This story goes out to all of my fellow Americans who are under the impression that a post Obama America is a country where racism, and predjudice no longer exists, and to the SCOTUS who seem to think that racism is part of our ugly past, and not our perilous present.
Michael Brown and a group of friends were celebrating his cousin’s last day in Charleston, South Carolina last month at the Wild Wing Cafe. After waiting 2 hours with his party of 25, the shift manager told him that there was a "situation".
Brown said, “She said there’s a situation where one of our customers feels threatened by your party, so she asked us not to seat you in our section, which totally alarmed all of us because we’re sitting there peaceably for two hours. Obviously, if we were causing any conflict, we would have been ejected out of the place hours before.”
Brown explains that while talking to the shift manager, someone in his group began videotaping the conversation, which is when the manager became upset and refused to seat them.
He explains, “I want to be clear with you. I said so you’re telling me I have to leave. She said I have a right to deny you service. I said so you’re asking me to leave because you’re upset because he was recording you, after we’ve waited for two hours, and after you’ve already pretty much discriminated on us, and she answered yes.”
After making several calls to the corporate office in Mt. Pleasant. But his calls were never returned, so he took to Facebook with this post on Thursday.“
I will never go to Wild wings cafe in N. Chs again! We (Party of 25 family and friends) waited 2 hrs, patiently and were refused service because another customer (White) felt threatened by us. This type of racial discrimination is unacceptable and we have to put a STOP TO IT. The manager looked me dead in the face and said she was refusing us service because she had a right to and simply she felt like it. DO NOT SUPPORT THIS ESTABLISHMENT… PLEASE SHARE THIS POST… We need your help.
Suddenly Brown got the restaurant’s attention.
Debra Stokes, the chief marketing officer for Wild Wing Cafe said, ”We got alerted through social media, so we always encourage our customers to respond to us or to comment on our social media pages.”
She said she spoke with Brown, “We had a conversation. It was a really good conversation. He and many of his family and friends were there about a month ago, and they are regular customers of ours. So, they were having a going away party, and they just didn’t receive the experience that they have come to know and love.”
Brown said that an apology was offered and a free meal for the entire group, but he’s not completely satisfied.
He said, “We weren’t coming there for a free meal. When we came there that night, we were coming to patronize the business. This is not a situation where you can just give us a free meal and everything is ok because it’s deeper than that.”
Free food is not a band aid for discrimination. It fact, when it is implied the someone's pride and dignity can be bought with free food, it's almost like pouring salt into a wound. I've gotten free food for getting the wrong order in a restaurant. Surely these people's embarrassment is worth more than being given French fries free, because you ordered onion rings
PR
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