Waffle House supports racism and sponsors police brutality



WHAT HAPPENED

Yet another incident of racial profiling and police brutality was added to the growing list on Sunday, April 22, 2018, when three Alabama police officers harassed and assaulted Chikesia Clemons, a Black woman, in a Waffle House restaurant.

The issue here is that unsurprisingly, Alabama’s Saraland Police Department wholeheartedly supports unjust behavior, and believes that when their officers placed hands around the Clemons’ throat and exposed her breasts, they were simply acting appropriately to the assumed “threat” she caused.

We’ve always known that police culture, and more specifically the prison industrial complex, were never proponents of #BlackLivesMatter. Now, Waffle House joins the clan, proclaiming the police’s decision to assault Clemons appropriate behavior, stating that the above cellphone video, which was recorded by Clemons’ friend, didn’t capture all the details of the incident.

Waffle House is just as a racist as the people who manage it. According to a Waffle House employee, they were told to phone in Alabama police, orders from their manager, because the manager was uncomfortable with two [BLACK] women and a [BLACK] man “acting drunk and disorderly.” However, what is “normal” behavior to a quick service chain restaurant that’s open 24/7, often attracting night-scene folks looking for a place of alcohol refuge?!

It is impossible to see Clemons’ interaction with the police as not being racially charged.

CAPITALISM TO BLAME?

This offense brings up the question of value, and how value is created from a racist, capitalistic lens. Police and Waffle House corporate executives who are defending what they call police intervention because they believed that the value of their business decreases by the conduct of their clientele. The economic issue with Waffle House’s stance on the matter, however, fails to acknowledge the inherent crux of their business model as a 24-hour quick-service restaurant.


If a local Tennessee rapper, by the name of Mr. Jelly Roll, can create a whole mixtape named "Whiskey, Weed & Waffle House," imagine all the odes that regular customers would make to a cheap 24 hour pretty decent breakfast joint to offer 2am satiety to empty-alcohol-filled stomachs.

With a 24-hour cheap quick-service chain like Waffle House, the customer target market are working-class night owls, who drink and smoke weed, primarily on weekends, and predominantly Black. This might be a sweeping generalization, or this also just might be the truth given its geographic segment, which is predominantly located near black communities in the South.

Class and geographic specific target markets inevitably bring up questions of racism and racial profiling that happens every day. It should be no surprise that this Capitalism is the applied foundation of the way we have created, accessed and standardized value in the United States. Thus, if it looks like a threat to business, it must be eradicated.

There are emotional implications to the way the manager responded to a group of Black people, she felt was acting irresponsibly.

WHAT WE CAN DO


When racism has economics on its side, it cannot be defeated. Our goal is to also hold the economy accountable for enabling racists to justify their deleterious behavior as “protocol standards” for handling social interactions that make them feel powerless and uncomfortable. As such, all lives in the United States should boycott Waffle House, to reflect its impact and harm on its own target customers.

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