This article originally appeared at WALReader.com, the website of our magazine.
It’s not a radical boast to say that racism has been losing steam. White nationalism is rightly and frequently taken to task. Just a mere decade ago, moronic statements from these lunatics were usually accompanied by some kind of explanation as to why the quote in question was foolish. Now, they can be presented without comment and the person making the statement will possibly find themselves without work or housing due to public backlash.
Sexism is also a losing campaign. Such adherents are desperately trying to link chromosome superiority of one sex over the other, only to be rebuked by the scientific method. Of course, both racism and sexism are far from eradicated; there’s some dipstick saying something of this kind virtually every day on some type of platform, but society has largely forced them into small cults of irrelevance.
So is it possible for things to get more bleak for racists and sexists aside from total extinction? Indeed, the answer to this question does not bode well for adherents to these garbage philosophies. Recently, a manager was fired for complying with a customer request to not have a “colored” server.
Story available here: www.theroot.com/olive-garden-manager-fired-after-complying-with-custome-1842119114
How is this a setback? Well, I work in the restaurant industry. I don’t want to say that racism and sexism is prevalent, that be be hypocritical in light of what I’ve just written. But, when you serve hundreds of thousands of guests every month, one or two are bound to be of dubious mind when it comes to tolerance and let it show. At least monthly, we have a guest that requests to not sit in a section served by a Latina. And, daily, we have guests that refuse to be served by a male. The manager usually has no idea this occurs; the host feels pressure to make the guest happy and can easily comply with the request. The server who benefits from the racist/sexism against a coworker is more than happy to take their money. Of course, we talk (“Can you believe those guys over there told the host they didn’t want a Mexican to help them?”) so we know who they are, but, until now, we’ve been under tremendous corporate pressure to comply.
But this new story establishes a precedent that will likely become more and more popular. In fact, even this story comes about one year after a staff was fired for asking a black family to move to accommodate someone who was uncomfortable with them (www.theroot.com/buffalo-wild-wings-employees-fired-after-racist-seating-1839604536). And these instance are going to become more and more common. The requests were always there, but now the threat of losing your job comes from complying with them.
“The Customer is Always Right” is an altruism of the food industry that won’t survive this new momentum. The market will no longer stand to cater to customer bigotry. And good riddance to it, I say.
