The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

I have experienced prejudice on several occasions, but the most memorable and frequent occurrences have been at a little hometown diner.  It is owned by a Caucasian couple, and it has all Caucasian employees. The prejudice is very prevalent when the diner has a lot of Caucasian customers, mostly Caucasian men.  My co-workers and I frequent the diner at least twice a week.  The employees are very familiar with us and they know our usual orders and everything.  It is one of the employees who is a lot friendlier than the others.  She usually acts the same way all of the time.

In one particular case, we had pre-ordered our food and when we arrived it was already sitting on the table not covered.  We asked, how long had it been out. The waitress replied that they had just sat it out.  The diner was packed, so people were walking by the table and our meal was exposed to all of the elements. We all felt that it was inappropriate.  We wanted to know why the food couldn’t be held in the kitchen area until we arrived.  After several questions, the restaurant would not admit any wrong doing. Keep in mind at the time, the restaurant was filled with Caucasian’s.  We just sat down and ate our food.  That was the icing on the cake.  We do not frequent the diner much now, because that situation was beyond rude and disrespectful.

I feel in this day and time, we should all be treated equal if we all are paying customers.  Racism and prejudice is still very prevalent in American today.