Community rallies around Saskatoon restaurant after video shows man yelling racist insults at workers
Mai's Kitchen customers 'aggressively' refused to wear a mask
WARNING: This article contains offensive language.
Saskatoon residents are mobilizing around a Vietnamese restaurant after video captured a man yelling racist insults at staff there on Wednesday evening.
The incident was filmed by an employee at Mai's Kitchen. The video has made its way around social media and has motivated people to support the restaurant by ordering food, and sharing the video to denounce the racism.
According to Brandon Lai, who originally posted the video on his Facebook page, restaurant workers told a group of customers they needed to wear masks in the restaurant when not at their table, and the customers "aggressively" refused.
Lai got the video from a friend who works at Mai's Kitchen and was harassed.
The video shows one of the customers stand up from the table, raise his middle finger to staff and shout.
"You're the c--ksuckers who brought the f--king disease here," the customer yelled.
Warning: This video contains offensive language:
As he left the restaurant, he could be heard yelling, "Go back to China."
Keith Tsang, a first-generation Chinese Canadian from Saskatoon, is organizing a solidarity lunch at Mai's Kitchen on Saturday. He says watching the video was a triggering experience for him.
Tsang's parents moved to Canada from Hong Kong in the 1980s. They worked in hospitality and eventually owned their own Chinese-Canadian restaurant, where Tsang would often help out.
"That spilled over to this video ... in that if my mom or my parents got verbally attacked like that ... it's something I was always fearful of for my mom," Tsang said.
"Not only do Asian people during this pandemic have to fear for their health, for not catching COVID ... I fear that they will get racially attacked during this pandemic too. It's another extra layer that we have to deal with."
Tsang says it's important to share videos like this one, profanity and all, in order to call out the racist behaviour and the people behind it.
"The ugliness needs to be shown," he said.
"Racism is nasty and that's why I feel it's important to to share the recording, to show it unfiltered — how nasty racism is and how nasty people can be."
Tsang says that when people film incidents like this, they expose the racism that is a problem in Canada.
"It's just very, very troubling and not surprising too, because it's part of our the systemic racism, whether you're Indigenous, Black, Asian."
Granada House Restaurant & Lounge in Saskatoon is one of the businesses also supporting Mai's Kitchen. The restaurant condemned the racist speech incident.
"Many of you have seen a recent video online of a customer's racist rant at Mai's Kitchen in Saskatoon. We are horrified by this hateful and racist speech that our peers have endured," Granada said in an online statement.
"While we do not personally know the owners and staff at Mai's Kitchen, we stand with @MaisKitchenYXE and fully throw our support behind them. As a sign of solidarity, we encourage anyone who was planning to order from us this evening, to instead order from Mai's Kitchen."
As for the solidarity lunch on Saturday, Tsang says he's had a great response from people looking to support Mai's Kitchen.
"I've had friends from different walks of life, different groups come out in support. So it's really nice."
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