By Nicole Acevedo
A video showing a white woman swearing at the general manager of a Mexican restaurant in West Virginia for speaking Spanish went viral over the weekend.
“English is our first language, so you need to speak English,” the woman, identified in the video as Jill, screamed at Sergio Budar, the manager. “Get the f--- out of my country.”
One of two videos capturing the incident shows how customers at Tampico Mexican Restaurant in Parkersburg, West Virginia, were astonished at the woman’s remarks.
“It makes me feel angry, sad. It's unbelievable that we're still seeing this kind of behavior to this day,” Budar, who's originally from Mexico, told NBC News. “I’ve been living here for almost two decades, and counting. I got my U.S. citizenship while here, but that doesn’t mean that people can’t speak other languages that are not English.”
The website Latino Rebels first reported the story on Sunday.
As Jill continues to scream at Budar, saying that she has “no problem with the way he looks,” the man dining with her tries to stop her from shouting because “these are good people.”
“If you don’t stop being racist, we're going to leave,” her companion said. "That’s racist. And this man takes care of me," he added, referring to Budar, "and we’re going to get out of here because you don’t talk to him like that.”
To which Jill replied, “I’m not racist.”
The videos where posted on Facebook on Saturday. Since then, the post has racked up more than 841,000 views.
“My daughter captured this situation while working. My poor baby was frightened but cannot believe this continues to happen,” wrote Irma Dleon, the woman who posted the video on Facebook. “We should be united as a country but there is much hate. We are all human trying to help each other out. I will pray for this woman to be a better person, but you can only educate the ignorant.”
Budar told Jill and the man with her that he would pay for their meal if they left the restaurant, which they did.
“I got raped by illegal aliens,” Jill replied to Budar while throwing something at him. “F---ing rapist."
Similar incidents have gone viral in recent years.
Just last year, a white lawyer threatened to call immigration authorities on some restaurant workers in New York City for speaking Spanish. At a store in Colorado, a young woman defended two Spanish-speaking friends who were being harassed by an older woman. In Montana, a border patrol agent detained two women who were chatting in Spanish while buying groceries.
According to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University in San Bernardino, America’s largest cities saw a 176 percent spike in anti-Latino hate crimes the first two weeks after the 2016 election.
In 2017, reports of anti–Hispanic/Latino crimes rose by more than 24 percent, according to FBI numbers.
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