RACISM
Bad Service Or No Service Is Part Of The Black Experience, And Inevitable
Blatant racism doesn’t even take a break for a moment so you can enjoy dinner.
When my son was younger, I had a brief window of time to spend with him on Tuesday and Thursday evenings — damn visitation order — so our typical go-to activity was to get dinner before I brought him back to his mother’s house.
Distance limited our dinner options but every now and then we teased the hour by venturing outside the immediate vicinity. On one occasion we made the pilgrimage to a place my son had heard about; a specialty burger joint just north of Boston.
It was early and the restaurant was empty so we had the good fortune of sitting wherever we wanted — in the middle of the dining area against the wall so we could observe everyone coming and going. Black people move.
Check, please
Engaging in conversation with my son was my only objective but for him, it was what sammy to order and if he should get the accompanying Cajun fries. After 40 minutes we still hadn’t seen a server, which was odd since no other customers had come in. Eventually, impatience got the best of me and I went up to the hostess stand to ask for service. The hostess, the one who seated us earlier was clearly not in the mood to see me and offered a rather dismissive “go to your seat and someone will be with you in a moment.”
I returned to my seat and to a hangry teen waiting to throw in the towel. Moments later that same hostess came to take our order. Since we knew what we wanted, the ordering went quickly. At this point, we were still the only customers in the restaurant.
After another agonizing 30 minutes of waiting our meals finally arrived. It was “go time” and our collective salivary glands were living up to their names forcing a request for extra napkins. As the plates aggressively hit the table, it was clear from the jump that both orders were wrong. Not slightly altered but two completely different orders. Before the server left the table (and she did try to get away rather quickly), I politely mentioned that our meals were not what we ordered. Her indifference was glaring and substantial enough for me to get up and walk with her over to the open kitchen where the chef was hanging out looking at his phone.
He reluctantly took back the plates and offered to redo the order. Further, he said it would only take ten minutes. Hmmm, where were those ten minutes an hour and a half ago? It was obvious what was going on here but I wanted to see it through and make sure they knew that we knew, what they were doing.
In general, my first objective is never to play chicken but I also never want to punk out and give those trying to screw me the satisfaction.
I went back to the table for the second time and found that my son had completely checked out. I don’t blame him. By this time the restaurant was at full capacity. Over the next 20 minutes, we saw entrée after entrée come out of the kitchen and pass by our table.
Surprisingly by this time, we had had enough. I believe in giving second chances and letting things play out before action is taken. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt but it has been increasingly difficult in an era of injustice and constant targeting by people who just want to keep our community from living our lives.
I went up to the hostess stand one final time to tell her we were leaving and that they could cancel our order. The chef overheard me and injected with the, “Your order is up next.” Up next? Huh. We had been sitting at the table for almost two hours with nothing to show for it, except intense hunger and increased suspicion on why you treated us the way you did.
His parting shot… “Hey, would you like us to pack up your order to go?” The order he was referring to by the way was the original order that he had kept aside on the counter. He hadn’t fired up our new order yet.
As we left, the chef and the hostess, both unable to hide their exuberance, smiled and waved with giddiness as if to say “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Needless to say, we never went back.
Next time, pizza (maybe)
I’m used to bad service. I am also used to being turned away from places because of my skin color. But this experience had impacted time with my son (time, I had little of).
To have it co-opted by blatant racism wasn’t cutting it for me. Yet shockingly it didn’t surprise me.
Unquestionably the staff just did not care, well, they did as far as mounting a concerted effort to mistreat us. They saw two Black males and by all accounts thought they could flex their white supremacy muscle and take advantage of us (or screw with us). Who really knows, but that is what it felt like.
Fortunately, the positive experiences outweigh the bad but you can’t escape the reality of being Black in a white space and being treated like trash.
I would like to say this was the only incident in which we were treated poorly just for being Black but it’s not. And though the dynamic of this experience was blatant, it was by no means an outlier. Experiences such as the one at that burger joint were nothing new to me having grown up with this form of racial discrimination my entire life, but it was now becoming commonplace for my son who was beginning to acknowledge how we as Black people are treated on a routine basis.
When such treatment is so common that it’s anticipated and even expected, is there any silver lining?
Can our Black children ever expect to live a normal life?
Thank you for reading!
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