Rapper will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas apparently had a heated exchange with a flight attendant on Qantas air on his way to Brisbane, Australia. A flight attendant asked him to take off his noise-cancelling headphones during flight announcements. He allegedly refused and a verbal altercation ensued. Brisbane Police were called to meet him as he deplaned. Once off the plane, the rapper tweeted about the incident and named the flight attendant by name for his 12.8 million followers to attack.

In his first tweet, before naming her said, “I don’t want to believe she racist. But she has clearly aimed all her frustrations only at the people of colour.” However, will.i.am contradicted his initial statement in his next tweet naming her by name and calling her “#RacistFlightattendant”

Qantas Airlines shot back in a statement saying, “There was a misunderstanding on board, which seems to have been exacerbated by will.i.am wearing noise cancelling headphones and not being able to hear instructions from crew. We completely reject the suggestion this had anything to do with race. We’ll be following up with will.i.am and wish him well for the rest of the tour.”

Many social media users were understandably outraged at the rapper for outing a private person and exposing her to online abuse from 12+ million will.i.am followers. Peter Ford, an Austrailian and New Zealand entertainment reporter asked the rapper directly why he would subject this woman to that level of online “intimidation and abuse”.

After the public shaming of a private person doing her job, the rapper was stunned and upset that people were attacking the flight attendant on twitter calling her all sorts of vile names. He said he does not support abuse and attacks… when they come from people other than him apparently.