My wife and I have been mourning the demise of our favorite restaurant. It's still in business, but we can't bring ourselves to go there anymore. It used to be a vibrant, fun, and quirky place where the waiters got to know you by name. They made outstanding food and brewed their own beer. They still brew beer, but the food is subpar, the wait staff is non-existent, and the service is spotty at best. A once-great menu has been reduced to a two-sided flyer. And that's too bad. We loved the place. I guess I can still go back and get my growler refilled.
The owner of that restaurant also owns a Mexican place adjacent to the restaurant mentioned above. We tried it and encountered cold food and lax service. And the kitchen staff all went on break simultaneously and walked into the dining room. They immediately began to entertain themselves and the customers with armpit-fart noises. Seriously, how hard is it to put Spotify on Bluetooth? We aren't picky diners, and Mrs. Brown and I both waited tables in the past, so we tend to be big tippers. Sometimes, restaurants fail. It is a tough business. It can be hard to get good employees, even if they don't make armpit-fart noises.
Recently, a debate arose in Huntington, W.V., over the problems that Crisppi's chicken was experiencing. The restaurant, the product of an investment by NFL star Randy Moss, had been struggling and was the subject of bad reviews. Local TV station WCHS reported that some of the complaints were that the store did not offer ketchup and only accepted touchless payments.
Well, if the customers want ketchup, give them ketchup. As to touchless payments? Like it or not, that is the direction in which commerce is going. Touchless payments offer an extra level of hygiene and are undoubtedly easier when it comes to reconciling the till at the end of a shift. On the rare occasion I stop at McDonald's, not only do I have to order at a kiosk, but the place only accepts credit or debit cards. It is what it is.
The manager, named Kurt, attributed the restaurant's woes to another issue. WOWK quoted him as saying:
The entire community is filled with negativity. Being an African American company, this is what we deal with on a regular basis. We are not the other color, which is unfortunate to you guys, because if we were the other color, I’m sure there would be a lot more respect.
According to the station, Kurt tried to address the complaints and met with local podcaster David Williams to discuss the issue:
"It’s an issue of respect, and they felt like they weren’t getting respect. But the problem is that they disrespected people in the process of getting their respect. That’s something they hurt some feelings of people in Huntington. Understandably, there is some animosity now once you attack somebody,” Williams said.
During the live interview, Kurt said, “What did our community do? They tore us down, like they always do. The African American community, we are known to tear each other down. The Chinese is not known for it, the Europeans. Nobody else is known for it.”
Kurt continued, “This ain’t being racist when I’m talking. We talking about we need to come together, our African American community. This was the time to get on the air, and I had to say that to get the attention, then boom, well done. Now I can take my peace that we’ve been disrespected since we’ve been here within our own community, our own race.”
You can see a news report here.
Related: Oakland's Lastest Absurd Outrage
I looked up the restaurant's reviews, and yes, when I checked, two reviewers had posted overtly racist comments. One of those had a swastika rendered in Confederate-flag stars and bars as an avatar, so there is no getting around that. Others complained about the food, the atmosphere, and the service, while some felt that the manager was playing the race card. Other reviewers were quite complimentary about the food, the restaurant, and the service.
Kurt can hardly be blamed for mentioning racism. After all, racism is the coin of the realm these days. This is not to say that racists do not exist. Of course, they do. We have all known or met racist people. Mr. Confederate-Flag-Swastika is proof of that. While we need to root out racism, we need to keep in mind that racists are not as ubiquitous as the culture would have us believe. Oddly enough, the last time anyone asked me if I wanted to hear a "black joke" was back in my liberal days. And it was a fellow liberal who asked me. And no, I didn't want to hear it. Make of that what you will.
Aside from Joe Biden and our government telling us that white supremacy is the biggest threat we face today (when climate change is not the topic of discussion), here is a glance at some very recent headlines:
- National Review reports that the UCLA Medical School recently and abruptly canceled the lecture “Beyond Magic Bullets: Whiteness as a Structural Driver of the Opioid Crisis.” The topic is now “BioSocial Futures: Towards a Symbiotic, Community Ecology of Health.”
- The College Fix notes that the St. Louis Park Public Schools wants to hire an assistant superintendent who “can actively listen for both spoken and unspoken racial concerns” and “examine the presence and role of ‘Whiteness’ in systems and structures.”
- The Fix also ran a story about the community garden at UC Berkeley, which is only open to students of color on Saturdays. A farm manager allegedly texted, “Saturdays are exclusively BIPOC. Exceptions have only been made for events that are BIPOC-centered and with plenty of advance notice and planning.” The university said it was unaware of the situation and would conduct an investigation.
- According to Campus Reform, Fresno Community College recently opened a Social Justice Center:
“The mission of the Social Justice Center is to engage the campus and greater community in order to cultivate and promote social justice and equity on campus, locally, nationally, and globally,” the center’s mission statement reads. The center will also serve as a “research and resource center” for social justice causes, and will work to “advocate for social justice wherever and whenever needed, in order to better serve, educate, and empower our students and our community.”
Then, there is the issue of the DEI and CRT agendas that have been hammered into the public's head in recent years.
Small wonder that Kurt would suspect racism as the main reason behind the negative reviews. If that is the prevailing doctrine that greets Americans at every turn, how can we expect anything else?
Again, there are real racists out there. And they come in all colors. And if Americans could ever honestly dialogue with one another without someone whispering "racism" in their ears, we might start seeing each other as human beings as opposed to enemies. But the narrative provides too many with power, money, and social credit to allow that to ever happen.
