Meet the new Green MP Ricardo Menendez March, who has managed to come onto the seen with a little controversy.

He has already had a petition started requesting his removal, and a bit of social media backlash.

The furore started with Menendez taking to Twitter to post an image of a Chihuahua looking distrustful with the comment, “my face when they show me affirmation of allegiance to the queen.” He also said that the walls of parliament were filled with “a lot of white men.”

This has been met with some expected backlash and It has not taken Menendez long to play the minority card(s) after his comments received angry retorts to his tweets.

The usual “go back to where you came from” responses where there, and someone said how good the choice of image was, “a yappy little Mexican dog”

There were also comments that suggested that Menendez is a Marxist

However, unapologetically Menendez has claimed that the reasons for the attacks are that he is gay and a Mexican migrant to New Zealand.

Interestingly he doesn’t seem to be bothered that he is being called a Marxist saying “If people want to call me a Marxist because I raise the issue that a few people own a lot of homes at the expense of our homeless community and employers don’t pay fair wages – so be it,”

I did not see any comments on his sexuality (I haven’t looked at them all) and whilst the old, “go back to where you came from” comments are childish and not ideal. It seems that if you want to be seen as a representative of your new country, then deliberately commenting on the colour of your predecessors skin and mocking the royal hierarchy in New Zealand, will get some people’s back up.

New Zealand is a multi-cultural, multi ethnicity country that on the whole is very accepting of peoples sexuality and ethnicity. There is of course still prejudices out there and by commenting on issues such as skin colour and accusing people of not being accepting, is a great way of going backward in the desire for people to have greater acceptance of diversity

I think Menendez has milked the situation here and is ignoring his own bias’ by blaming others for the reactions. Reactions that he undoubtedly wanted to get with his use of social media this way.

When will people learn that the sooner we stop focusing on the colour of peoples skin or their preferences sexually, the sooner we may be able to reduce the prejudices.

Bad form all round here I think, and the media are obviously siding here with the poor Mexican immigrant. One who will now enjoy some great exposure for his activism and included with his new role is a nice tax payer paid salary of a minimum of $163,961 and a further $16,980 per year for expenses over the next 3 years.

Oh my heart bleeds

https://www.stuff.co.nz/…/new-green-mp-attracts…