High school biology must have been vastly different in the 1950s. Either that or New York State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, who is a person of color, needs to break bread with a person of pallor and take note of their conspicuous consumption habits.
While protesting the closing of a Key Food supermarket in her Brooklyn district, Montgomery observed that “white people don’t eat the way we do.” I have to admit that I find the claim baffling. I have eaten in the presence of black people, and I can tell you we eat employing exactly the same methodology: (1) put food in mouth, (2) chew, (3) swallow, (4) repeat until full.
According to a report in the New York Post Senator Montgomery “raged against the closing of the supermarket to make space for a new store she feared would be too posh for the neighborhood.”
Perhaps after the good senator completes her course in remedial biology, she can take one in remedial economics. If the replacement store is “too posh” for her predominantly black neighborhood, it will go out of business and be replaced by a supermarket that isn’t “too posh.”
“Supermarkets are an important part of the community. It’s an important amenity, especially for black and brown communities,” she said at a town-hall meeting at Clinton Hill housing project.
“When you’re talking about a white community, it can be a little boutique, because white people don’t eat the way we do.”
Montgomery later backtracked, saying she regretted the “white people” comment.
“It was an unfortunate statement and I didn’t mean to offend anyone,” WCBS said.
Others at the town-hall meeting were upset about recent gentrification in the area and the effect on longtime residents.
“If our skin were any other color, this would not be happening,” one resident told the paper.
Cross-posted at The Lid
