THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 2, 1994 TAG: 9406020439
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Marc Tibbs
DATELINE: 940602 LENGTH: Medium
For others of us, however, eating out can stir less predictable concerns.
{REST} Some friends and I spent an evening not long ago at a nationally franchised Norfolk restaurant. Almost as soon as we walked in, the host asked if we wanted seats in a smoking or nonsmoking section, and then ushered us past several empty tables into a rather secluded section of the dining room.
The consensus of our party was that we wanted to sit at one of the tables we'd just walked past, and almost without missing a beat, the host complied.
It was only after we were seated that things started to get peculiar.
For the next 90 minutes or so, we watched as practically every black patron that came in was taken to the same secluded table where we'd initially been led. Besides us, the few blacks not sitting in that area were those in interracial parties.
It was almost funny, at first. This had to be a coincidence and certainly not the policy of the restaurant, we thought. But as time went on, we could hardly believe our eyes.
As more black patrons were brought to this same section, our laughter, at one point, turned into an eerie silence.
Even so, at meal's end, most of us were inclined to give the restaurant the benefit of the doubt. But that was before the details of the Denny's fiasco were made public.
This restaurant wasn't a Denny's franchise, mind you, but knowing what we do now about allegations against that chain, it's a lot harder to dismiss our experience as an aberration.
``We have no policy and no practice to discriminate against anyone,'' a Denny's executive said after the company announced it would settle two class-action lawsuits and one Virginia complaint by paying a total of $54 million. ``If there were situations where there was (discrimination),'' said the exec, ``we apologize.''
In one of those unfortunate ``situations,'' ex-employees of a Denny's in Delaware said they were told to seat blacks at locations in the restaurant where they would not easily be seen. Other former employees tell horrifying tales of being trained to discourage black patronage by requiring blacks to pay for meals in advance or by closing a restaurant when managers thought there were too many black patrons.
And of all things, two Denny's in Northern Virginia refused service to the Martin Luther King Jr. All Children's Choir - the last group you'd ever expect to be discriminated against.
Denny's admits no wrongdoing, but is making donations to every ethnic cause imaginable in hopes that this matter will go away.
Flagstar Cos., Denny's parent corporation, has promised to spend $1 billion for jobs and minority contracts over the next seven years, and it has agreed to set up scholarships and trust funds for the kids in the choir.
I'm sure the managers of the restaurant my friends and I chose consider themselves fortunate. Who, after all, would ever have imagined this kind of bigotry at a place like Lenny's - uh Denny's?
by CNB