Food and Racism: The Snapping Point

It's been a while since I made a substantive post. Here's a draft I've had kicking around for a while. Unlike my other food and racism anecdote post, it doesn't reflect so well on me.

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This is an anecdote from my experiences waitressing in Miami during college in the early 90s. Since I'm Asian and there are so few Asians in Miami, I had an uncommon perspective on Miami's race and class hierarchy; as a US citizen and college student, albeit non-"Anglo", I was a relatively privileged outsider with an average amount of social mobility.

For about six months I worked at a trendy café in a tourist district. The cooks were Cuban-American. Cooks are a fairly high status position in restaurants. The other servers were a tightly-knit bunch of young illegal Swedish immigrants. Other part-time Anglo servers floated in and out, but the Swedes were willing to put up with more abuse because of their immigration status.

Everywhere I worked, cleaning positions in Miami were held by immigrants with the lowest economic and social capital. This generally meant non-Cuban Caribbeans and Hispanics. The full-time busser responsible for all major cleaning duties at the small café space was a recently arrived Jamaican. She was a very short and powerfully built woman, looking to be in her 50s, who always kept her eyes downcast and rarely spoke. We were both smokers, and I sometimes chatted with her during smoke breaks. She told me she had several children and grandchildren, not all of them in America. Our most memorable conversation was when something unknown triggered a quiet rant about African-Americans; in her opinion they were all violent drug-addicted thieves and could not be trusted.

The owner was an abrasive and dictatorial Italian. He once called a special staff meeting only to alternately glare and scream at us for 15 minutes straight. I remember him yelling "WORKING WITH YOU PEOPLE IS A NIGHTMARE, I TELL YOU, IT'S A NIGHTMARE". A few months into my tenure he stopped spending time at the restaurant and hired a French assistant manager to take over duties. The Frenchman's name was Philippe, and he was a truly miserable specimen of humanity. Because we were short-staffed, 90% of his job duties consisted of serving and cleaning and cashiering, so he didn't have nearly as much time to boss people around as he obviously wanted.

Philippe believed he was at the very top of the caste system. He wanted everyone else to believe it too. He was short and pudgy and had a complex about it. The Swedes were fellow white Europeans, so they were perhaps his closest threat, and he always reinforced their subordinate status by making nasty little jokes at them. His behavior towards everyone else was less subtle. We were scum.

The Cubans were skilled workers who probably had better job security than Philippe, so they didn't bother taking him too seriously. One cook pretended he couldn't pronounce the French "Fee-LEEP" and kept saying the Spanish "Felipe" or "Feh-LEE-Peh" instead. This would send Philippe into paroxysms. Of course, the Swedes and I all began to copy this passive resistance.

Me: "Felipe, we're out of napkins."
"My name is Philippe. Philippe! Why can't you pronounce my name correctly? Are you an idiot? It's not hard. My name is FRENCH. Not Spanish. Philippe! Not Felipe. Philippe!"
Me: "Sorry, Felipe."

His worst abuse was reserved for the Jamaican woman, and for reasons of his own he reserved it for when I wasn't around. Of course, as a normal day to day routine, he would tell her she was wrong and slow, as he did to the other workers... but the Swedes told me that they were starting to hear him say flat-out racist insults, introduced with "you people" statements.

At this point readers may be wondering what the hell I was doing staying at this job. I'd simply developed a high tolerance for racist and sexist digs... some of it directly towards myself, some of it towards others. I was very young and I figured it was just the price you had to pay to work in the restaurant industry. I knew it was wrong, and I spoke up sometimes, but not when it would endanger my jobs. Back then, I didn't think I had a choice. Looking back, I had more choice than others did. I'm also incredibly thankful I have a lot more choice now than I did back then.

One day I walked into a hushed café. The Swedes and Cubans dished the dirt. Last night, as the Jamaican woman was mopping along the length of floor, Philippe had followed right behind her, leaning over her shoulder, keeping up a steady stream of monotonous invective. "You people are so stupid. So slow. The black people. Why are you so stupid."

She snapped! Drawing on the strength of rage, she turned around, picked him up off his feet and hurled him over the counter. He skidded over the counter, landed on top of the glass cake display stand and threw out his back. She was gone, he was in the hospital. No charges were pressed. We were awestruck and wished we could have given her a medal.

Philippe returned to work a much more subdued assistant manager.

I was fired shortly thereafter because the Italian owner's wife saw me one day and didn't like the way I was wiping off the tables, or something like that.