These Restaurants Are Racist As Hell: Shut 'Em Down!

I was waiting outside The Great Wall restaurant, located on College Avenue, looking at the menu taped on its window, exactly as some people are doing right now. I'm person who likes to marinate my thoughts before I act upon them, so I stood out there for about ten minutes. I noticed that the waitress kept passing by the window that I was looking into, but I thought that maybe she was just doing her rounds. Maybe I lingered for too long, I have no idea. 

I walked into the restaurant, tired as hell with a bag of groceries in my hand. I looked at the same waitress that had been watching me outside and she looked back, but not in a way in which I would have expected. She simply looked puzzled, and I could tell she was analyzing me because her gaze shot sporadically from my face to the food in my hands. Us looking at each other like this happened for a painfully awkward thirty seconds. I thought she would have said something at that point, but she didn't. She just retreated to the back of the restaurant to the kitchen. That was when things got awkward. Instead of being seated in this restaurant, I had to walk all the way to the front with my groceries in my hand. I was practically chasing after the waitress just so that I could ask her for a seat.  

I ask to sit somewhere, pointing in the general direction of the tables, but I am instead relegated to the Take Out Chairs, located right next to the cashier's desk. I felt strange being placed there because my intention was not for take out; I wanted a place to sit down and eat. Looking back, I now think I was placed there so they could watch me like I was a child.

All this time I kept thinking, "E., don't go there. It's not about race, it's not about race. Maybe you're just a strange customer seeing that you are by yourself and all."

The waitress and the cashier are staring--almost glaring--at me, and yet again I 

think "It's not what you think E., just come and be demanding, but be courteous."

"What are you having?" Asked the cashier. I placed my order, and the cashier, without looking at me, says that I'll have a ten minute wait. I say 'alright' and sit, once again in the Take Out Chairs. But then, after several minutes of experiencing a painful awkward feeling bubbling up inside me, I take the initiative to place myself at a table, and gallantly used their wifi (which I asked for). After a ten minute wait, I was given my food. A waiter comes up to me to tell me that my food is ready. I get up, foolishly leaving my laptop and bank card on the table behind me. The next event bugged me out. My food was wrapped in Take-Out, rather than the typical service. I was automatically given the take-out order. Even though I hadn't asked for it.

"Okay, that's it," I think. "I'm done with being civilized."

Now as we type, I am watching a fair skinned woman, eating alone just as I am, get served as if she were the pasty-white Duchess of Cambridge. I had to run to a seat right after they gave me my food--in take out trays, might I add. And the waitress keeps roaming, asking if everything is okay with everyone, except for me. And I keep seeing, I am facing the door. As each person walks through the door, they are immediately greeted with a question: "What are you having? Is that for here or to go?" Not awkward stares as if I were deranged madwoman who just reentered civilization after forty years of living in the woods. Am I jumping the gun? Should I say something? I am so afraid to even ask for a cup of water.

I got up to get water, and they just poured me a cup. I said thank you, and there was nothing. No communication, no unspoken reassurance. Nothing. Hospitality, my ass.

Did I seem threatening? I had my headphones on. I had groceries beside me. I was by myself. I am a five-foot-two plus-sized black woman with no athletic ability whatsoever-I cannot, in the least, seem threatening or harmful. That is unless you've got some prejudice linger inside that dense brain of yours that you think avoiding me because of the way I was born gives you justification to treat me wrong. In other words: you're a self-absorbed, prejudicial prick, who's internalized racism so hard, you wouldn't see it if it controlled your life.

After I sat in there for about two hours, the waitress finally came up to my table with a question.

"Are you done?" she asked.

Really? Are you fucking kidding me? She asked me if I was done. With what, exactly? Was I done with prejudiced bullshit and mitigating my feelings every fucking time someone did something obviously racist to me and other black people?

Yes, I am so fucking done, thank you very much.

I left that restaurant, huffing under my breath, saying that they were racist as hell and I was never coming back.

I wanted to say so much. I wanted to blame them for everything wrong in this country. I wanted to generalize their race. I wanted to confront the manager, but my anxiety would have overpowered me, and I would have been crying more than I was sitting and eating in that chair alone.

I was screaming on my way home. Screaming about injustice, because that was what I faced. 

This happened on January 1st. I hope that this isn't what the rest of the year will look like. 

Racial relations have got to change for the better in 2016.

Adieu,
E.