Recently, a new chicken-and-waffles spot opened in Nashville, the first of its kind in Music City U.S.A.

Having had positive culinary experiences at like-themed restaurants in Atlanta, I was thrilled to have this dining opportunity within a 15-minute drive. No more having to drive 300 miles to have the uniquely urban, historically black combination of breakfast-meets-dinner on one plate. “It’s about time,” I thought, as I read a recent feature on the new restaurant in a local newspaper.

To add fuel to my fervor, the new restaurant was black-owned, and I am big on supporting black businesses when possible. So throwing down some discretionary dollars on a combination I could have culled together at home for a fraction of the price was not a big deal. In fact, I viewed it as putting capital into the community.

But, as this outing taught me, that doesn’t mean our loyalty would necessarily be treated with respect.

Enter the concept of the “black pass,” defined by me as the idea that black entrepreneurs and businesspeople should somehow be held less accountable for the basic tenets that govern proper business stewardship – prompt and courteous service, cleanliness, and professionalism. Unfortunately, the chicken-and-waffles restaurant appeared to be operating with the “black pass” as its modus operandi.

Upon entering, we (my husband, my two kids and I) were greeted by the chatter of hostesses wearing circa 1987, light-brown contact lenses, who, for some unknown reason, did not want to seat us themselves, did not know where to seat us, and/or did not know the basic function of their jobs. After some back-and-forth among themselves, we were escorted to our table, a basic table with four chairs. Seeing that a booth was available, we asked to be seated there, as it was more comfortable and certainly more child-friendly for a couple with an infant in a carrier. But we were told that the owner didn’t allow children to sit in the booths because “they get food stuck between the cushions.”

Wide-eyed and struck with disbelief, we commented on the craziness of this likely-illegal and discriminatory policy and sat down at our designated table, hoping that our dining experience would be positive, despite these early clues that made us feel like we must have been on an episode of MTV’s Punked – so ridiculous was what we had already experienced. Our waitress brought out a high chair, turned it upside down, and nestled the infant carrier in it. Not until later did I see the warning printed on the high chair explicitly stating not to use the chair in this manner, as it could result in injury. If only they had let us sit in a booth …

Our waitress was decent enough, coming to our table after we had perused the menu for a few minutes and getting our drinks in quick order. When we ordered our food, she wrote down our orders and repeated it, something unexpected and appreciated, as servers often rely on a mental Rolodex that can often result in messed-up meals arriving at one’s table.

After about 20 minutes, my waffles and chicken arrived. But no one else at my table got a plate. Several more minutes passed and out came my daughter’s vegetables. Many more minutes later, as my waffles were well on their way to cooling, my husband still didn’t have a plate at all. Though I wanted us all to enjoy our meal at the same time, I had to go ahead and start on my waffles, or else I would have been asking them to put them back on the heater (or in the microwave). Shortly after I drizzled syrup on my waffles, I noticed a mini-marching band of ants making their way from the corner of our table toward my plate. Disgusted, I paused.

Our waitress soon returned with my husband’s plate. Finally.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Um, no, we have a problem. There are ants on our table,” my husband said.

I sat there, looking quite unpleased and in utter disbelief.

“Let me go get the manager,” she said.

Soon she returned with an elder, an older black man who looked like he could be the prototypical uncle at the family barbecue who dishes out dollops of knowledge in unpredictable spurts. We told him about our problem, even pointing to the ants.

“Well, there’s nothin’ I can do,” he said. “I got ants at my house like you got ants at yours, and ain’t nuthin’ I can do. We done had folks out to spray, but they keep comin’ in from the outside.”

My husband and I looked at him rather blankly. The manager then went on to crack some not-so-funny jokes that suggested the collective struggle shared by us all. In short, we were expected to give him the all-too-common “black pass,” by default. Because he was black, and we were, too, we should overlook the rudimentary expectations of conducting business and instead focus on the phenotypic traits we shared as a proxy for anything reasonable.

Shortly thereafter, a waitress came over and said, “I guess I’ll have to start putting the syrup in the refrigerator at night instead of leaving it on the tables.”

I could not believe it. We had ants crawling on our table and around our food, and the proprietor of the restaurant couldn’t – or wouldn’t – do anything about it. Surely our meal could have been comped; surely he could have earnestly apologized, so embarrassed that he would offer some concession; certainly he would bring out new food to us. Instead, he only offered to move us to another table, which, with a toddler, an infant in a carrier, a purse, a large diaper bag, several plates, three glasses and silverware would have been no small feat. So we sat there, picking at and chewing our food slowly, our joint indignation filtering its way from our mind into our digestive tracks, turning hunger into hesitancy; our hesitancy turning into horror, our horror turning into a hatred of the fact that all too many black businesspeople hold themselves and their black customers to a much lower standard.

We hear a lot about tokens in our community – the so-called black sellouts who have debased their color and culture in turn for currency, compromise and the coffers of the majority community. But there is another kind of tokenism plaguing us – one in which we tokenize ourselves and each other, expecting the “black pass” to create a hedge of protection against accountability, respectability and professionalism. We isolate and enumerate the destructiveness of the traditional black token, but are mum on the neo-tokenism between ourselves.

We won’t be going back to the chicken-and-waffles restaurant. We’d rather spend our highly budgeted, hard-earned money at establishments that provide good food and good service, even if it’s at a premium and (gasp) even if it’s white-owned.

BC Columnist K. Danielle Edwards is a Nashville-based writer, poet and communications professional. She is the author of Stacey Jones: Memoirs of Girl and Woman, Body & Spirit, Life and Death (2005) and is the founder and creative director of The Pen: An Exercise in the Cathartic Potential of the Creative Act, a nonprofit creative writing project designed for incarcerated and disadvantaged populations. Click here to contact Ms. Edwards.

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