TikToker Kat Clark apologizes for ‘offensive’ comment about Jewish people

An A🌌ustralian mother-of-two and TikToker has apologized after comments she made in a video during a recent trip to New 🧔York offended Jewish viewers.

Kat Clark, who has a following o💃f 3.1 million on the video-sharing platform,  of her family’s time in New York City, including footage of a group of Hasidic Jewish m🔥en wearing a shtreimel (a round fur hat).

“Why are so many people wearing these wigs?” Clark said over ꦦthe cliꦉp.

A number of viewers were swift to point out that they were🎉n’t wigs at all – with some going as far as to label Clark’s observation “ignorant” and “offensive”🐻.

“This just feels like ܫrich people ‘experiencing’ the everyday and it’s giving me a not great vibe,” one commented.

“She disrespected the enti✱re borough from start to finish … Do you really think this is an appropriate way to talk about a community that you visiting as a tourist?” wrote another.

“This is so so so tone deaf omg,” a third said, while another person declared that Clark’s video “misse🔯d the mark”.

Clark acknowledged,  uploaded on the weekend, that “one of my vlogs I posted whilඣe in New York has really upset people and that’s what I want to talk to you about”.

“I’m sitting in New York airport and I post the vlog. And I always like to ꧅stay live on my vlog for the first 10 minutes to make sure that everything is going all good. And everything was sweet, so we jumped on the plane to LA, and that was a six-hour flight,” she s🌳aid.

“On the plane, we actually had Wi-Fi … So I jumped on my Instagram Story and I put up🥂 a question box for people to ask me questions, and it was all going well, and then I got this question that said, ‘If I ever see you walking the streets of New Y♏ork, I’m [going to] beat your ass like your ex [did]’. And I was like, ‘What? What have I done?’”

Clark, who ha☂s been candid about her experience as a survivor of domestic violence, added that the minute her family landed in LA, she checked her TikTok – where “so many people … were getting upset by my question [about the ‘wiꦅgs’], and accusing me of lying, saying that I had seen a shtreimel before”.

“I’m here to tell you, I have never seen a ♛shtreimel before. I’ve lived in Australia my whole life – I’ve lived in Brisbane, Cairns, Thursday Island and now the Gold Coast, and I have never seen anyone walking the streets wearing a shtreimel.

“So when I saw that in New York, ♚it was a new experience for me and I was making an observation and asking a question about why people were wearing it.”

Clark wrote a comment u♔nder the vlog clarifying that she’d since been informed of what a shtreimel was, but then “things only got worse from there”.

“People were then getting angry at me for saying [elsewhe🥃re in the vlog] 🅠‘dodgy pizza place’, for treating New York like a zoo, and the comments were just filled with so much negativity,” she said.

“If it isn’t obvious, I have no idea what I’m doing. I am learning as I go. I do know, though, if I have offended anyone, I owe them an apology, and that’s what I want t🌞o do today.

“So firstly, I want to say sorry to anyone that was offended by my question – that was🌸n’t my intention. I was just making an observation, and I truly didn’t know what it was. And I am sorry if it offended you.

“Should I have done more research on꧃ the place I was visiting? Absolutely, and I’m so๊rry I didn’t.”