“Americans have a right to express their opinions about how their government is being conducted.”
People like the owner of the Red Hen restaurant in the US have a right to express opinions about how government is being conducted and it is a moral obligation to tell those responsible that they are doing something reprehensible
In June, Stephanie Wilkerson, owner of The Red Hen, a restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, asked one of her customers — Sarah Sanders, the White House Press Secretary — to leave. Wilkerson’s action has generated considerable controversy, and she has paid for it dearly.
United States President Donald Trump, in a tweet, called her restaurant “filthy”. Right-wing conspiracy theorists have blamed her for statewide child abductions. Her business has been severely disrupted, and she and her family have been targeted for online bullying. Demonstrators, among them self-styled “vigilantes” and KKK members, have gathered outside the restaurant, discouraging patrons from eating at (as one hand-lettered sign said) “the commie cluck”.
In private, and in the press, Americans have discussed whether a moral response justifies a so-called breach of civility and good manners. It’s been suggested that such incidents might backfire and further enflame Trump’s base. Wilkerson has also had her defenders, most visibly and vocally Congressional Representative Maxine Waters, who, in turn, was warned, by Trump, to “be careful” about encouraging her supporters to “push back”, to confront and heckle his associates.
The speed, the virulence and the violence with which this story has played out is yet one more example of how America’s leadership has wilfully turned every public discussion of ideas into the equivalent of trying to speak with someone’s fist clenched, inches from your face. America has lost all notion of balance and proportion if it feels that asking someone to leave a restaurant merits a death threat, and a warning to “be careful”. That alone is scary, and characteristic of the alarming way in which Americans are being schooled to cave in to every threat of vengeance and rage.
Myself, I think that Wilkerson showed remarkable restraint. It’s all too easy to imagine how impossible it would have seemed to ask your wait staff to fill the water glasses and describe the dessert offerings to a woman who, night after night, has been knowingly lying to the press and the American people. And when those lies have been exposed, she has mockingly dismissed anyone who seems to care about the truth. When a reporter asked Sanders if she, as a mother, had any feelings about the migrant families being torn apart — children being ripped out of their parents’ arms and sent to camps — she accused the reporter of showboating, of bringing up the subject to get more air time.
It’s easy to imagine the adrenalin that must have been running through Wilkerson’s system as she did something that, she must have known, would have consequences. (One wonders if she could have imagined how vile and punitive those consequences would be.) A simple polite request was made, and politely acquiesced to. Sanders left, followed by her entourage, though they had been told that they could stay. Their cheese platter remained on the table — the bill was “on the house”, the owner said.
I’d like to imagine that, had I been Wilkerson, I would have done things slightly differently. I might have asked Sanders about the missing children, separated from their parents. What does she plan to do about reuniting them with their families? I would have liked to ask her if she really didn’t believe that migrants are human beings, like herself.
But maybe that would have been the wrong strategy, too. Such questions would have been audibly tinged with accusation and hostility. Perhaps it would have been more useful to ask her less leading questions. Tell us, Ms Sanders, what’s your favourite part of your job? It might have been interesting to try and find out how someone can work, every day, to promote hatred.
Crimes against humanity
Wilkerson did what needed to be done: the best that she could do. We are under no legal or moral obligation to discuss the wine list or describe the nightly specials to someone who is complicit in crimes against humanity. Our moral obligation is to tell them that they are doing something reprehensible, even if, at the moment, they are on their own time, off the clock. The caged migrant children crying for their parents in detention centres aren’t spending their weekends eating gourmet meals in pretty Virginia towns.
A decade ago, when I was visiting a small former Communist country, a US government official invited me and my husband to dinner. Also present at the dinner were four other writers, men and women of different ages, all more or less personable and more or less politely interested in our views about the (then recent) Barack Obama election. The next day, local friends asked who had been at the dinner. They paled when we told them. Three out of four of our fellow guests, they said, were “murderers” — government agents instrumental in the imprisonment and death of their fellow writers, whose only “crime” was to have criticised the current dictatorship. As far as I could tell, the American diplomat had no idea who they were, though surely he should have known.
I felt as if I had not only been misinformed but tricked into acting as if criminality were no big deal. What were the loss of a few dissidents compared with sharing a pleasant diplomatic dinner? Treating others with odious cruelty, sending them to their deaths was all in the game, an easily overlooked and forgiven bad patch in (also recent) history. No reason for us to show bad manners.
If we’d been told who those people were, we would have left as soon as we found out who was, along with us, enjoying the cold watercress soup.
America has lost all notion of balance and proportion if it feels that asking someone to leave a restaurant merits a death threat, and a warning to ‘be careful’. That alone is scary, and characteristic of the alarming way in which Americans are being schooled to cave in to every threat vengeance and rage.
People need to be able to speak up and say what they think, to quote Maxine Waters, “in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station”, anywhere we see them. It’s as American as apple pie to hold public officials accountable for their actions.
Need to speak up
For anyone with a conscience, that experience must be what it is like to serve dinner to — or have dinner with — any of Trump’s officials. We need to be able to speak up and tell them what we think, to quote Maxine Waters, “in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station”, anywhere we see them. It’s as American as apple pie to hold public officials accountable for their actions. That is part of their job, what they signed on for. Their obligation to represent Americans is the condition of their employment, especially when their duties require them to uphold and implement morally indefensible positions.
Changing their minds seems unlikely; no one imagines that Sarah Huckabee Sanders will mend her ways as a consequence of being denied service in a Virginia restaurant. Still, we need to speak up — if only for ourselves, to remind us of who we are and what we believe in. We have a right to express our opinions about how our government is being conducted, and no one should be able to warn Americans to be careful.