April 11, 1997 began as an unremarkable Friday night. Seven college students (three Asian Americans, three Japanese internationals, and one white male) dropped by the local campus hangout in Syracuse, New York. Some of the students had a drink or two before heading over to Denny's around 2:30am. At that point, the night began to unravel.
Upon their arrival at Denny's, the group stood waiting several minutes for a table without being acknowledged. The students eventually wrote their names on the waiting list themselves. As they waited next to a group of African Americans, they witnessed several groups of white males be seated immediately upon arrival. The students continued to wait half an hour, noticing that there were several empty tables large enough to accommodate their group. Finally, the students complained to the waitress about unfair treatment, at which she allegedly shouted, "Don't even go there!" Two of Denny's security guards (actually off-duty police officers moonlighting as security guards) escorted them out, pushing one of the students outside.
A large group of around fifteen white customers was leaving the restaurant
at the same time. Yelling at the students to "get out of here" and to "go
home," five of those whites attacked and began to beat Yuya Hasegawa, one
of the Japanese international students. Despite pleas from bystanders, the
security guards refused to intervene. Seeing this, another student,
Derrick Lizardo, came to Hasegawa's aid. While Lizardo was beaten
unconscious, the security guards pepper sprayed him. A similar fate befell
Yoshika Kasuda, a female Asian American student who tried to intervene.
Speaking of the security guards, she later recalled, "I came to the
realization that the people who I grew up believing would be there to help
us were turning their backs on us Then to be thrown down by a man and
kicked like some dog in the head; I've never felt so scared and degraded."
The beating finally stopped when two African American bystanders came to the students' aid, ignoring the security guards' threats that they would use pepper spray on anyone who helped the victims. Moments later, the police arrived on the scene and ordered everyone to leave, including the students' attackers. When the cops arrived at the emergency room, they claimed that twenty witnesses had confirmed that the students started the fight. Angered, one of the students shouted, "Those were the people who jumped us!" The students asked if they could file a complaint against the individuals who attacked them, but the police officers refused on the grounds that both parties were intoxicated. Many of the students had had no drinks that evening, and the others claimed to have had only one or two. All the students offered to take a blood test to prove their sobriety, but the officers refused and left without granting the complaint.
Most of the above account is obviously unconfirmed; no one but the seven students, the security guards, and the attackers knows what really happened that night. The events I have related represent the story as told in the Asian American and local press, by the students' friends, through admissions in Denny's public statements, and through the students' lawyer at the Asian American Legal Defense Fund. A federal Civil Rights Monitor has recently concluded that the employees of Denny's did discriminate against the students. With the provision that the specific findings of the federal investigation remain confidential, Denny's parent company, Flagstar, has agreed to implement all suggestions made by the Monitor.
I relate this story in such explicit detail because, frankly, I wish to shock. It seems that far too few find the incident as shocking as they ought. If Denny's goal was to hush up the horrifying details of the beating, the company cover-up succeeded remarkably well--and not without the aid of the national mainstream media. I don't mean to imply a large-scale media conspiracy; I simply mean to imply large-scale callousness. While the assault itself and the behavior of the Denny's security guards have made big news in Syracuse and in the Asian American community, the incident remains largely unpublicized in the mainstream press.
That a group of bigoted whites would launch a violent racial assault, I do not find beyond belief. That a large corporation and its employees would be viciously discriminatory, I find disappointing but also plausible. That the entire national mainstream media would allow a case like this to go entirely unremarked upon and utterly unreported, I find deeply distressing. What happened to those students was hardly your average case of someone being beaten up on the streets because of their skin color. It was a situation in which the employees of a large national corporation with a history of deliberately denying service to minorities in order to reduce the number of non-white patrons allowed and even encouraged racial violence. This is racism institutionalized in all its ugly splendor.
