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.”
Oxtail, fried plantains and marinated pork; in addition to being racists, the town council doesn’t know good food. That all sounds delicious.
The palate for oxtail is way different than mayonnaise on white bread. Or even plain rice and boiled chicken.
The plantains might be a little too much for them too.
That’s the sort of thing we eat down here all the time. What’s wrong with fried plantains? Oxtail is kind of hit or miss, but if you know someone who can cook it well… 👩🍳😘 Truly divine. And who hates marinated pork? It makes the best tacos.
Judging by their open bigotry, what’s wrong with all of this is that it was cooked by black folk.
So it would seem.
What a disappointing state of affairs.
There is literally no benefit to racism but a fucktonne of limitations and loss of opportunity. It really breaks my brain why people keep making it so central to their identity.