Former police officer and newly-elected New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been in office for less than a week. But he’s already causing New Yorkers to shake their collective heads and ask themselves what they’ve really gotten into.
The city’s second-ever Black mayor is making headlines because of his comments about essential workers.
Eric Adams just said “Low skill workers like cooks, messengers and Dunkin’ Donuts employees don’t have the academic skills to sit in a corner office” pic.twitter.com/KaoY9MNZ8J
— Achmat X (@AchmatX) January 4, 2022
In his misguided (at best) speech, Eric Adams referred to essential workers — which included shoe shiners, cooks, dishwashers, and “those who work at Dunkin’ Donuts” — as “low-skilled.” He went on to claim that these workers “don’t have the academic skills” to “sit in a corner office” (Yes, you read that right). The same workers who were getting applause and “thank you” banners at the beginning of the pandemic — who were essential in helping us stay alive — were now being referred to as “low-skilled” and, euphemistically, “stupid.”
And, according to Newsweek, Eric Adams only made things worse when he doubled down on the claims later on in the speech.
Despite being in the midst of a pandemic — with the highly-contagious omicron variant continuing to rip through the population — he urged people to return to the office at least three days a week. He said that the only way to boost the economy was to get people off remote work and back into the office.
“That accountant—I need him to go to the cleaners. I need him to go down to Dunkin’ Donuts. I need him to go to the restaurant. I need him to bring in the business traveling,” Eric Adams said. “And if we say that, ‘Well I don’t have to go in. I’m still getting my salary,’ then you are not helping those New Yorkers who need us to come in.”
It seems New Yorkers were so desperate to get rid of Bill DeBlasio (and for good reason) that they settled for the first thing that came along (which is not so good, to say the least).
How did Eric Adams react to the pushback?
Naturally, Mayor Eric Adams drew well-earned criticism for his comments. One Twitter commenter said that he was going to run New York City the way Joe Clark ran the high school in “Lean on Me.”
And another commenter was a lot blunter.
Eric Adams constant use of possessive pronouns is already exhausting. My workers , my schools , this dude really think he kingpin
— Antoine Hardy (@Slangdini) January 4, 2022
But, in case you were wondering if Eric Adams had any level of reflectiveness on his comments, he doubled down again on the use of possessive pronouns when he went on CBS This Morning.
“People are going to try to take everything I say and distort it,” he said. “But I’m focused, I’m disciplined, and I’m grinding to bring my city back.”
