News Americas, MIAMI, FL, Fri. May 25, 2018: By now, millions have viewed the anti-immigrant racist tirade of New York City lawyer, Aaron Schlossberg, at a Manhattan restaurant.
If you have not seen the video, the man later identified as Schlossberg, is seen angrily complaining to a restaurant employee at Fresh Kitchen, that “it’s America” and that “staff should be speaking English.” He then goes on to question the immigration status of workers and threatened to call ICE (the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agency to have the workers “kicked out of my country.”
“They have the balls to come here and live off of my money I pay for their welfare,” the man says on the video. “The least they could do is speak English.”
Rightfully so, many have protested Schlossberg, naming him and shaming him, getting him kicked out of his mid-town-office, holding a Latin party complete with Mariachi band in front of his apartment building and now calling for his disbarment.
But the real culprit who has emboldened the racists to come out from under their rocks and feel emboldened to voice what’s truly in their hearts, is boldly getting away with making similar pronouncements from the White House.
Last week, the US’ Hater-In-Chief lashed out at undocumented immigrants during a White House meeting, branding them “animals.”
The President of the United States of America had the audacity to boldly make the pronouncements as the cameras rolled in the Cabinet Room meeting that reporters were allowed to document. Of course, it is hardly the first time that Trump has used such racist rhetoric to scapegoat immigrants and fan the flames of bigotry; remember he began his campaign for the office on this platform.
Is it little wonder that there has been a rash in anti-immigrant and racial profiling across the country with so many racists now empowered and emboldened to call 911 on people of color for doing nothing but going about their daily lives?
Take the incident in California where Bob Marley’s granddaughter and her friends had the police called on them simply because they did not wave back to a white woman living next to the AirBnB they were staying, which led her to assume they were thieves. Or the latest Starbucks incident in LA, where a barista wrote the racist term “beaner” on the coffee cup of a Hispanic immigrant.
And then there are the Republicans nuts running for office across the US who are taking the Trump model and barefacedly attacking immigrants in ads and on the campaign trail.
Take Michael Williams, who is running for governor of Georgia and is doing so with a “Deportation Bus” with the words: “FOLLOW ME TO MEXICO.”
In a campaign ad and a press release unveiling the bus, Williams said he aims to have every city in Georgia participate in 287(g), the federal program that allows local police and sheriffs to cooperate with the feds on immigration enforcement.
“We are going to implement my 287(g) deportation plan. That’s going to fill this bus with illegals, to send them back to where they came from.” Williams says.
Little wonder that the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented 954 hate groups in the US so far and reiterated that Trump’s tweets correlate with hate crimes spike.
The crazy has been unleashed and now what we are seeing is many trying to out-crazy each other in their bid to “Make America White Again.”
Immigrants and all people of color must combine their energies, issues and resources in a necessary bid to save this country from racists, xenophobes and zealots. The same way we have shamed and humiliated Schlossberg, is the way we must fight back against the racists raising their heads, including the top dog in the White House.
But most importantly, help elect a Tsunami of Liberal, like-minded representatives’ country wide, come November.
The writer is CMO at Hard Beat Communications, Inc. which owns the brands: NewsAmericasNow, CaribPRWire and InvestCaribbeanNow.
