Food fight!
From Toledo, the laugh capital of Ohio, comes this charming story about a Mother's Day outing at Golden Corral that went badly awry. The tale suggests a few words of advice:
1. To Sylvia Harris: when your child is acting like an animal and somebody says so, it is not a racial slur, no matter what the color of the speaker is. White people say that white kids are acting like animals, when they do. If you don't like it, train your children to not act like animals.
2. To Christine Lewandowski: I want to give you the benefit of the doubt on the knife thing, just because it's not typical behavior for 56 year old women -- though AYCE restaurants don't attract the classiest clientele. But when you're pissed off, put your knife down instead of gesticulating with it, because other people are going to look on it as a threat. Or did you really think you needed a knife to confront a young black woman, because you assumed she'd be armed? Don't talk big shit about your knife, and don't discipline other people's children, no matter how desperately they need it -- and don't scream at them when what they need is a calm potch on the heinie. Modeling irrational behavior is not the way to elicit rational behavior.
3. To Golden Corral: When a customer can't control her children, you move the offending party rather than those complaining. If they get pissed off and leave, they weren't the kind of customers you need.
4. To Stephen Robinson: a man does not countenence 90 year old ladies getting punched.
Comments
Posted by: James Chang
Posted on: May 15, 2007 03:45 PM
When I read the news about it, I can just keep on shaking my head. There will always be people ready to make a situation so explosive no matter how little the problem.
Posted by: jeffrey smith
Posted on: May 15, 2007 10:09 PM
I have yet to see a one year old in a restaurant who doesn't make some sort of fuss at some point during the proceedings.
Taking references to animals into racist remarks has been inflicted on me once. Actually I wasn't even referring to animals.
Me, to kid (of the African-American persuasion) running wild: Is this a playground? Do you see a jungle gym?
Mother: What do you mean, calling my child a monkey?
Me: Errh, excuse me? I told him not run around here like that.
Mother: You said jungle! You compared my children to monkeys!
Me (slightly enlightened): I said jungle gym, jungle GYM, like they have in the parks!
Mother persisted in her anger. Either she had never heard of jungle gyms or she was just incredibly stupid. After a moment or two, I realized she wasn't going to stop and walked off. Good thing she didn't know Yiddish, or she would have heard more than one bona fide racist remark as I left fuming to myself.
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: May 16, 2007 12:24 PM
"meshugganeh Schvartze" is descriptive, not racist.
There are other things you could have said to her, but they probably wouldn't have helped:
"Do you see a swing set?"..."What do you mean, calling my child a pervert?"
"Do you see a teeter-totter?"..."saying my child can't walk straight?"
Posted by: jeffrey smith
Posted on: May 17, 2007 12:46 AM
Meshugganeh was not the vort I used.
Back in college, I used the word schvartze in a sort of automatic way in front of a black friend of mine, who immediately told me off. To me, it's just the Yiddish word (which I explained to him, but he wasn't satisfied); to my friend, it was an insulting term.
Which is why I now restrict the word to things I really dislike. For instance, rap=shvartzemusik
Posted by: James Chang
Posted on: May 17, 2007 06:04 AM
I have to bet that the mother's background was educated in responding with a racism/discrimination accusation. It's pretty much institutionalized by now.
If I have to yell at kids to slow down, the parents probably would accuse me of calling them stupid or mentally retarded, or wait I mean mentally challenged, wait...educationally challenged...
Posted by:
Posted on: May 17, 2007 08:57 AM
Jeffrey:
Something from this list, maybe? (Warning: this site also contains, uh, pictures of pretty girls :-) ). So "black" is an insult now? How do you say "African-American" in Yiddish?
I agree with James: to a great extent, you have to be taught to take offence.