September 22, 2009
How the Elite Negro is fucking it up for the rest of us.
Oh, really? So this makes sense in your world?
A few days ago, I was spending my entire afternoon on Twitter, as I do most days, when the topic of tipping came up. It wasn’t long before someone brought up the stereotype of black people refusing to tip. A lot of arguments went back and forth across my timeline, most discussing the validity of the stereotype and the different reasons why black people do or do not tip. Since it was Sunday, I was busy eating fried leftovers and trying to fight off the itis, so I didn’t pay too much attention until I saw a tweet from one prolific journalist. It read:
”When you don’t tip you contribute to the stereotype that Blacks don’t. Blacks arriving after you have to deal with your mess.”
I just kinda blinked at the screen. I mean, really. Read that shit again.
”When you don’t tip you contribute to the stereotype that Blacks don’t. Blacks arriving after you have to deal with your mess.”
Where do I even start?
I have an issue with famous people who say things that are this ignorant. Especially famous black people who may have a higher number of non-black fans (read: the uppity blacks on Twitter who are always trying to front like they ain’t uppity), fans who may take said misinformation and repeat it as if it’s the gospel truth.
I’ll make this plain: Chastising blackfolks for “contributing to the stereotype” is the uppity negro’s way of “making the rest of us look bad”. Not that you’ll ever get an uppity negro to believe it, but there it is.
I don’t care if my neighbor, my mama’s whole block, my high school graduating class, the entire north side of Tulsa, the southern half of Texas, or every biracial kid with a white mama and fucked up hair doesn’t tip. Y’all don’t speak for me, and I don’t for you. If a server groans inwardly and reluctantly approaches a black table, the burden is not on you, dear black person, to tip extravagantly or overcompensate for any other black person who doesn’t tip. The burden is on the server to get his damn mind right.
I’m not apologizing for my race. I’m never going to be ashamed for being black because some black people fuck up. If a black person ran over your cat, I’m sorry for your cat. (Well, not really – I hate animals. But I’m kinda sad for you, I guess.) If a black girl put her backpack in the seat next to hers at the lunch table and wouldn’t let you sit there, I’m sorry that this event occurred twenty years ago and still affects you as an adult. If a black man snatched the mic away from you while you were accepting the award for Best Female Video at the MTV Video Music Awards and humiliated you in front of everyone in America, I’m sorry that the band started back up before you could finish your speech. If a black family sat in your section at Applebee’s and only tipped $5 on a $50 bill, well, I’m sorry that you’ll have to split that $5 with the busboys and everybody in the kitchen.
What I’m not going to do is pay a “black tax” (the concept of over-tipping as a socially-conscious-and-therefore-superior black person) or apologize for my roommate who never tips more than three dollars, because I remain unconcerned with the stereotype. I don’t categorize every white girl with a black boyfriend as some stupid Becky with a fetish for getting played, even if I’ve seen it happen four hundred thousand trillion times. I don’t assume all Indians drink their lives away, or that all men are rapists, or that every black man with a non-black wife married her because he was concerned with too-dark babies and kinky hair.
But if I did – it’s not the job of every Native to make sure to remain sober around me so I won’t think anything bad about her race. It’s not the responsibility of that brother to say “Hey, just so you know, I married her because the dowry was low. Not because of colorism.” It’s not up to Becky to prove to me that her man ain’t cheating on her, and she has the GPS tracking records to prove it. It’s up to me to change my fucked up way of thinking. Anyone who tries to get you to change your actions for the sole purpose of working to disprove a racial stereotype, especially one as inconsequential as not tipping, is full of shit.
And for the record, I’m normally a 25%-30% tipper. Unless that bitch is white*.
*kidding, white people! don’t take my innanet away!
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