The Weekly Issue / El Semanario Editorial Board
What are the racial, ethnic, national background, and linguistic proficiencies required to shop at Safeway and their conglomerate partner Albertsons? This question, or these questions, have come into stark relief with the advent of a most unfortunate event that happened at the Safeway store on 26th Ave. and Federal Blvd. in Denver, Colorado, on March 26th. When a couple with their two young children attempted to place an order at the Deli shop in Safeway, they were treated in a most unfortunate way by one of the Delicatessen, or Deli, workers. The Weekly Issue/El Semanario has obtained a video of this encounter. Despite that watching this video is troubling, even traumatic, we ask our readers to view the video to make up their own minds as to the gravity of this situation.
As the video shows, a man and woman, who were with their two children, were shopping at the Safeway store and were trying to order from the Deli. The video was most likely recorded by the man who is speaking. It shows the employee, who was working at the Deli, engaged in a heated argument with the couple, whom she apparently believes to be recent immigrants from Venezuela (as she indicates), with her judgment arrived at probably because they were speaking Spanish.
The video, begun perhaps midway through the encounter, begins with the employee walking from the employees’ side of the Deli counter, around to the customer side, and at first apparently gesticulating manually at the couple in what is generally viewed as an offensive slur; that is, she appears to “flip off” the couple. The employee then tells the couple “Don’t touch it, no toque” referring to the glass covering the Deli items. She then approaches the same front section of the glass where the couple was, as if looking for where the woman touched the glass. She tells them again, “Don’t touch it, look, dirty, your fingers are dirty,” as if she was able to see where the woman had touched the glass.
The employee then tells the couple, “Go back to Venezuela, nobody wants you here.” The woman customer asserts, “Peruana,” meaning she was from Peru, not Venezuela. To which the employee tells her, “Well, nobody wants you here, go back, go back,” as the employee continues to busy herself with using what appears to be a box cutter to cut open empty boxes. The man speaking in the video has told the employee, “Somos clientes” (“We are clients [customers]”). The 42-second video clip ends with the employee telling them, “Go back, this is America, learn English.”
Note that the would-be customers, the man and woman, are not shown in the video, nor are their two children, the latter of whom we have learned about through interviewing the couple.
For those of us at The Weekly Issue/El Semanario, as well as our editorial writers and advisory committee, as Latinos, many of us have experienced variations of such treatment over the years. This has been the case albeit if we were born in Denver or the surrounding areas, grew up here, lived only and entirely in the Denver area. For us, such treatment as the couple and the children faced is infuriating. But perhaps even more so, it is heartbreaking.
Some of us have shopped in various Safeway stores almost exclusively for decades, and this treatment of this couple is symptomatic of generations of such occurrences. However, we now realize that Latinos in Denver do not need the Safeway/Albertsons conglomerate for shopping. Among other grocery stores, we have Save-A-Lot, which caters a variety of Mexican food staples, as well as King Soopers, Whole Foods, Costco, Walmart, and so on. On the other hand, Safeway/Albertsons needs us as clients—or as “clientes,” as the man in the video stated they were trying to be.
How do Safeway and Albertson’s quantify the English-speaking ability, or acumen, or expertise, of their customers, if such is necessary? And what is the level of abilities on this stratification and hierarchy of linguistic prowess necessary to be able to shop in their stores? We assume even above a U.S. born White person, home-grown of Denver born and bred—who speaks English only and whose linguistic milieu has never been tainted by Spanish within an audible range—would reign a visitor from England, with a pronounced British accent, so adept at speaking the King’s and Queen’s English that he or she does not pronounce “r’s” (“arrs”?) but rather pronounces, say, “letter” as “lettuh” and “outdoors” as “outdoohs” and so on. They would be able to go to the head of the line, especially at the Safeway Deli counter.
But what does that list of “Shoppers Allowed, or Not, in Safeway” hierarchy actually look like? Following the King’s English Brit, who comes next? A White Denverite who speaks English middling well, but not too good? And how do Safeway and Albertsons stratify Latinas and Latinos who speak English but also speak Spanish, a problematic linguistic trait for Safeway and Albertsons?
Ironically, Safeway/Albertson grocery stores sell Deli items whose names are not Anglo-Saxon derivatives. This is “Old English,” the “language spoken and written in England before 1100; it is the ancestor of Middle English and Modern English. Scholars place Old English in the Anglo-Frisian group of West Germanic languages”. Interestingly, relevant to our Denver discussion about Denver English vs. Denver Spanish, the English we know today is an amalgamation of historical and linguistic influences, or as we say in Spanish (now forbidden in Safeway), “mestizaje,” or mixture, a combining, leading to an amelioration or enhancement of the languages.
English, the language, is known as perhaps the most prolific language at “borrowing” words or terms from other languages, greatly expanding our vocabulary. For example, the Safeway Deli’s sell Salami (or “salumi” in Italy) and Bologna, both of which are Italian words and foods, along with Prosciutto, whose “origins trace back to ancient Italy, where the practice of curing ham dates over 2,000 years,” with perhaps a choice between Prosciutto di Parma or Prosciutto di San Daniele. For those conversant in Salami, there are, for example, Genoa Salami, Milano Salami, and Calabrese Salami. However, in order for Safeway Delis to sell such variety, the store would have to become precariously bilingual.
To assure oneself of remaining linguistically pure, Safeway should stick to the British Fish and Chips, albeit the “Chips” part of the meal is made from potatoes, which originated in Peru and have now spread throughout the world, to the great nourishment of the world’s population—including Brits. To reiterate, of the two adults in our video (with their two young children) who were told to “go back to Venezuela” and “nobody wants you here,” the would-be-client woman indicated “Peruana,” or “I am Peruvian,” from where, again, potatoes were first domesticated. The Safeway Deli has no qualms in selling potatoes from Peru, but apparently will not serve Peruvians. But then, the word “potato” is certainly not English; it is Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, originally “potatl,” as “tomato” was “tomatl,” and the wildly popular Avocado was “aguacatl,” and so on. The Meso-American area of México, along with numerous other Indigenous cultures throughout the Américas, cultivated such foods, along with corn, squash, and beans, among others, all of which taken together are central to the nourishment of the world’s population—and none of those foods were originally named in English.
What is to be done about this callous treatment by a Safeway employee of these two would-be customers, along with their two children? Is such treatment part of the cultural milieu of Safeway? As we said above, Latinos in all their linguistic aptitudes and varieties do not need Safeway, although we are not calling for a boycott. However, to begin the road back, this couple, and others like them, must be made whole and treated with respect.
Of all Latinos in Denver who speak Spanish, Safeway/Albertsons should be able to hire employees who speak the language and who understand the background of Latinos, in all of their diversity. The Director of Albertsons Safeway Denver Division has assured The Weekly Issue/El Semanario in writing that “Safeway has clear policies against discrimination and racial profiling.” We have asked for a copy of such policies, which we intend to compare and/or contrast with this event. Hopefully a resolution can be reached soon.
We advise our readers to view the video and perhaps share with us your reactions.
The Weekly Issue/El Semanario Editorial Board: The Weekly Issue/El Semanario Editorial Board: Luis Torres, Ph.D., Professor, retired, Metropolitan State University of Denver; Kathy Escamilla, Professor Emeritus, University of Colorado, Boulder; Ramón Del Castillo, Ph.D., Professor, retired, Metropolitan State University of Denver; Steve Del Castillo, PhD, Center for News Directions in Politics and Public Policy; Danny Stange de Jaramillo, Sheridan School Board Director, Peer Advocate; and Manny Almaguer, Community Advocate.
