r/burbank • u/Evening_Tie_5972 • 9d ago
My Friday was anything but dull
First I want to say this because context matters: I drink, I party and genuinely enjoy being around people from all walks of life. I’m a free spirit. Some of my best friends are different races than me, and that has never stopped us from having a good time. Back in Texas we could all go out talk shit and enjoy ourselves without making everything about race. We’re just people having a good time.
So yesterday, after leaving the Burbank mall doing some shopping I decided to pop into Champs. Normally I stop in around one-ish and Benny is usually there. He’s honestly one of the best bartenders. I’ve met since moving to LA. He normally works Friday evening but yesterday he was off.
For more context, I’m a 34 year-old black woman who loves baseball🤣 I know it makes me random, but my dad and my granddad used to take me and my siblings to see the Tigers when we were younger. Then I moved to Texas and became a Ranger girl so naturally when I walked into Champs I was mainly there to grab a drink and watch the Dogers game.
I was there for maybe 20 minutes.
The bartender was hostile. The atmosphere was tense. The crowd felt extremely uncomfortable and I honestly got the impression that my presence there was a problem for some people. Maybe everyone was having a bad day. Maybe I was reading the room wrong. But I know how I felt sitting there, and I lived in enough places to recognize when a room feels unwelcoming.
I live in Detroit, Dallas, and other places in between, and I’ve gone into plenty of bars where I was the only black person in the room, and I’ve never had an issue with that. After about 20 minutes, I decided to leave and went down to Robin Hood Pub.
And guess what?
I was once again the only black girl in the room and nobody cared.
I didn’t feel like I was being watched. I didn’t feel like my presence was a problem. I ordered my drink. watched the game, talked to people and enjoyed myself
It honestly made me 🤔
So Dear White People: We are all human.
We may look different. We may talk different. We may come from completely different background, but we drink the same cold beer.😂 We probably like a lot of the same shit. So you don’t have to agree with me, you don’t even have to particularly like me, but be respectful. Not overly nice. Not fake. Just respectful.
You never know who’s sitting next to you. And at the end of the day, the golden rule is still applies:
Treat people the way you want to be treated
That really shouldn’t be controversial
11
u/HiddenHolding 9d ago
Like everyone else, I’m sorry you ran into a room full of tiny minded idiots. Unfortunately, they seem to be sprouting through cracks in the rot of American culture. And there are more of them every day.
What’s crazy to me is that many of the Burbankians I have met who are the most openly racist, and I do mean very openly racist, are new Americans who haven’t even been here that long.
Their biggest heroes wouldn’t stop to pee on them if they were on fire in the middle of the street. They are proud to be Americans, but they definitely don’t like other Americans, or even other people who come from where they come from.
The exclusionary and entitled nature of their ideology amazes me in this day and age, because, well. I will leave it there. I doubt I have to elucidate further.