The chef-partner of a restaurant who said last week he would not serve anyone wearing a Make America Great Again hat has apologized, saying that making a public statement "without taking my team's thoughts into consideration was disrespectful and reckless."
J. Kenji López-Alt of Wursthall restaurant in San Mateo, Calif., posted the apology on Medium.
"Symbols have power and meaning and can mean different things to different people at different times and in different contexts," he wrote. "After having seen the red hat displayed so prominently in so many moments of anger, hate, and violence, to me — and many others — the hat began to symbolize exactly that: anger, hate, and violence. This was the context my tweet was meant to communicate. Unfortunately the way I tried to communicate this ended up only amplifying the anger, and I apologize for that."
The restaurant is not changing its policy, according to López-Alt, and will to serve all customers regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual preference, gender orientation, disability, or political opinion "so long as they leave hate, anger, and violence outside of the doors of our restaurant."
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