Marine Park pol resigns post over racist tweet
Democratic District Leader Lori Maslow, who posted a racist rant against Chinese people, still retains her elected seat, though
Marine Park Democratic District Leader Lori Maslow has resigned her post after triggering a firestorm of criticism over a racist rant she posted against Chinese people over the weekend, including the bizarre slight: “I can’t even look at Chinese food.”
The commentary, posted to Twitter along with a link to a news item on Chinese tariffs, has since been deleted. But nothing disappears from the Internet forever:
Since Lori Maslow deleted her account, here’s the tweet: pic.twitter.com/hWpGCeV3PW
— Caitlin Kawaguchi (@CaitKawaguchi) January 3, 2021
“We’re sick of buying from China. They did this to us. They lied to us. And yes, Trump played outside role as well. I, for one, will never, ever buy anything made in China again. Join me,” Maslow wrote.
The backlash was as fast as it was furious.
Elected city officials, many of them Asian American, expressed outrage. Manhattan Assemblywoman Yu-Line Niou said that Maslow’s comments echoed a larger trend of racism against Asian-Americans, exacerbated over the course of the past year due to the provenance of the coronavirus.
“Her statement was bizarre. You might as well just say, `I can’t stomach Chinese Americans,’” state Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Flushing) told the New York Post. “We’ve been combating anti-Chinese American sentiment during this pandemic. It was very hurtful.”
The Brooklyn Paper noted that this is not new behavior for Maslow, pointing to virulently anti-Palestinian comments she had tweeted as recently as 2019.
In a statement released Monday, Maslow, who retains her elected seat, struck a different tone:
I hereby resign from my position as 6th vice chair of the Kings County Democratic County Committee effective immediately. I sincerely apologize for the poor choice of words I used in a social media posts over the weekend, which were hurtful to members of the Chinese American Community.
