Interracial Couple Outraged after 'Go Back to Africa' Photo Was Left on Door

A White woman married to a Black man found a note on her front door that forced her to take action. The racist message prompted her to gather her community and take steps to curtail the spread of racism.

“Who says that in 2019?” asked Lisa Sproat, a White woman from Scottsdale, Arizona in response to a nasty note she received on her front door.

A MESSAGE ON HER FRONT DOOR

Sproat is an oncologist at the Mayo Clinic who is taking action after being greeted by a photo with a racist message in her home’s entrance. The black and white image taped to her door featured people in protest with one of them holding up a sign that read, “Go Back to Africa, Neg***s.”

“The community we live in talks about how tolerant we are … but in this gated community, we have hate crimes.”

Sproat, a mother of two White children is part of the statistics of interracial couples. She’s married to an African-American and they recently fostered two African-American kids they intend to adopt. She thinks this and the growing number of African-Americans in their neighborhood has led to the incident on Thursday which she reported to the police.

“Racism isn’t gone, and it is active and it is not latent, and we need to talk about it.”

“The community we live in talks about how tolerant we are … but in this gated community, we have hate crimes,” she said in a video released on Instagram under the username @sproatsaysnomore. She was speaking at a rally she organized outside the McDowell Mountain Ranch the day after the incident to draw attention to her cause. About 50 people participated.

“I will not be silent, and nobody should be silent when this type of discrimination and racism occurs, no matter what your race is."

Sproat is committed to putting an end to this. In fact, prior to the rally, she spoke at a community meeting on Thursday evening, the same day she received the disturbing note. She suggested to further educate the neighborhood about racism and to sponsor a community run to that would take a stand against it.

“Racism isn’t gone, and it is active and it is not latent, and we need to talk about it,” she said and created an Instagram account where people can discuss the issue and find ways to eradicate it.

For Sproat, the incident was a wake-up call. In fact, it succeeded in encouraging her to inspire others to take a stand. In her passionate speech at McDowell, she said,

“I will not be silent, and nobody should be silent when this type of discrimination and racism occurs, no matter what your race is. My take on all of this is that the person that did this wanted to do something hateful, and what they have done is actually inspired many people move forward to create change.”

Sproat is not alone in her cause. In fact, many Americans including celebrities have been victims of hate spawning from their inter-racial relationships. These include Tia Mowry and her husband, Cory Hardrict, Serena Williams and husband Alexis Ohanian, and model Ashley Graham and her husband, Justin Ervin. Each of these couples had humiliating experiences being bashed and looked down on because they chose love over their differences.