Source: Shutterstock.com
The story about the group of 25 African Americans, who were denied service, after waiting two hours, at a wing shop in South Carolina because a white customer felt threatened by them, brings back some not so fond memories of my own about what it is like dining while black.
It’s hard to imagine that over 50 years after hundreds of young activists, mostly black, courageously protested segregation by sitting and demanding service at white-only Woolworth lunch counters, black folks are still being denied service at eateries across the country. But it happens. And it happens frequently enough that many of us just accept it as a natural part our blackness. I have been in restaurants with friends, where we were treated rudely and had wait staff be almost paternalistic over our dining experience. Things like having different bartenders, working behind the same bar charge us different prices for the same mixed drinks (a tactic, which I always suspected, was a way for shifty bartenders to get tips from those they suspect wouldn’t pay). Or having our waiter be indifferent to servicing our table, if not being denied service completely. Or, in some more brazen scenarios, leaving hand written racial descriptives “accidentally” on your receipt. We know it’s discriminatory. We know we are being treated differently than the other non-black patrons. Yet we accept it as just the way things are.
As a former waitress, who worked through high school and college waiting tables and serving foods and drinks in some capacity, I am very aware about the perceptions about black customers. Basically black folks are ill-mannered, hard-to-please and poor tippers. It was not uncommon to hear coworkers, of all colors, bemoan the travesty of having to “wait on them’ every time they saw the hostess seat a table of black patrons in their section. And it is isn’t just the people in my small microcosm who feel this way. According to one study, 38.5 percent of restaurant servers openly admit to discriminating against black customers.
As someone, whose livelihood, at the time, depended upon brown-nosing for dollars, in some respects, I could understand the frustrations of my coworkers. It’s not about the color, it’s about the money. But I also knew that many of my coworkers perceptions were often times self-fulfilling. Not to mention that being a waiter, I pride myself on being a fair tipper. And many of my girlfriends – as well as other black folks I have met over the years–who are cognizant of the perception about us, would go out of their financial ways to show their servers that they knew better. So why did I – and we – deserved to be lumped together as one mass indistinguishable ball of bad customers?
I really came to understand that point the night a group of my friends decided to grab an after-the-club meal at one of the chain breakfast spots. There were about 12 of us; males and females; all friends and students from Virginia Union University. We had traveled outside of Richmond to party on another campus and found the restaurant on our way back to campus. We had been seated for over an hour and a half at table in an establishment where the only other brown faces were the actual employees. Despite having our order taken we had not seen any food. Not even the cup of coffee a couple of my friends had ordered in place of food. The complimentary glasses of water had run dry. Our servers (plural because no one really took ownership of our table the entire evening) refused to come to our table to refill our glasses or even update us about the whereabouts of our meals. In some instances flat-out ignoring our attempts to get their attention. Tables, who arrived after us, had eaten and were readying to pay and leave.
Nothing about the behavior of our group warranted the kind of treatment we were receiving. Besides our group, there were other large groups in the restaurant, who were being properly serviced. We were giggling and talking across the table but our noise level was not louder than what you would expect from a party of our size. We weren’t hooligans. We were regular college kids, some in distinguishable school paraphernalia (including Greek) looking for a short stack of pancakes and a couple of pieces of bacon. And, most importantly, we were patient.
Fed up with our treatment, one of my friends managed to track down the manager. To our surprise and almost delight, it was a black woman. We laid out our case to our “sister” knowing that we were going to get a satisfactory resolution. But our comrade didn’t even crack a smile. Nor did she acknowledge anything that we were saying. Instead, her exact words were, “That’s your problem. And if you have a problem, you can leave!” We were stunned silent. Besides myself, two of my other friends in our party also waited tables. And several of our other friends worked customer services in retail. All of us knew that talking to customers in that tone would be considered a terminable offense. Well by then, one of my girlfriends dropped all pretense of respectability and verbally put a foot in that manager’s behind. That was our signal that it was time to go. We grabbed our friend and dragged her towards the doors, where we were met by some of Virginia’s finest. Four police cars to be exact.
Apparently the police had been called prior to the manager coming to our table to speak with us. After checking all of our IDs and having to sit through the big fat white cop lecture on how “you people need to learn how to act right,” we were let go but given a police escort halfway back to our college campus. It was a somber ride back to campus that early morning. No one spoke. We didn’t even bother with the radio. Some of us were fighting back tears. It was a lot to process for our young minds. We knew our right to good customer service, which was one of the promises of this particular chain restaurant, was being sacrificed for the comfort of the other patrons, yet we couldn’t quite understand how another black person could act as an agent of discrimination against another black person.
During the commotion, a really nice young white couple, who were also patrons in the restaurant, came to us in the parking lot, told us that they thought the whole thing was racial too and volunteered to be our witness if we decided to report this to the chain restaurant’s headquarters. We vowed to take them up on their offer. But none of us did. As angry as we were, we had convinced ourselves that taking it further was pointless. It was only breakfast. It could have been worse. Maybe, there was something we did to deserve our treatment? Honestly, our trepidation at reporting the incident came simply down to the fact that we had very little hope that anything would be done. But we were wrong. Others could have been warned. Notice could have been given to corporate that we would not be supporting your business any longer. Efforts to counter support more respectable businesses in protest could have been organized. Despite their efforts to dehumanize us, the point is that we were not powerless and we should never have to accept unequal treatment as just the way things are.
