; then this site won’t be able to fall foul of the true obscene N-Word in this world, that is NewsGuard.

If only a young white lady over in Minnesota named Shiloh Hendrix had thought of this tactic herself, she might not have ended up being senselessly prosecuted recently. Hendrix’s case was big news in America, much less so over here in Britain. Even many free speech advocates appear nervous of defending an angry white woman’s right to call a black man a Nigerian on camera – despite the severely mitigating fact that said black man had specifically asked her to do so, a detail omitted from what little highly muted UK coverage of the case there was.

Triggers with attitude

The Democrat-controlled US state of Minnesota has, since the 1990s, become the American Left’s chosen dumping ground for imported Somalis, with over 100,000 now living there. An abnormally large number of local Somali children have been diagnosed with forms of mental disability, probably because this allows their parents to claim free welfare money in acts of fraud; one in 16 Somali four year-olds in the state supposedly have autism, for example, compared to one in 53 non-Somalis.

On April 28th last year, one of these purportedly disabled children, an unnamed eight year-old boy, was running riot in a playground in the town of Rochester, rummaging around in the bag of a nearby white mother, Shiloh Hendrix, who was there with her 18 month-old son. Hendrix began chasing after him, not knowing what he had stolen from her: as it transpired, it was just an apple-sauce sachet, but that’s hardly the point. Whilst she did so, the boy’s father, Shire Jimali, declared that Hendrix had called his son a Nigerian.

Another watching nearby Somali immigrant, Sharmake Omar, approached Shiloh wielding his phone camera in her direction, demanding to know if she had called the child a Nigerian (footage here – warning, it contains the Nigerian-word). She replied that she had, as the boy had been acting like one, whilst sticking her tongue out at her harasser. Omar followed her around and kept on demanding Hendrix dare to repeat the slur on camera, if she had “the balls… so that the world can see”. Eventually, she did so, saying “Fuck you, Nigerian. Nigerian, Nigerian, Nigerian!” before walking away, her infant son in her arms, as Omar accused her of “a hate-speech”, threatening that “OK, we’ll see about that, what the Internet has to say about you.”

Of less interest than what “the Internet” had to say about Hendrix was what the Minnesota justice system had to say about her. Brought to trial late last month, Hendrix was found guilty on one count of ‘disorderly conduct’ (against Sharmake Omar) and not guilty on a second one (against the child). As punishment, she was fined $1,000 and ordered to complete 200 hours of community service, besides receiving a 90-day jail sentence stayed during probation. All for calling a Nigerian a Nigerian, after he had explicitly asked her to call him a Nigerian.

Them’s fighting words!

The First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to free speech, should have meant Hendrix was free to call Omar a Nigerian, particularly given that he had essentially just goaded and entrapped her into doing so. In the opinion of the American free speech association FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression):

The video merely shows a heated verbal exchange between Hendrix and Omar. No threats. No violence. Nothing beyond words. However much offence they caused, that simply does not justify the Government imprisoning, fining or otherwise punishing the speaker. A public argument does not become a crime because a speaker used a particular word.

There is an obscure exception to the First Amendment called “fighting words”, in which, technically, someone can be convicted of deliberately provoking a violent, heat-of-the-moment reaction from others by deliberately uttering something incredibly offensive, like insulting a dead man to his family’s face at his own funeral.

Prosecutions under this notion are rarely used, though, as it is clearly open to abuse, with an objective violent reaction being excused and a mere subjective verbal insult being punished: imagine if you get punched in the face with a brick by a man in a dress after deliberately misgendering him, and you get prison time and he doesn’t. However, the judge in Hendrix’s trial instructed jurors to resurrect this long-forgotten legal principle, despite the facts that:

• It hasn’t been successfully used for a prosecution since 1942
• It was Sharmake Omar doing the initial verbal provoking
• No violence was at any point actually provoked anyway

Ah, but in current Left-wing parlance, words are violence, aren’t they, so perhaps this was why the judge felt able to direct the jury down this particular route? Sentencing being complete, critics soon looked up the record of the presiding judge, Christa Daly, finding that, for her, words did indeed seem to be worse than certain other crimes. In 2023, for example, she had sentenced a man discovered with sexual abuse images of minors aged six to eight in his possession, something carrying a maximum 10-year sentence and a $10,000 fine under Minnesota law. Judge Daly let him off with probation and 100 days of community service – fully half the time Shiloh Hendrix now has to spend painting fences and picking up dog-dirt just for using a bad word.

The Narcissus of the Trigger

When it comes to Sharmake Omar himself, the two-tier standards of the Minnesota justice system become even more apparent. In April 2020, in cahoots with another Somali, Faruq Ali Omar (no relation), he was apprehended by police after throwing a rock at a car before assaulting the 16 year-old driver. When a bystander tried to intervene, Sharmake’s accomplice threatened him with a knife.

Despite this clearly being a full-blown assault, Sharmake Omar was allowed to plead guilty to the precise same charges of ‘disorderly conduct’ Shiloh Hendrix faced, walking away with only a $200 fine, as opposed to the $1,000 one Hendrix received. Evidently, calling a man a Nigerian is five times worse than beating someone up – so Shiloh would have been much better advised to have smashed her provoker in the face; it would have been cheaper. Sharmake’s 2020 accomplice, meanwhile, got off even lighter, his charges being charitably dropped “in the interest of justice”.

It gets even worse. In 2022, Sharmake Omar was arrested under suspicion of raping a 16 year-old girl – or, technically, “penetration of a person under 18-year-old”, “use of coercion” and “non-consensual penetration” – alongside yet another Somali with a similar surname, Mohamed Hussein Omer (previously known to the police for other things). The two alleged rapists should actually have been standing trial when Omar with an ‘a’ filmed Shiloh Hendrix calling him a Nigerian, but in March 2025 all allegations against the pair were dropped, once more “in the interest of justice”.

The reported victim alleged she had fled from her Minnesota foster home and met Omer with an ‘e’ at a petrol station, where he offered her a bed for the night. Omer and Omar then proceeded to hold the girl captive inside their shared trailer, she testified, repeatedly raping her and forcing her to perform sex acts, also stealing her shoes so she could not escape. The girl said she stole a pair of rain boots in her turn and made her getaway. Subsequently examined by medics, she reportedly showed signs of sexual trauma, dehydration, sleep deprivation and foot pain.

Sharmake Omar denies any of this happened. Despite the seriousness of the charges, however, prosecutors allegedly delayed so long in pressing charges – over three years – that the complainant grew too old to remain in foster care, left her previous accommodation and simply disappeared, thus giving them the excuse to drop the case against Omer and Omar.

Steven Tucker is a journalist and the author of over 10 books.