This travel influencer saw a man's racist texts about her. Why she spoke up and made him feel 'uncomfortable.'

When Taila Rouse boarded her flight to Atlanta, Ga., last week, she was still buzzing with excitement from her weeklong stay in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where she had just attended a conference for women who travel.

"I had the best time. I connected with so many women in the travel space, and just felt really, really inspired," Rouse tells Yahoo Life.

In the air, her mood soured when she saw the man in the middle seat next to her sending and receiving racist texts about her and others on the plane.

"I was not trying to look at his phone, it was just something that I happened to see," says Rouse. “When I glanced down at his phone, the first thing that kind of caught my eye was him saying to someone else, 'I'm willing to bet money that the big Black woman next to you is going to be scared and grabbing onto you the whole flight.” Her seatmate replied that he "was sitting next to one too," which Rouse assumes was about her.

After seeing the first message, Rouse, who describes herself as a digital nomad, says she didn't feel particularly offended but it did encourage her to continue reading. Rouse recorded some of the exchange, with two — "Hopefully, the airlines will continue to raise prices and weed out these people" and that "Ryan is also stuck sitting next to a big Black woman” — included in a video that Rouse posted to TikTok. As the group conversation continued, with multiple prejudicial perspectives included, she started to feel like she was going to explode.

She debated whether or not she would say something to him, as she wasn't sure if it was her place since the words were not spoken directly to her. "I went back and forth with myself for a while, but I was fuming," she remembers.

Eventually, Rouse spoke up. "I wasn't gonna say anything. But I decided I want you to feel as uncomfortable as I do. And I want you to know that I saw your text messages and think you're disgusting," she told the man, which she recorded and shared to TikTok, where she has a a following of nearly 48,000.

The man responded by asking Rouse, "What text messages?" to which she replied, "You know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not going to repeat it."

She did go on to call out some of the specifics she read, including the message suggesting higher airfare prices would weed out Black travelers and concluded by telling him he was only saying sorry because she caught him.

She also says she "didn't articulate myself as well as I thought I [would]," but is still glad she said something.

The man did apologize, and Rouse says he seemed "embarrassed" and proceeded to avoid eye contact with her for the rest of the four-hour flight.

In confronting him, Rouse says she was nervous and "felt like I was going to throw up." She also had "no idea" how the man would react but wouldn't classify her nerves as fear; explaining their location made her feel a bit safer in the interaction.

"I can't say I would have made the same decision if we were sitting next to each other on the subway, or somewhere that I didn't feel as protected. Him and I both have to get our bags and are going through two security checkpoints," she says.

She initially posted the videos to TikTok and later on Instagram after deciding the experience was worth bringing awareness to, especially with her platform in the travel space.

"It was crazy to me that I was in a situation where I experienced or was even involved in a surrounding where there was racism," she says. As a travel content creator, Rouse knows the threat of bigotry is omnipresent, but she was startled to experience it so close to home.

"Travel [isn't] created equal for everyone. And I think that the identities that we have influence the way the world sees us. So it was insane for me to already have that feeling. But to be in that situation with someone from my own home country. And in a day and time where people try to convince us that there isn't any racism in 2023 — there could be someone that feels this way, literally sitting right next to you," she says.

After she posted the videos, she was bombarded with comments telling her she had no right to read his text or share the videos online.

But Rouse believes if he was that concerned with privacy, the text shouldn't have been so visible in a public setting.

She was also careful not to include his face as she did not want the man to be doxxed or identified, which she feels negates claims she was "just doing this for clout."

"Just because I didn't post his face on the internet doesn't mean I don't have it. If I was doing this for clout or attention in that manner, then I would have been one of those people that reveal his face and had the internet go wild, looking for his job and things like that," she says.

But according to Rouse, the vast majority of comments were supportive, and many users shared that they were inspired by her to call out racist encounters they may come across in their own lives.

And while she appreciates the sentiment, Rouse says she took a calculated risk and wouldn't recommend her approach for every situation.

"I wouldn't encourage people to necessarily make this decision in situations that would be unsafe for them," she says.

She also doesn't want her flight experience to deter others from traveling.

"I truly believe travel is the ultimate teacher, even when you aren't prepared for the lesson."

Wellness, parenting, body image and more: Get to know the who behind the hoo with Yahoo Life's newsletter. Sign up here.