There’s a particular cruelty to racism in 2026: it rarely arrives announcing itself. It seeps into the everyday. A comment in a queue. A “joke” at work. A stare that lingers too long. A decision made behind a desk that quietly closes a door.
And increasingly, it arrives on a screen.
For Black communities, racism is not an abstract debate. It is the familiar weight of being watched, doubted, singled out, underestimated, over-policed, and then told to “move on” when you name it. It is the daily tax of having to calculate safety, respectability, and risk, sometimes in the same breath.
There is another uncomfortable truth we must say plainly: anti-Black racism is not only perpetrated by white people. It can come from other ethnic minority groups too. That is not an invitation to blame-shift. It is a demand for honesty. Prejudice travels. It is inherited, repeated, and reinforced. And when it targets Black people, the effect is the same: dehumanisation.
Across the Atlantic, the danger is amplified by something uniquely American: the global export of culture. The United States doesn’t just produce entertainment, it produces tone. And too often, anti-Black slurs and stereotypes are treated as “realism,” “edge,” or “shock value” in mainstream culture, until language that should stop a room becomes background noise. When a slur is heard often enough in films, in music clips, in viral edits, it becomes familiar. And once it becomes familiar, some people start to believe it is available for them to use.
Online platforms then pour petrol on that familiarity. Algorithms reward outrage. Rage becomes engagement. Engagement becomes reach. And reach becomes permission. Hatred doesn’t simply spread in that ecosystem, it gets trained. People learn what they can say, how far they can go, and what they can get away with.
That is what makes the videos now circulating so disturbing.
The Thames Gazette has authenticated the footage and identifies the speaker as Mr Sukhbinder (“Suky”) Khangura, a hotel owner in Arizona, USA. The Gazette understands that Mr Khangura was born and raised in Birmingham, West Midlands, before emigrating to the United States, and is now settled in the Tucson area.
In the recordings, Mr Khangura uses the N-word and makes a violent, dehumanising statement about Black people. The tone matters. This is not framed as comedy. It is not delivered as satire. It is expressed with seriousness and apparent hostility. Not once, but in two separate videos, the language is used openly and without hesitation, showing the intensity of feeling behind it. The videos also describe a workplace-related context involving employees who have been dismissed, which makes the implications even more severe.
(WARNING – contains racist language): https://x.com/bigjoe860/status/2011756946911871027?s=46&t=4vwpXtJwnHXu1xzknK-kbw
It is worth adding context here, because this language sits in the same lineage as the notorious recordings involving Detective Mark Fuhrman in the O.J. Simpson era, where the use of a racial slur revealed more than prejudice, it revealed a mindset. In Mr Khangura’s case, the recording is worse: the slur is paired with an explicit sentiment that celebrates Black death. That is hatred, plain and unfiltered, and no serious brand should allow its logo to sit above it.
The Gazette further understands and reports that Mr Khangura is the owner of the following branded hotel properties in Arizona:
- Fairfield Inn and Suites (Marriott) in Oro Valley, Arizona.
- Marriott Residence Inn Phoenix Mesa-East in Mesa, Arizona.
- Holiday Inn Tucson Mall in Tucson, Arizona.
This matters because racism expressed by someone with hiring and firing power is not “just speech.” It is pressure. The workplace is not a debating society. It is where people earn their living. When racial abuse enters that space, it becomes coercion by atmosphere, punishment by humiliation, and intimidation by implication. It tells Black workers that they are not safe. It tells them that dignity is conditional. It tells them that respect can be switched off the moment a manager decides they are disposable.
And that is precisely why this is not only a story about one man’s alleged prejudice. It is a story about corporate responsibility.
Hospitality brands often emphasise that many hotels operate under franchise agreements. That may be true, but franchise is not a moral shield. It is a commercial relationship. If global brands can dictate standards for signage, service, loyalty schemes, and revenue systems, they can dictate standards for human dignity too. “We don’t own the building” cannot mean “we don’t care what happens inside it.”
The public has already seen what it looks like when a brand decides to enforce its standards quickly. In early January 2026, Hilton terminated a franchise agreement with an independently operated Hampton Inn in Lakeville, Minnesota after a discrimination controversy, removing the property from its systems and ending its right to trade under the Hilton flag. Whatever people think about the politics that surrounded that case, the corporate reality is clear: a major hotel chain can act fast when it wants to, and it can make a franchisee’s actions matter.
And this is not unique to Hilton. In 2017, Dairy Queen terminated the franchise rights of a store owner in Zion, Illinois after the owner was accused of hurling racial slurs at a customer and her children during an argument. Corporate action followed swiftly: the relationship was ended and the store closed, demonstrating again that a franchisor can intervene decisively when racism becomes linked to the brand in public.
There are also cases where discrimination becomes so embedded it triggers contractual consequences at the highest level, not merely staff discipline. In a U.S. court dispute involving a franchise licence in the transportation sector, the franchisor terminated the agreement after the franchisee was found liable for punitive damages connected to a racially hostile work environment. The case illustrates a key point: when racism is not simply an allegation but is tied to proven harm and serious liability, franchisors often treat it as a fundamental breach that endangers the entire system.
These examples matter because they remove the last refuge of corporate excuses. The whole point of a franchise model is consistency and control. You cannot enforce uniformity in the guest experience and then plead powerlessness when racism takes place under your logo. If a brand can enforce what goes on a wall, it can enforce what cannot come out of an owner’s mouth.
Discrimination in any form should be opposed. Yet too often, anti-Black racism is treated as uniquely tolerable, uniquely survivable, something that can be managed with a statement and a shrug. That has to end.
We have seen that major brands can act quickly when standards are breached and reputational risk rises. The public has watched corporations distance themselves, terminate relationships, and move decisively when the controversy is deemed damaging enough. The test is whether those same brands will show the same urgency when the discrimination is anti-Black racism, expressed in the open, in a workplace context, by an individual alleged to hold power over staff.
Some will try to reframe consequences as “cancel culture.” Others will claim that holding people to account is an attack on free speech. But consequences are not censorship. A corporation choosing not to licence its name to conduct that breaches standards is not a government gag order. It is a company refusing to launder hate through a logo.
This is not a philosophical parlour game. It is safety. It is dignity. It is whether Black people are expected to work, live, and move through the world while absorbing abuse as the price of existing.
The most alarming feature of these videos is not only what is said, but the confidence with which it is said. The sense that being recorded is not a deterrent. The assumption that consequences can be outwaited. That is what must be broken.
The message has to be clear and strong: this will not be tolerated.
If society has become numb, corporate action is one of the few forces capable of restoring feeling. Not just statements. Not just “we take this seriously.” Real investigations. Clear thresholds. Transparent outcomes. And if standards are breached, decisive action that demonstrates one principle: hate is not a private quirk. It is a public threat.
Because when racism becomes casual, it becomes contagious.
And when racism becomes profitable, it becomes policy.
