We had a little incident here in a local cafe where an interracial couple ate breakfast together, then later the husband who is black, stopped by as his wife and three friends were having lunch at the same cafe, and the waitress tapped on the window and told him to scram, evidently thinking he was pandhandling. The guy was deeply upset, as he had every right to be, the waitress was fired, and our little pocket of the woods is in an uproar. The waitress didn't have much speech, one word, but it was enough to cause a hellaballou.
This event is a good example of impulsive judgment arising before all the facts are in. She stepped in when no one had requested she do so. She was minding someone else's mindstream, and reading it very, very wrongly. Because she acted impulsively instead of responsively, all her prejudices and preconceptions arose to choke her. She probably thought she was being proactive, but she was in the wrong town in the wrong era. She might have made a lot of tips in Selma, Alabama in the sixties.
This extreme case reminds me that great harm can be done with one unthinking impulsive action. The waitress lost her job. The black man and his family were shocked and hurt, and the surrounding community has been forced to face racism in a place where it seldom shows itself so nakedly.
Pausing might have saved the day. Not doing what hadn't been requested would have helped. Making assumptions revealed a prejudice that possibly the waitress didn't even know she possessed. She learned something about herself, and she may be wiser now. But the family has been rendered feeling unsafe and their world is askew. The one word hurt them and changed their lives.
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