A Thai restaurant is claiming that a lunchtime customer from Thursday left a note on the counter reading, “If you’re going to live in AMERICA learn to speak ENGLISH! or, go back to where you came from!”
The restaurant took to Facebook to share an image of the note along with a sorrowful response: “Someone left it at the counter at lunch today.Who ever you are,I apologize for that which I wasn’t born with.”
Since then, the post has been shared over six thousand times, and many have commented directly on the original post to express their support for the Lubbock, Texas-based restaurant.
One user wrote, “You can speak whatever language you want in America. Don’t apologize.”
“Calling them out like this is heroic,” another wrote. “I applause for you! You are for sure the best Thai food in West Texas and it has nothing to do with what language you can and prefer to speak. Air hug from Tennessee.”
According to NextShark, the identity of the person who left the note is still unknown.
There has been a noticeable number of Asian Americans taking to Facebook lately to share their encounters with restaurant racism, although oftentimes it’s the employees being accused of insensitive behavior.
Just a couple weeks ago, South Carolina restaurant Firehouse Subs was under fire after an employee labelled a customer as “ching chong” on the receipt.
And earlier this year, two smoothie franchises in North Carolina closed after separate incidents of their employees labelling customers on receipts with “jackie chan” and the N word, according to The Charlotte Post.
The “go back to where you came from” rhetoric has been prolific as well, with various politicians getting thrown in the mix.
In July, Trump notoriously told four congresswomen of color to go back to the countries they came from. And in September, radio host Jesse Lee Peterson said on air, “There’s this little Asian guy or Chinese guy, whatever he is, he should go back to China, or where ever he came from, Andrew Yang.”
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