We had been driving since early that morning and still had a lot of hours to go. Everything blends in after enough hours in a car, and we didn’t even talk about what we might want for dinner. We just pulled into the first place we saw.
It was clean and bright inside, busy, but not full. We sat down at a table and waited for our server.
We waited.
And waited.
And waited.
"This is ridiculous," I said.
"Sure," he said, looking at me a little strangely.
"What," I asked.
"You know what’s going on here, right?"
"Yes I do. It’s called ‘poor customer service’ and it will be reflected in my tip.’"
"Look around. What do you notice about everyone in here?"
"I notice they are all eating food and being served and we aren’t. Did I miss anything?"
"Who’s the only African American here?"
"You are, but what does that have to do with anything? We’re not talking about race, we’re talking about how come we aren’t being waited on. If you want to talk about race, that’s fine, but first, let’s at least get our order in …"
Yep, right in mid-sentence, I finally got it.
I thought I had mastered everything one needed to know about racism. I had read books, gone to conferences, had deep, sometimes uncomfortable conversations about it. I thought I knew everything I needed to know. I thought I had graduated!
But I couldn’t see it until I was 10 hours into a road trip with a Black friend, and he spelled it out to me.
I couldn’t see, as a White person, that the racism that has been the cause of so much pain and sin is still an active, insidious presence in the world.
I guess I thought that when the visible, repugnant signs are absent—the burning crosses, the "Whites Only" instructions—then there is no racism present. Yet somehow we had stumbled into a "Whites Only" restaurant. In 2005. In the United States. I was stunned. My real education had just begun.
This story is embarrassing. My naivety is embarrassing. I hate to look dumb. But this is one of the most important stories in my life. It taught me more than anything else about race, racism, power, Whiteness, and so much more. I’m still being taught by it, 12 years later.
We eventually had dinner in that restaurant. My friend said, "We’re staying until they serve us or kick us out." The rest of our trip was uneventful. We didn’t have any more trouble in restaurants or anywhere else. Not that I could see anyway. But that’s the problem—I couldn’t see.
