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.”

  • lad
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    710 months ago

    In my home country there are minorities, as I would guess in most other countries, and they quite often are told to go back to where they came from, despite literally being native to the country 🤦‍♂️

      • lad
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        fedilink
        310 months ago

        No, an Old World country, so most inhabitants have been living on the same territory for at least a millennium

    • Herbal Gamer
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      210 months ago

      I’m dutch. We colonized anything darker than pale and stole everything we could and now people complain about multiculturalism.