You know, in the news, there’s always a story about racism. The common two races that butt heads are White Americans and African Americans, and it’s usually the African American’s who are suffering the brunt of a crime done against them and lose a case, causing national uproar. This eventually leads to the White race being accused of being racist as a whole, instead of the individuals involved, causing a division of races within the country. Always is the argument of civil rights and slavery brought back up, drudging up the past and smearing it on a generation that wasn’t even born when the Civil Rights movement was going on, and it’s always going to paint the African American’s as the victims every time.
Well, not this time.
Waitressing at a restaurant, maybe about a week ago, I had an African American couple and their two children come in and sit in the section I worked. Putting on my most polite smile, I greeted the table with the same amount of enthusiasm as I do for anyone else, and took out my pen and pad, ready to take their drink order. The first thing I noticed was that the man had given me an odd look, one I hadn’t seen before. I could tell you then and there that I hadn’t ever seen this man before, nor his wife or kids. This was probably the first encounter we had ever had in our lives with one another. Yet he looked at me distastefully. Almost reluctantly, they gave me their drink orders, and when I turned to ask the children what they wanted, the parents quickly interrupted me, asking me not to speak to their children. They gave me the kids’ orders, and then looked away from me. As I walked away to get their drinks, I heard the woman mutter, “Oh, we had to get cracker-trash for a waitress.”
Cracker-trash for a waitress.
Those words echoed in my head angrily, and for a second, I wanted to turn around and give this woman a piece of my mind. How dare she say something like that? I hadn’t done anything wrong, was impeccably polite, yet she looked down upon me for some odd reason I hadn’t been able to figure out. So, placing the insult in the back of my mind, I resumed my smile, though more forced than anything, and returned with their drinks, respecting the customer’s wishes by not speaking with the children. I took their orders, ran them in instantly, and the family received their food in under 10 minutes. For any other table, that would be considered great service. I refilled their drinks, to which I noticed when I would hand it back to the man; he’d take the cup from me and rub it down with a napkin, almost in an irritated manner. I watched as their food was brought out to them by an African American waitress, to which, for the first time I had seen them sit at my table, they broke out into smile and laughed and jokes with her, and then she left to go take her table’s orders. Feeling more confident, I waited about two minutes before checking on my table to make sure everything was fine.
“How is everything?” I asked to them with a smile on my face, looking around to make sure they had all that they requested. Needless to say, my concern was hardly needed when it came to their food, which came out just like they wanted, however, my concern should’ve been for me. The man rolled his eyes at his wife, thinking that I could not see what he was doing, and the woman threw her napkin on her plate. And then spoke the dreaded words no waitress wants to hear. “We’d like to speak to the manager.” I obliged, sending back a White male manager. I saw them shake their heads as they saw him coming, and after watching them talk with aggressive movements and headshakes, I saw the Manager go in the back of the restaurant and pull out the African American Manager, who was greeted with much more warmth than the other manager and myself had ever managed to conjure. After talking with the couple, the Manager came back to me saying that the couple had requested that the African American Waitress who had brought their food be their server. Confused and baffled, he sighed and said “They don’t like white people.”
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so hurt in my life, knowing that these people came into this place and immediately didn’t like me because of my skin color. I hadn’t done anything wrong, if anything, I had done everything right. Yet this couple was allowed to call me ‘Cracker-trash’ with no rebuttal, yet if I had called them the ‘Nigger’, it would’ve been national news. Their new waitress, J, had come to me after they had left, saying that had apologized to her for having to work with Slave-owning trash. How long ago was slavery abolished? Was I, an 18 year-old girl, even alive then? No. I wasn’t. It seems to me that while there may be a stigma associated with being African American, due to the overwhelming stereotypes of them being in poverty/crime-causing/gang-involved thanks to various people, it isn’t all one sided. White people today, especially young people, face the brunt, the punishment, and the stigma of having to constantly pay for the actions of the past American people who had mistreated African Americans. My real concern for society today is that the race card will always be pulled in courts until people today can move on from what happened in the past, especially when it comes to court cases or even meager things, like scholarships.
America has made a lot of fuss over preventing racism, and I feel that the majority of it has been targeted at White people and for us to ‘clean up our act’. But it’s not just us that need to clean up. I have never been, nor will I be, a slave-owner, or a supporter of restricted civil rights against any race. But I will stand up against special allowances that are made for people of color, especially when it comes to financial scholarships for college, or horrid behavior in order to carry on the memories of the past. Notice there’s not really many for an average white girl, yet every minority has an equal, if not larger chance to be granted money, and for what? Their skin color. If a black woman spoke what was on her mind about a white woman, she’d be an independent black woman who exercises her free speech. If a white woman spoke her mind about a black woman, she’s racist and a bigot. See the double standards?
America needs to get rid of this in order for our society to be more united!