Shreveport Business Owner Makes Racially Charged Facebook Post
Back in 2017, social media across the state of Louisiana became familiar with the name of a Shreveport business owner. Michael Turney, owner of the Michael Turney Agency, became embroiled in a long-running social media fight. The fight started over an attack posted under the business page for Turney's agency, as he went after a photo shoot from a publication called Lola Magazine.
Through the online fight in 2017, Turney made multiple posts that hinted at race. Towards one woman he responded:
"Oh I m so glad you like my photo. The opinion of a Hispanic bus not is so important to me."
Mixed in with the attacks was a semi-apology, where Turney's agency said:
"Michael Turney Agency regrets that our post from last night was so misunderstood by so many people as an attack on this male model. In retrospect, I could have chosen my words more carefully,"
But in that same post, he continued to attack the male model who was involved in the photo shoot.
This week, Turney returned to the spotlight online, as he made some interesting comments on local news pages, and began commenting on random Facebook posts.
In a thread on the KEEL News Facebook page about the Confederate Monument at the Caddo Parish Courthouse, Turney commented:
"There have always been bad parts but the area I live and do business in along Line Avenue was so pretty. It was once a lot cleaner and a whole lot less diverse."
When Turney was asked in the thread of comments to clarify the "whole lot less diverse" quote, he did not clarify the statement, leaving it to appear that he referencing the racial makeup of the area.
Turney was then found commenting on a post from someone's personal page. The profile belongs to a local man named Cody Matthew, who posted about Turney, possibly in response to the comment made on the KEEL page, but that is unconfirmed. Turney posted a comment directed at Navarro, that Turney:
"does not want or need the approval of an ape from Bossier City"
The racial use of the term "ape" is what led to the backlash surrounding Roseanne Barr last year. She used the term in a Tweet directed at Valerie Jarrett, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama. During that backlash, the Washington Post described the use of the term:
"this racist trope has been used for centuries to condone slavery, segregation, even eugenics. The trope has its roots in 16th- and 17th-century European and American thought, when it was used to argue that Africans were subhuman, thereby justifying the enslavement and second-class citizen status of African peoples."