The online title of an op-ed in the New York Times recently caught our attention: “Racism Is Everywhere, So Why Not Move South?” The observation that the American South isn’t the backward place frequently portrayed by our entertainment industry is not a new one. Nor are appalling expressions of racism totally unheard of in non-Southern cities commonly thought to be progressive—Philadelphia, say, or Chicago. But the acknowledgment of these realities doesn’t ordinarily turn up in the Times, so we read the piece with interest.
The author—an African-American millennial who, according to her byline, “is at work on a book about black millennials”—introduces her essay with an anecdote meant to illustrate just how racially bigoted some allegedly forward-thinking Northern cities can be. “Last winter,” she writes, “while waiting for friends on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, I wandered in and out of the boutiques on Madison Avenue. I could feel eyes on me, following me, my big Afro, hoop earrings and even bigger book bag.”
You wince, prepared for some shameful slur. Maybe you also wonder what the earrings and the book bag have to do with anything, but you read on, prepared to feel ashamed of your country. “I went into a coffee shop—a place that specializes in espresso,” she recalls. “It was full of white men and women laughing and chatting. I took a seat at the counter and the barista asked for my order.”
By now you’re prepared for the worst. And, well, here’s what happened:
And that’s it. A barista in New York City was discourteous, if that. And if there’s any evidence that the espresso-jerk’s supercilious pose was racially motivated—as opposed to the reflexive snootiness of NYC coffee-slingers—the author fails to mention it. Isn’t it possible that he asks “Are you sure?” of anyone who orders an espresso, after having gotten complaints, from coffee-house newbies of any color, about the size of espresso cups?
What a happy and prosperous country we must live in when the slightest failure to show politeness and warmth elicits an essay in a national newspaper about the ineradicability of racial bigotry.
The op-ed goes on at some length to list the reasons many African Americans are migrating southward (it’s cheaper, the racism isn’t as bad as it used to be, etc.). The author herself, though, doesn’t want to live there. “I sort of hate the South” is the charming way she puts it. Which is too bad, because if she insists on equating bad manners with racism, she would surely be happier in Birmingham or Savannah than in Manhattan.
