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 ...
That's what I thought, too. I wonder if the two men grew up in the South.
Why? Some women want all the rights and perks of men but not the responsibilities. Just like some other groups...they want special rights, not equal rights.
I have a daughter, her husband and three children in Huntsville Alabama. When they are in trouble, they line up, face eye to eye, and say YES SIR, NO SIR. I will not do this again. We will NOT have this problem again sir.
For some reason the worst stuff always seems to win out. Bad manners, bad language, bad cooking...
Spot On!
Oh gosh you ARE from the south! LOL!
It doesn't really matter where they got large, they didn't grow up.........
Parents who move South tell her they don’t want their children to learn to say “yes, sir” or “yes, ma’am.”
Then you stay your rude yankee @ss where you are then and leave us alone. We didn’t ask you to come South. This is our turf - respect it, respect us or leave.
God warned Abraham to stay away from cities.
Jefferson reiterated this in his quote:
“I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice.”
Just as soon as you take back your southern cousins who have infested Ohio with their white trash ghettos.
So you are going to treat ALL women like femi-nazis?
“Some women want all the rights and perks of men but not the responsibilities”
I dunno - my motto is, “Do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reason, REGARDLESS of whether somebody thinks they’ve ‘scored’ one on you.”
Holding a door open, sure. Giving up my seat in a restaurant to young, able-bodied women? Not in a million years.
If you're in line at the grocery store would you let the woman in line behind you go ahead of you? I think not.
Yes, ma’am! You have nailed the appropriate response! Like when a young friend lamented that his new California bosses (he’d moved from Lubbock) told him he should refrain from using the word “y’all” in emails, I told him his response should be, “Y’all can kiss my Texas a$$ - y’all!”
Not exactly mannerly, but certainly appropriate.
Colonel, USAFR
A generalization of Gresham's Law.
Women who aren't feminazis wouldn't have asked seats that already had occupants.
We decided in the 70s that we are all equal. And half the time if you act graciously to strange women they are offended.
southern cousins who have infested Ohio with their white trash
You must be mistaken, sir. Yes, we do have white trash but they wouldn’t move to Ohio.
I don’t see where the story says the women asked for the seats. The bartender asked the men to give up the seats for the women who were standing behind.
Such a shame. I was always quite impressed with the genteel manners demonstrated by folks in Savannah, GA, and in nearby areas of South Carolina and Florida.
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