A customer at a Wal-Mart in Irving, Texas, saw fit to casually share his racist views about Hispanic people (who he referred to as “foreigners”) with a female Hispanic employee trying to help him.
The employee, an immigrant from El Salvador who became a U.S. Citizen 20 years ago, felt it necessary to take her phone and record a racist tirade from a white male customer being directed at her and an African-American customer. In the video, the man can be heard telling the employee that people like her need to “go to your own countries” and fix their problems there.
“It has hurt me a lot because we are working people. We pay our taxes. We have children who study in college,” said Adela, who spoke on the condition that only her first name be used because she is concerned for her well-being.
Adela, who works in Wal-Mart’s optical center would not share the identity of the man in the video who came up to her counter complaining that he couldn’t see will with the glasses he purchased at another store. When Adela informed him that he would have to go back and see his optometrist to check his prescription, the man demanded that she get a white employee to assist him.
You’re being racist,” Adela said she told him.
The employee then went to get her supervisor (who was white). However, she was busy on a conference call. When she returned to the counter, Adela started recording the rest of her interaction with the racist customer after he complained about a black woman in a wheelchair.
“Look at that, who do you think pays her hospital bills?” the man says on the video.
“I don’t know, you can ask her,” Adela says.
“I do,” he says pointing at himself. “I pay her hospital bills. She’s a foreigner. She came over here. She got sick and fat and obese, and she can’t do anything. She can’t work,” he says. “But I have to pay her bills. See what I mean? Am I fat and obese? I go to work every day. I pay taxes.”
Adela responds: “OK, me, too. I pay my own taxes, too.”
“All of these foreigners are living off of us good working white people. Yes, I’m just telling you the truth,” he says, laughing. “It’s all right. I know you ain’t leaving. I know you’re here to stay. Y’all should go to your own countries and fix up your own countries.”
“OK, sir, I don’t want to hear that anymore. That’s it,” the employee says as her supervisor comes to assist the man.
After the man had left, Adela said she showed her supervisor the interaction she recorded on her phone.
“I told her I was in shock,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do, whether to cry. I felt very bad.”
Her supervisor asked two other Wal-Mart employees to watch to see if the man returned, however, according to Adela, he later called in and canceled his follow-up appointment. The 20+ year U.S. citizen said that she had never once faced discrimination to the degree she was subjected to at work that day. Before becoming a citizen, Adela was a legal permanent U.S. resident.
The manager working on the day of the incident told The Dallas Morning News that he was unaware that it had taken place. He noted that such situations were investigated by the company internally and directed all further inquiries to the corporate media office, which the paper could not reach for comment.
This is just another example of how brazen how supporters of President Donald Trump have become after his election victory. To be clear, there is no evidence to indicate that the man in the video is a Trump supporter, aside from his profoundly racist attitude which is common among Trump’s supporters. It’s this writer’s opinion that this man voted for Trump and we are now seeing racist trolls like him slither from under the dark places in which they lay dormant for all these years.
Unfortunately, people like the man in this video can not be reasoned with; they can only be defeated and drove back to the sewer if more Americans get out and vote to defeat those who would cater to their bigoted worldview.