Racist or Not Racist

A few comments . . .

1. This is why they number the tables at most restaurants. There could be several "old couple", "5 black guys", or "stupid bitch" but there is only one table 12.

2. If bartenders use descriptions on a ticket to remember customers, that does not have to be the same receipt that the customer sees. Duuuhhh! If you write "5 happy darkeys" on a ticket, best not show it to the happy darkeys.

3. Owners could take it out of the hands of employees. I went to a bar and grill in colorado once. I ordered and paid and instead of asking me for a name to put on the ticket, they just assigned everyone a name of a celebrity and put it on their receipt. It was kind of unusual to hear "Elvis Presley, cheeseburger and fries for Elvis. Steve McQueen, your order is ready. Humphrey Bogart, BLT and a Bass Ale for Bogart."

 

Don't fuck with the bull, Pancho. You've blown his cover and now he'll have to kill you. Leave right way. Don't take your phone or use your credit cards.

 

A big issue that confuses a lot of people. One's nationality and one's heritage are not always the same. And neither of them have anything to do with race . . . at least until Jesse Jackson decided that being black was no longer proud and derailed the term African-American to apply it to black people.

Now, African-American is a fine term for the blending of American with African heritage. Gumbo is an African-American dish. Jazz is an African-American musical form combining African and American styles. Most black Americans have an African-American genealogical heritage as well. But as previously noted, there are millions of white Africans and and about a billion non-African black people in India, Australia, and the Pacific islands.

Essentially the term African American is a very descriptive term when referring to heritage, just as Irish-American, Mexican-American, and Italian-American are. But it is a poor and confusing term when referring to a person's race.

It became apparent to me over a decade ago when the UN President was addressing a US middle-school assembly. A teenage black American girl asked Kofi Annan how he felt about an issue as an African-American. He had to remind her that he was not an African-American, he was an African. But he understood that what she really meant was what he thought as a black person and he answered her question. But he very succinctly outlined the problem. The term is descriptive when discussing the blending of heritages, but confusing when discussing race.

 

I quite agree. I'm just saying that in today's world you have to cover your ass so that you are not perceived to be racist. There are a ton of people who like to make issues of petty stuff like this. A bartender who doesn't know that people are sensitive is not being smart at his job. It was purely descriptive, but black folks understandably don't like to be categorized by their color alone. Who doesn't know this? Like someone mentioned earlier, if the ticket had said "5 sharp-dressed black guys" it probably would have been seen as a description and not something setting them apart from the crowd by their color.

True enough, but it's not everybody, thank goodness. There is a small percentage of people that are oversensitive about everything in the world. I have a friend who sends half of her food back to the kitchen when she eats out, and is hell on waiters, she is so hypersensitive if everything is not exactly what she imagined. We have to learn to deal with these people without restructuring the world to accommodate them them, because most of us are more laid back.