Saturday, May 19, 2018

What Is Wrong With People!!!!!

A lawyer with advertising in Manhattan the other day decided he was going to decide what language the people who work at a Midtown restaurant should speak and not only berated the people who were speaking Spanish, suggested they were on welfare and in the country illegally.  He threatened to call Immigration Enforcement. Seriously, who does that?  Sadly it is not the first time he suggested that he was going to get someone kicked out of the country.  He did it to a young man from Boston who was in the city.  That video surfaced as well.  The irony of all this is that the lawyer has a practices that advertises 4 languages that they speak, including Spanish and oh he is Jewish.  So there is a good bet that at some point in his family history someone was persecuted for being a little different.  Also likely that if his family has Eastern European ties the first generation spoke Yiddish all the time, in New York, as they kept part of their culture while assimilating into America.  I have no real reference point to this kind of hate and bigotry aimed at strangers, just because they spoke a different language.  To publicly become hostile is just so outside what I would expect from a person who lives, works or visits Manhattan over a foreign language.  I wish there was more to the story to help me understand his reaction.  Maybe there is, but I don't know it.  What I do know is that the immediate reaction to him has been devastating.  He is an outcast on the street, being followed by both reporters and citizens.  He lost his lease for his office, which I am sure will be a huge hardship.  A mariachi band is playing outside of his apartment and he is up on ethics violations for his public antics with New York Bar.  All that said, he is not the first or the last person this week to do something like this.  Social media has made these stories find people and there seems to be an epidemic of this kind of behavior.  This comes on the heels of a series of stories of white people calling the police on people of color they encountered in their walking around life.  You know a new neighbor moving in is black, first reaction call a cop, black family barbecuing in park--call a cop, AirBnB check out--call a cop.  Is it because these people are scared that a black person in their immediate surrounding doesn't belong so must be up to no good?  If so that is a sad state of affairs.  It does tell you that there is a sense of white privilege in the world of some of these people.  A white girl falls asleep in the common room of a dorm, nothing happens, a black girl,--call the cops.  We have to stop. 

But here is the thing.  This kind of stranger attack without cause is not just for bigots over race or culture.  We heard this week that employees of Cheesecake Factory accosted a young black man for wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat.  They even threatened violence.  The restaurant fired two of the employees involved and questions some of the story, in the end, people working at a public establishment threatened and verbally attacked a man for his political views that he was broadcasting in a not threatening and passive way.  That is simply wrong. 

Have we gotten to the point in our culture where this is going to be the new normal.  That is you go out in public more people will be comfortable not simply making a passing comment, that happens all the time, but being verbally assaulted by a total stranger because of your accent, dress, language you choose to speak or simply being of a color that makes someone uncomfortable?  That is not the America I want to live in and neither should you. 

I will say that recently a man attacked a woman for wearing a Niqab in a coffee place.  He made fun of her and then told her he hates her religion.  More of the same kind of nonsense that started because he wanted to make a snarky remark about her dress.  Well the people in the coffee shop were not having it and told him so, in words I won't use here, but the coffee shop also refused to serve him.  He was forced to leave. 

These toxic people are everywhere it seems and they are driving down the discourse in our country.  But there are more of us than there are of them.  Don't let this be where we are going?  This is not reacting to an overt statement or action, these examples, and many more, are attacks on a person for their mere existence.  You don't have to like anyone and if you have a bigotry toward a race, culture, religion etc, you are entitled to have that.  But when you single out people in public because of it, often based on ignorance, you are crossing a line we shouldn't cross.  If we allow that to go unchallenged then we are giving the person a lift over that line.  That we can't do.   

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