W. Kamau Bell Claims He Was The Victim Of “Textbook Racism”
W. Kamau Bell said he was told to leave a restaurant in Berkeley, California by an employee because he’s black. According to Bell’s account which he wrote on his website, his wife and her friends were eating at the Elmwood Café when he saw them and decided to stop and show them a book he had just bought. Bell’s wife and her friends who were at the table are all white. When a restaurant employee saw him talk to the ladies, she motioned to him aggressively to leave the place.
Bell said, “It is the definition of prejudice. They looked at me, they judged me against other people, an idea they had in their head about what a person like me is going to do, and then they acted in stupidity and ignorance.”
Here’s how W. Kamau Bell, a resident of Berkeley and a San Francisco Bay area comedy fixture, summed up what happened at the Elmwood Café.
1. After buying the book and deciding not to get a bag for the book, I walk to the Elmwood Café.
2. I see my wife and her new mom friends all happily chatting and holding their babies while sitting at an outside table. It struck me how well my wife fit in with these new friends. (And not just because they were all white… although I think that may have made a difference to you.)
3. I walk over to them. My wife introduces me to them.
4. One of them asks about the book I am holding.
5. I show her the book.
6. Seconds later there is a loud series of knocks on the window of the Elmwood Café. They are coming from the inside of the restaurant.
7. I look up and see one of your employees staring daggers at me.
8. The employee then jerks her head to her left aggressively and I see her mouth say something to the effect of…
9. “SCRAM!”
Seriously. That is what happened. OK. Maybe it wasn’t exactly, “SCRAM!” Maybe it was, “GIT!” Or maybe it was, “GO!” Whatever it was, it was certainly directed at me. And it was certainly the kind of direction you should only give to a dog… a dog that you, yourself, own.
Or maybe you could yell that at a dog that you don’t own, but a dog that you are afraid is going to attack a group of moms and their babies.
And in a case of adding insult to insult, this all happened on W. Kamau Bell’s birthday. He even titled the article he wrote on his site about the incident, “Happy Birthday! Have some Racism from the Elmwood Café!”
Berkeleyside.com reported that the owner of the restaurant said he was “horrified and appalled” at what happened to Bell and his wife. Since Bell has gone public, he says that he has talked to the owner and wrote on his Facebook page that “My wife & I just talked to Michael Pearce, the owner of Elmwood Cafe, & we’ve decided to have a public conversation about this. Details soon.”
