A married couple who fled Haiti for Virginia achieved their American dream when they opened a variety market on the Eastern Shore, selling hard-to-find spices, sodas and rice to the region’s growing Haitian community.
When they added a Haitian food truck, people drove from an hour away for freshly cooked oxtail, fried plantains and marinated pork.
But Clemene Bastien and Theslet Benoir are now suing the town of Parksley, alleging that it forced their food truck to close. The couple also say a town council member cut the mobile kitchen’s water line and screamed, “Go back to your own country!”
“When we first opened, there were a lot of people” ordering food, Bastien said, speaking through an interpreter. “And the day after, there were a lot of people. And then … they started harassing us.”
Racism is so ugly and stupid. It is always wild people saying go back to your own country when they are not natively from here as well usually.
I’m from the US and have been told to go back to where I come from based on my name alone.
I’ve been told to go back to my country. Which is Hawai’i haha
I think they were referring to indigenous people. But you’re right, even 2nd generation immigrants who are American citizens get told to go back “where they came from”
In my state at least, native folks are sometimes mistaken for being hispanic based on the way they look… so I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens to them too on occasion. ×_×
Now that would be top notch irony. A very sad one, too
In my home country there are minorities, as I would guess in most other countries, and they quite often are told to go back to where they came from, despite literally being native to the country 🤦♂️
I’m dutch. We colonized anything darker than pale and stole everything we could and now people complain about multiculturalism.
Australia?
No, an Old World country, so most inhabitants have been living on the same territory for at least a millennium
This wasn’t about racism, this was about money. I think they would have done the same to anyone who was disrupting how income gets in their pockets. They just chose the racist path with them because of their skin color.
Crazy how they want to control the economy of the town. Probably the same people that preach about the free market and how amazing capitalism is… while it fills their pockets.
“Go back to your own country” isn’t something you yell if you aren’t racist.
I didn’t say racism wasn’t involved. I said the root cause wasn’t racism, it was money.