rant · moment 19 of 19
Dissecting an Eater Article About Restaurant Racism
from #208 - Let's Have A Party | The Tim Dillon Show · #208
8 min
Tim reads through and picks apart a former high school classmate's essay claiming the restaurant industry is racist, arguing most of her examples (like a waitress being called 'hey girl') aren't actually racism while a few incidents genuinely are.
- Tim on the letter-writer's boss being "shitty" but the restaurant owner's advice to not let people affect her wallet.
- Waiters and waitresses in chain restaurants aren't always the best and brightest, but generalizing the entire industry from Long Island examples is a stretch.
- The letter-writer describes a senior customer grabbing her and whispering something racist, then attempting to kiss her.
- Tim predicts the headline would have inverted blame: "black server abused elderly white man at a Long Island restaurant."
- Old guy was a horndog harassing women as fetishes; Tim questions whether a hot white woman or Asian woman would have avoided the same behavior.
- Coworker asked if she was a black Jew, then stayed openly racist to her despite her standing up for everyone.
- White women approaching the table saying "hey girl" and calling makeup "on fleek"—Tim questions whether that actually counts as racism.
- Tim compares it to calling out homophobia: if his example was just someone asking if he had a boyfriend, that wouldn't be real homophobia.
- I don't want any problems for her, but calling "hey girl" racism dilutes what actual racism is.
- The gun songs from white women with dreadlocks might actually be a legitimate problem, Tim concedes.
- If Tim was a waiter and customers started acting gay around him, he'd find it annoying but his bigger problem would be why they're doing it at all.
- Singing spirituals would be a real problem; that crosses a line.
- Singing "He Must Know Something" by staying silent and rolling would be racist.
- If customers started singing "Old Man River" when she walked over, that would be genuinely wrong and odd.
- You have to learn the difference: staged mockery of someone's identity is homophobic; just saying hello is not.
- You have to learn the difference between racist and not racist; someone saying hello the wrong way cannot be the problem.
- Tim was so nervous his server from the restaurants would mention him in the article, worried he'd said something inappropriate while drunk.
- A decently well-known comedian asked the server to get him cocaine and said "can you call a cousin or something"—comments he thought might be in the article.
- She's a good woman and Tim wishes no ill will toward her.