A Filipino-American family celebrating a birthday at a Southern California restaurant became the victim of a racist tirade by a white technology executive, who later apologized for his actions on Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila).
Raymond Orosa, a native of Makati City, told the Asian Journal that his family was celebrating his wife Mari's birthday on July 4 — Independence Day in the United States — with his sister-in-law and her two children at the Lucia restaurant of the Bernardus Lodge and Spa in Carmel Valley, California.
That was when Michael Lofthouse, who owns a tech company called Solid8 in San Francisco, started berating them, apparently over their singing of “Happy Birthday,” Orosa said.
“We were having fun, playing games and when we were having dessert, suddenly, we hear somebody behind us yelling, ‘You f***ing Asians,” Orosa, who has been in the US for 26 years, told the Asian Journal.
Orosa’s niece Jordan Chan pulled out her cellphone and told Lofthouse to repeat what he had said. In the video Chan posted on her Instagram, Lofthouse is seen sticking up his middle finger to the family, and then says, “Trump’s gonna f*** you.”
Later in the video, Lofthouse gets ready to leave and tells them, “You f****** need to leave. You f***ing Asian piece of s***.”
After the video went viral on Tuesday, multiple journalists identified Lofthouse of Solid8, a cloud computing firm based in San Francisco. By the day’s end, Lofthouse had deleted all his social media accounts and issued an apology to a local TV station.
“My behavior in the video is appalling,” he told San Francisco’s KGO-TV in a statement. “This was clearly a moment where I lost control and made incredibly hurtful and divisive comments.”
However, the incident was “the latest vivid illustration of a rising tide of racist abuse against Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic, a trend many critics tie to Republican leaders blaming China for the disease,” the Washington Post reported.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly used the racist term “kung flu” for the virus, and on Tuesday again called it the “China Virus” on Twitter, the Post added.
Members of the Orosa family say Lofthouse's slurs speak louder than his mea culpa.
“He’s just saving face. I think he really meant what he said and what he did,” Raymond Orosa told KGO-TV. “I don’t believe his words because his actions speak louder than the words he’s saying.”
“It is no coincidence that this man has the audacity to showcase such blatant racism on the 4th of July. White supremacy has a notorious habit of masquerading as patriotism!” his nephew Chan wrote on Instagram.
A waitress at Lucia later stepped in, saying “You do not talk to guests like that.”
The video, which has been viewed nearly 400,000 times on Chan’s Instagram, also caught the attention of singer Kelly Clarkson on Twitter, praising the waitress for speaking up and “throwing this trash out.”
Orosa also told the Asian Journal that the video didn’t capture the entire encounter as a man at another table also tried to intervene and chase Lofthouse out of the restaurant.
The Bernardus Lodge has since released a statement commending the staff for how they handled the incident and apologizing to Orosa and his family.