Islam El Masry, the owner of Small Pharoah’s food cart on SW 5th and Stark St., has admitted to throwing hot sauce and a Gatorade bottle at a customer Wednesday. In a pair of YouTube videos uploaded this morning, El Masry also confesses to calling the customer, an African American woman, the n-word.
But he doesn’t apologize.
“I really feel bad and I really feel sorry for what happened to me and for her too, both of us,” El Masry says in one of his lengthy videos, which have been graciously condensed into one by the Oregonian. “I blame her, and I blame myself.”
El Masry was arrested Thursday after his outburst—which customer Carlotta Washington (partially) caught on video— and charged with misdemeanor assault and harassment. According to Washington, he was upset that she had tried to purchase food using primarily coins.
In his videos, El Masry says Washington threw a bottle at him, too. He blames his aggression on Ramadan fasting, not having a cigarette, his ill parents, the media, and other customers who’ve called him names in the past. But he also admits to doing the same exact thing to another Black women a year and a half ago.
“Almost the same words I told to her, the same words,” he says.
The words of a reformed man.
If he was white, he’d be an immediate folk hero among RWNJs, who’d love how his rudeness and bigotry pushed back against political correctness and owned the libtards.
Since he’s not, their reptilian brains are exploding.
You know all those people dealing drugs, panhandling and camping on sidewalks? The man is dealing with that ALL DAY EVERY DAY. Front and center, right in the mix. I’m not okaying bigotry, but it’s not easy to deal with a neverending line of “difficult customers.” We all snap once in a while.
Cosmic Charlie, there’s a difference between “snapping” at difficult customers, and assaulting them and using vile racial epithets. I lived and worked downtown for years, I’ve even “snapped” at rude customers (by which I mean I became irritable and vocalized it). Never once did I assault a woman or become a magical temporary bigot.