"The View" co-host Sunny Hostin returned from a summer break with a disturbing story about racist abuse she and some friends suffered on the Fourth of July.
Hostin said she and her friends rented a cottage at a historically black beach, as they have for years, but their evening was interrupted July 4 by a group of teens shouting racial slurs.
"We were there celebrating, and some kids, about 20 of them, ran in front of our home, and started yelling the N-word at us," Hostin said. "I have a video, of sort of the aftermath, when we realized they were targeting us."
Hostin can be heard confronting the teens, who denied shouting the slurs and blamed another group.
"We called the police, I filed a police report," she said. "The police were wonderful."
But she said the teens' language and actions were disturbing.
"They said, 'This is America, we are patriots, this is our holiday' -- things like that," Hostin said.
Hostin wryly observed that the teens had accidentally made an insightful point about Independence Day.
"You know, the African-American community does have a feeling, many of my friends, on July 4th, because African-Americans were not emancipated on July 4th," Hostin said. "They were not independent then."
Hostin said she later learned the teens had come from New Jersey and Long Island to the predominantly black beach specifically to harass African-American beachgoers, and she and her friends felt threatened.
"This area is supposed to be a safe haven, a place of pride," she said. "We found out later they targeted us specifically because of that community."
Host Whoopi Goldberg said the incident was a reminder that racism was alive and well.
"People come up and say, 'Well, you know, you all thought that once Obama came -- I say, 'No, I never thought that,'" Goldberg said. "Racism doesn't work that way. It's in pockets, it's in places. All you can do is face it when it hits you."
Co-host Meghan McCain said there was no such thing as a stereotypical racist.
"You're not talking about old people that grew up in a different time in the Deep South," she said. "You're talking about East Coast, young people. That's the part of it -- it's all awful."
Hostin said the incident escalated to physical damage.
"They broke my paddle board, they were kind of violent," she said.
Goldberg closed with a brief inspiring speech.
"We are Americans, we are all here together," Goldberg said. "You can yell the N-word as much as you want, because it's not going to change the fact that we're here. White people are here, yellow people are here -- this is our country, my friends. You can yell as much as you want and, if you don't know your homework, you kind of look a little stupid."
