Ellis Island Museum to update story of immigration
The new exhibition is heavily interactive, and visual, with video snippets from immigrants telling their stories.
A vulgar video of a Colorado woman berating a Hispanic family for speaking has gone viral after it was posted on Facebook.
In the video, Laura Bennett, of Grand Junction, Colorado is seen yelling at a Spanish-speaking family while one of them records her rant on a cellphone. She calls them racial slurs.
“You’re the one that give the brown people a bad name,” Bennett said in the video.
“Speak English, b****. It’s America,” Bennett said, while snapping her fingers at a woman off camera speaking English. “Put me on YouTube. Go for it. Down with Mexicans that don’t learn the language of the world.”
Bennett then mutters to camera, “Goddamn wetbacks.”
Following the incident, which occurred in the parking lot outside of the Health Department in Grand Junction, the daughter of the woman being verbally assaulted in the video, Yolanda Flores, posted Bennett’s rant on YouTube.
“My parents have sacrificed so much so much for us and it breaks my heart the way they get treated because of their broken English,” Wendy Flores wrote on her Facebook page. “I know they can speak English. And I know my mother understood every single word they said.”
Yolanda Flores, and her husband Ignacio, have lived in the U.S. for 23 years and moved around the country as Ignacio found different work as a welder.
After local Spanish-language stations ran the rant and the video began to make national headlines, Bennett apologized for her words, but said that the video doesn’t tell the whole story.
According to Bennett, she was leaving an appointment when she noticed that the Flores’ had locked their dog, Nala, in their car on a hot day. Bennett added that the reason for her tirade was that she was upset at how the family treated their animal.
Flores countered that she only left the dog in the car for a few minutes – with the windows partially rolled down – while she ran into a clinic to pick up a document.
“That part of me lost control, not right, not appropriate, not acceptable,” Bennett told local media. “My purpose that led to it, that’s not viewed at all, is the animal in question”
She added: “And at that time I thought, boy that’s not right, to leave an animal like locked in a car.”
Bennett also defended herself by saying that she identifies as Hispanic herself.
"I'm Hispanic too, so I don't really think I can be racist if that's my own descent," Bennett said. "I used inappropriate words out of anger and frustration because that party was definitely taking this as an unimportant subject. It wasn't important to her, it wasn't important to the dog to let a full grown German Shepherd just sit in a vehicle and just pant away."
Bennett admits that she could have handled the situation better, but added that she feels no regret about her choice to confront the Flores family about their dog.
“I don’t regret helping the animal, Bennett said. “My only regret is the language I used and my approach to handling the situation.”
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