Reblogged from azspotBeyond this, there is something more that is troubling about this as well. It’s that the restaurant where this happened was a Cracker Barrel. In this case the restaurant clearly bears no responsibility for Mr. West’s actions although the people who failed to intervene were presumably customers on their way in or out. But Cracker Barrel does have a disturbing recent history of racism. Even into the twenty-first century they have practiced de facto segregation such as forcing black customers to sit in the smoking section (including those black customers who don’t smoke.) Even Chris Rock’s mother has experienced racist treatment at a Cracker Barrel, only three years ago.
So it may well be that there is an undercurrent to this attack: Troy West represents exactly the demographic that Cracker Barrel seeks to attract. Keep in mind that even the name is vaguely racist. “Crackers” (derived from ‘whip-crackers,’ a term that hearkens back to the worst memories of slavery) were the young southern men who during the worst of the Jim Crow days would keep blacks ‘in their place.’
Wait, so child-beating thugs are “exactly the demographic that Cracker Barrel seeks to attract”? That doesn’t seem like the greatest business model - nor particularly representative of the over-60 crowd I have normally seen there.
And what does it mean to be “vaguely racist”? Could it not be that cracker barrel refers to “emblematic of down-home ways and views” (c. 1877), or “the heart of the country store […] the spot where folks would gather to chat about weather and politics, or to swap stories, jokes, and gossip.”
If you want to denounce West’s actions, fine. If Cracker Barrel has unfairly treated minorities, work to prohibit it. But let’s try to keep accusations of racism serious here, not “vaguely racist” based on an entirely etymologically incorrect interpretation.
