Posted on 11/03/2011 1:43:37 PM PDT by marshmallow
ATLANTA — One August night, two men walked into a popular restaurant attached to this city’s fanciest shopping mall. They sat at the bar, ordered drinks and pondered the menu. Two women stood behind them.
A bartender asked if they would mind offering their seats to the ladies. Yes, they would mind. Very much.
Angry words came next, then a federal court date and a claim for more than $3 million in damages.
The men, a former professional basketball player and a lawyer, also happen to be black. The women are white. The men’s lawyers argued that the Tavern at Phipps used a policy wrapped in chivalry as a cloak for discriminatory racial practices.
After a week’s worth of testimony in September, a jury decided in favor of the bar.
Certainly, the owners conceded, filling the bar with women offers an economic advantage because it attracts more men. But in the South, they said, giving up a seat to a lady is also part of a culture of civility.
At least, it used to be. The Tavern at Phipps case, and a growing portfolio of examples of personal and political behavior that belies a traditional code of gentility, have scholars of Southern culture and Southerners themselves wondering if civility in the South is dead, or at least wounded.
“Manners are one of many things that are central to a Southerner’s identity, but they are not primary anymore. Things have eroded,” said Charles Reagan Wilson, a professor of history and Southern culture at the University of Mississippi.
To be sure, strict rules regarding courtesy and deference to others have historically been used as a way to enforce a social order in which women and blacks were considered less than full citizens.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yet another example of behavior from the "Entitlement" class!
The bartender, IMO, was demonstrating manners that was sorely lacking in the two men who obviously belong to the “Entitlement” class.
My, my, such a dilemma for liberals. Who to side with?
I am from Indiana and considered it a charming compliment.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt on what your definition of "entitlement class" is in this situation.
I wouldn't have given up my seat either. My money is as good as that of those women.
I'd probably give up my seat if asked. Who wouldn't prefer a table and free food to sitting at the bar?
But I could understand a 50-year-old broken-down ex-athlete being peeved at giving up his place for a twentysomething woman who just walked in.
Age may be as important as sex or race here, and those who resent bossy, officious people may see something presumptuous, meddlesome, or intrusive in the restaurant policy. It's their property, sure, but some patrons do take offense at managements that are too interfering.
The basketball player, Joe Barry Carroll, was born in Arkansas and went to high school in Colorado and college in Indiana. Presumably his parents were Southerners.
The lawyer, Joseph Seth Shaw, went to Oglethorpe University before Howard University Law School. It's hard to say for sure, but I could almost bet he wasn't Northern-raised.
Atlanta is ridden with left wing libs. Don’t judge “the South” by Atlanta.
I’d give up my seat. Of course, my dad would STILL kick my butt if I didn’t.
Yuck! You know every one of their husbands has a hot young mistress! lol
I live in Massachusetts, and for a long time I would offer my seat on the train to women and the elderly.
The elderly will sometimes accept, but with reluctance. Often, the only way they will take my seat is if I get up and act like I am getting off at the next stop.
The women of nearly any age up to and equal my age not only never accept, and often act as if you threatened to rape them. That reaction completely creeps me out, so I no longer offer my seat to females (unless pregnant) but always will offer to any one older than me of any sex.
But I often don’t ask now, I just vacate the seat. I can’t stay sitting while someone older than me is standing.
I open doors for everyone, though...and I try to make a point of opening the car door for my wife when we drive somewhere. I think she still likes it...:)
My dad was Navy, and he taught me to address all men as sir, and all women as Ma’am.
Heh, when he was angry at us, and would say in his growly voice “Do you UNDERSTAND? if we answered “Yes.” he would advance his face about a foot towards yours and say in a deeper, more growly voice “Yes WHAT?”
Me, more meekly: “Yes Sir.”
How I love him and miss him.
I too live in Massachusetts, and find the manners of men to be quite gentlemanly. There are some women who are rather rude, but they are in the minority in my experience.
Wasn’t it the men who sued?
One thing I have found is that there are women HATE being addressed as “Ma’am” and tell me so (I work in a hospital, and part of my job is interacting with many people)
I usually apologize, and say that I was raised that way and just cannot shake the habit, and tell them it is, to me, a gesture of respect.
Many times, they think, and then say something like “Okay, then. You can call me “Ma’am”. But it makes me sound so OLD!”
I miss the concept of being gentlemanly. People think you are a dinosaur if you try to be, perhaps I am. I never thought I was old enough to be, but as I write this, it occurs to me. But I am not changing. I will still open doors for women and the elderly.
I miss dressing up to go out to dinner. There is no ceremony in going to even the most expensive restaurant. You can go into just about any restaurant wearing jeans and sweater.
I miss (as a man) the opportunity to talk to small children in public who aren’t yours. You just can’t do it any more, which I find to be as sad as anything. Even when my wife does, parents seem extremely edgy. I guess I understand why, but I don’t like it.
Sigh.
In this case, I don’t think they should have been “asked” to give up their seat.
If it isn’t free will, then it really isn’t gentlemanly manners. And that says more than anything about someone, though I understand completely not giving up your seat to the likes of many young women. They would excoriate you on one hand as being sexist, and on the other hand would give you a fake, sweet smile and take your seat while expressing to their friend out of earshot “What a putz. Gave up his seat. Glad I got it.”
Not all but there are some.
Elderly, or pregnant and you turn your back and fail to offer, you are a self-centered heel. No questions asked there.
Agree 100% on that point.
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