Perhaps the fault lies not with the media, but rather with a public that, like the Denny's security guards, averts its eyes from racist incidents. I fear we have reached the point of being anesthetized to "isolated incidents" of racism. Indeed, in discussions of race, racism has become a surprisingly hackneyed subject. Even among scholars of ethnic issues, the focus has shifted away from racism per se and toward other questions of identity.
Why? After decades of doing battle with the demon of racism, it seems that Americans are weary. A new, more cynical attitude has emerged. In a few weeks, a new book on race will debut in bookstores; a wealthy white Harvard professor and his scholar wife will argue that the civil rights revolution of the 1970's was a mistake. As self-described "liberal" converts to the anti-affirmative action movement, authors Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom contend that without the programs of the 1970's, racism would have simply dissolved, and with it the animosity that characterizes racial discourse today. The outlook is simple: the fate of racism is inevitable, and efforts to tamper with it are not only ineffective but also doomed to make things worse.
Alas, to put it bluntly, simply letting go and accepting the inevitability of racism is not so simple for those of us who are not white, heterosexual, and affluent. In many ways, the "minority consciousness" is defined by this obstinate inability to detach ourselves from our situation. I do not exaggerate when I say that what happened to those students at Denny's has changed my life, as has every egregious act of racism I've heard of, read of, or experienced firsthand. In the process of researching this article, I visited the local Denny's in Tucson, Arizona, hoping to obtain a copy of their diversity training guidelines. Without any rationally justifiable reason I can point to, my heart started pounding and my palms began to sweat before I even walked in the door. How ridiculous that I am forced to mentally prepare myself every time I walk into Denny's--whether to obtain a diversity training manual or to enjoy a famed $1.99 breakfast. How absurd that I cannot be seated in any restaurant, whether a Denny's or a cafe in the Sheraton Commander, without taking note of whether they put me in the back with the other colored people or out in front with the white folks.
Almost all minority individuals carry an emotional catalogue of times when we have felt discrimination, times when we have been called oversensitive, times when people we don't even know have been beaten or spat upon for reasons of bigotry. We have memories like elephants. I devour stories of discrimination, especially against Asian Americans, with an embarrassing ferocity--almost as one would read a thriller novel. In a world where racist incidents are often dismissed or considered non-events, I find myself in the absurd position of waiting for such incidents to occur so I can reassure myself that I am not paranoid.
This fear of "minority paranoia" is at the bedrock of the new atmosphere surrounding racial discourse. After all the ostensible progress minorities today have made, we often appear to be complaining without cause. A recent survey has been used to prove the existence of minority paranoia. Though an overwhelming percentage of African Americans still believe that racism is pernicious as ever, when pressed 65% of them will admit that they don't think they've ever been denied employment because of race. The mystifying question is why minorities continue to feel persecuted, when we often seem to have achieved perfect equality. To label this feeling as mass delusion is somewhat disingenuous. More likely, the reality behind the "paranoia" is a belief that the mainstream world cares not a whit about us--a belief reinforced by the Denny's beating and the subsequent public reaction.
As supposed paranoiacs, minority individuals find ourselves constantly accused of subscribing to various conspiracy theories about "five white men in a board room." Closer to the truth is that, because of that emotional catalogue, we are often quicker to believe of a particular incident that racism was involved than to offer the benefit of the doubt. We remember times when the government and the media have shielded racist action from public criticism, and we naturally draw the conclusion that many more racist incidents occur and are covered up without our knowledge. The minority consciousness reflects a belief in widespread bigotry coupled with an understanding that the powers-that-be are far from exempt.
My point is a ridiculously simple one. Minorities are not paranoid; we simply remember more vividly and react more sensitively. The public silence on the Denny's beating displays an utter lack of comprehension of this reality and a new apathy toward issues of racism. Indeed, it is oddly ironic that the beating occurred at Denny's. Since being repeatedly sued for discrimination by African American customers, Denny's has made so much progress that the NAACP gave it an award. In society, as with Denny's, despite all our self-congratulation, the problem seems so far-reaching that even after we've gone a long way we still have a much longer way to go.