…aka Dining While Black.
An article in Sunday’s Washington Post (and in the New York Times from 8/22/10) describes the discovery and subsequent efforts to publicize the history around a book that was published from 1936 until the passage of The Civil Rights Act in 1964. The Negro Motorist Green Book or “The Green Book” was a travel guide for black folk brave enough to travel around the United States and neighboring areas and listed a bevy of establishments that were safe or considered welcoming for black people to patronize during the Jim Crow era.
The Negro traveler’s inconveniences are many and they are increasing because today so many more are traveling, individually and in groups.
Inconveniences. Now that is certainly a flowery way of explaining that you take your life into your own hands should you attempt to travel without The Green Book in hand. My hometown lists merely one restaurant and my current city of residence, three. Taking this scarcity of safe dining havens into account, is it any wonder that the art of creating amazing, mouth-watering dishes from practically nothing was cultivated and passed down from generation to generation of black folk? I think of my parents who were raised in the South during this time period. I think of my mother’s father who was an excellent cook in his own right to the point where his talents were tapped and celebrated in Europe during World War II. I remember watching him fry just-caught catfish and baking his wonderful biscuits in the kitchen of my mother’s childhood home. That is the only memory I have of him as he died when I was a toddler. Special occasions that dictated special meals occurred mostly in the home for them, and I must say that I think my parents carried that way of thinking with them, for my parents (my mother especially) were not particularly adventurous when it came to dining out. Places such as Applebee’s and Golden Corral were about as fancy as it got, save for my parents’ anniversary dinner at a spiffy local steakhouse which we as children were definitely not welcome.
When I was about 12 or 13, my parents took us back to the scene of my father’s first military posting in Anniston, Alabama. They called one of the first black members of the city council there a good friend and we stayed with him. I didn’t understand it then, but now I remember my mother’s reluctance when he suggested that we go with him to a local diner/casual family eatery that had been open for decades. She had memories that she wouldn’t share, but with some nudging from my father, we went. Lo, and behold, Mr. Dunn was such a celebrated entity that the restaurant refused to accept payment for our meal; he instead dropped the money into a jar collecting for charity next to the cash register.
But over the years, I began to understand my mother’s trepidation. While stereotypes are indeed a horrible thing, the truly awful thing is that they are often rooted in truth, or in the misconception of behaviors of a particular group. It was sometimes an unintended consequence of my social group’s lack of racism that I would find myself in situations where I was the only-and often unwelcome-brown face in the room. My friends figured that if they knew me as a good and fine person, then everyone instantly would. It was then that stereotyping would rear its ugly head: black people are cheap and don’t tip no matter how good the service. If there’s a problem with the meal, they will “go ghetto” and make an unpleasant scene. If you don’t have the kind of food to which they are accustomed, they will give you, the server, an extremely hard time. They are messy, sloppy, smelly people and their presence will drive your good, white, paying customers away. They can barely read and won’t understand the menu. Black people do not understand fine dining etiquette and will embarrass themselves and others. They dine in packs with wild, unkempt, rude children. I could go on, but I will tell you that I have been in restaurants where I’ve seen the fear and occasional loathing in a server’s eyes as I approached alone or with friends. How many times did I have to say soothingly “it’s alright” or “yes, I understand what -insert cooking prep term here-means”. As a military child, I was taught the ins and outs of dining with a multiple cutlery setting early on and to this day it takes a setting for royalty to stump me. But in spite of this, I have had dining companions and even banquet servers sidle up nervously beside me and unobtrusively point out which fork I should use.
It is why even now that when I peruse the website of a potential new dining spot, I look for brown faces among the clientele. Why when I am in a new restaurant I pay very close attention to how other non-white patrons are treated. The fact that I am in an interracial marriage adds further reason for my antennae to be raised, because then it’s something to look out for should we dine at an establishment where the clientele is predominantly black.
I understand that my parents had a hard row to hoe when you come in the front door and people are only used to seeing you come from the rear as the help.
When I was performing a great deal while still in college, I spent a lot of time on the party circuit during the holidays. It’s interesting being a performer at high falutin’ house parties. You’re not quite a guest, but you’re not quite the help either. One experience that stands out in my mind was an event an the insanely large home of the dean of the school of humanities. It was my first real contact with folks who were professional servants and it unnerved me greatly. You don’t want to believe that there would still be such a wide gulf between the classes in modern times and modern cities and I was in for quite a rude shock. I was all gussied up in my formal wear and was taking a break between sets in the solarium when I ran into an older black man in a classic butler’s tux. One that would not distinguish him as anything other than service staff. He was very sweet to me, at first assuming that I was a guest and being all solicitous, then when he realized that I was the entertainment, his manner changed a little. His posture relaxed a little, his speech became more colloquial and conspiratorial as we talked about the folks attending the party. It was in the middle of this that an elderly white woman dripping with what were probably heirloom jewels swept in on a cloud of very expensive perfume and interrupted without apology-as if there was no one else in the room besides me and I obviously wasn’t doing anything-mock begging me to sing again. “What will it take to get you to sing something from Cats??” she pleaded, her hand bird-like on my arm, barely touching. I looked at her, then looked at my new acquaintance who had immediately snapped back into service mode, winked imperceptibly at him and said, “If you, yourself, bring me a drink and keep them coming and I’ll sing whatever you want.”
She blinked, then looked toward my new friend who had assumed the “I am here but not listening, lo, I am invisible” look on his face and was fading away to gather empty glasses. I smiled glowingly. She laughed nervously at first, then agreed and we swept back into the main room to the piano. Where she somehow miraculously produced my fresh cocktail. The rest of the evening as long as she was still able, I’d catch her eye from across the room and wave my empty glass and off she’d go…as long as I kept the tunes coming. I think she found it fun.
“Memory” never tasted so sweet, especially when I’d see the butler’s shoulders twitching with mirth.
Midnight…not a sound from the pavement…
Julie
missterioso
Catherine
griddlelicker
