A white restaurant patron sees a group of black customers enter an establishment, then asks the restaurant to remove the black group because the white patron feels “uncomfortable” by their mere presence. Sounds like a typical event from the 1960’s, right? Wrong! This happened just last month in 2013!!
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Michael Brown and 24 of his friends and family went to the Wild Wing Cafe in North Charleston, South Carolina, to celebrate the last night of a cousin visiting from out of town. The group waited patiently and quietly for 2 hours for a table to become available. However, when their table was finally ready and the group was already seated, they were immediately asked to leave because a white patron felt “threatened” by them.
According to Brown, “She (the shift manager) 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.”
The group left the restaurant and called the Wild Wing corporate office to complain. They received no reply. Michael Brown then decided to take the matter to social media and posted details of the unpleasant night on the restaurant’s Facebook page, saying:
I will never go to Wild wings cafe in N. Chs again! We (Party of 25 family and friends) waited 2hrs, 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.
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Once the story went viral, Wild Wing Cafe suddenly became interested and was magically willing to speak with Brown. They posted the following response to Facebook:
In light of recent discussions, we would like to make clear that Wild Wing Cafe welcomes and caters to customers of every background, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or age. We are proud to be a place where people from all walks of life can meet, relax and have a good time. Our corporate policy and ethics won’t stand for anything otherwise. We have been in contact with the person who has made us aware his experience was less than satisfactory, and are continuing to speak with him to reach a solution.
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Realizing that Michael Brown had been a regular customer of the restaurant and that the situation was quickly becoming an embarrassment, the restaurant offered Brown and his 24 friends one free meal for their trouble. But Brown brushed off the offer of a few wings and 2 sides, saying “We didn’t go to the restaurant looking for a free meal. The issue is much bigger than that.”
