VIDEO: Chick Fil-A CEO, Dan Cathy, says that every white person should get on their knees and “shine black people’s shoes” with a “sense of shame” and “embarrassment” for the racism they experienced

Chick Fil-A CEO, Dan Cathy, says that every white person should get on their knees and “shine black people’s shoes” with a “sense of shame” and “embarrassment” for the racism they experienced.

A three-year-old video showing Chick-fil-A’s boss shining the shoes of a black man during a plea for white people to fight racial injustice resurfaced this week amid a push by outraged conservatives to boycott the fast-food chain over its hiring of a diversity officer.

While it was intended to demonstrate a small act of redress for the historic injustices against the Black population—particularly through slavery and segregation in the United States—some argued the gesture played into the narrative of white guilt, a belief that white people bear collective responsibility for the racism of their ancestors.

The executive bent over and began shining Moore’s shoes.

“Whether they got tennis shoes or not, maybe they’ve got sandals, it really doesn’t matter,” said Cathy, who stepped down as CEO the following year and was replaced by his son, Andrew Truett Cathy.

“I invite folks to put some words to action, and if we need to find somebody who needs to have their shoes shined, we need to just go right on over and shine their shoes,” Cathy said Cathy.

The devout Christian — whose father founded the popular chain in Hapeville, Ga.in 1946 — then stood up and walked over toward Lecrae Moore, a Christian rapper who took part in the roundtable discussion at Passion City Church.

The executive bent over and began shining Moore’s shoes. The dad’s bold gesture came after several Chick-fil-A branches in Atlanta were smashed up during Black Lives Matter protests.

“We’ve had a dozen Chick-fil-A restaurants that have been vandalized in the past week, but my plea would be for the white people rather than point fingers at that kind of criminal effort would be to see the level of frustration and exasperation and almost the sense of hopelessness that exists among some of those activists within the African American community,” Cathy said.

Dan Cathy, head of the family-run fast food chain, was filmed making the gesture of contrition over racial tensions in the United States during a roundtable at Passion City Church in Atlanta, Georgia, in June 2020. At the time, the act was viewed as “bizarre.”

During the discussion, Cathy mentioned a story told to him by a friend about a church service in Texas, at which a young man shined the shoes of an older Black man because “he had been so gripped with conviction about the racism that was in that local community.”