denny's

[kelley <kcwalker@xxxxxxx>]

not to undermine your points terribly much, andy, but  the facts are
probably important.  the denny's incident involved mostly asian students,
7, and 2 black students.  when an asian stendent in the grp complained of
waiting while others were allowed to pass through, they were asked to leave
and escorted by sec. guards.  cops showed up fairly quickly.  7 of the
asian students were beaten by 20 white men while cops and security guards
stood by and allowed it to happen.  the store franchise was owned by a
black man and managed by mostly blacks.  i don't believe that there were
any other reports of similar incidents.  maybe you're confusing rest
chains?   is there another chain found wanting on this score? cracker
barrel had to do with discrimination against gays, right.  sambo's had to
do with the name.

in any event, the denny's incident wasn't really about seating.  what
should be and was initially the focus was the way in which they were
treated when they complained and then beaten in front of cops!
fascinating to me that the dynamics of internet communication has turned
this into an incident of racism against blacks!  it was the asian students
who were beaten.  no one beat the 2 blacks with them.

but let's speak a bit to wojtek's point which is, afaict, this:  the
fundamental problem is capitalism. racism is secondary.  when i was
managing a rest. not too far from the denny's you speak of i was in the
midst of hiring folks b/c we'd just opened that branch of the franchise.  i
interviewed a woman.  told one of the owners after the interview that i
thought she should go into the pool of hirees.  he looked at the app and
said,"no way.  she's from geddes st."  he pulled out a map and highlighted
all the streets that i should rule out, gave me a list of st name and said
not to hire folks from those areas of metro syr.  well, andy, she was
white.  true, most of the ppl living on geddes st and the other streets he
singled out are black.  that neighborhood, btw, is the 17th poorest in the
US.  this doesn't undermine your point so much as show how *structural*
racism works.

the owners were basically jerks and i walked two days later b./c of that
incident and the fact that they made the waitresses wear short shorts and
were, truly, sexist pigs worse than i'd ever encountered anywhere.

kelley
furthermore, and this is a point that sits somewhere

Andy wrote

>This is systematic; my personal experience is not novel.
>>(Although it is true that white males usually never notice the way they
are selected over blacks--no whites ever complained that Denny's was
priority seating and serving them while making blacks wait to be seated
and served. Given this, it is interesting to note that all of the Denny's
are undergoing a face-lift to be remade into 1950s-style lunch counters.)