Dinner and a Show
“If you don’t like it you can suck my big black titties!” I first heard the “black titty” challenge as a TWC staffer cursed out a white customer during my first visit there a couple years back. And given my numerous visits since, that was sweet talk. Imagine the Queens of Comedy, the Soul Plane crew and just about every degrading stereotype you’ve ever seen or heard of about black women. Now imagine them serving you hotdogs, burgers, and fries. That’s TWC for you.
TWC is a small shack of a hot dog place in Chicago’s upscale Lincoln Park community. It’s owned and run a by an older white couple who encourage their all-Black female staff to not only curse each other out but to serve up ghettofied Black woman stereotypes to patrons. The joint plays to constant laughter and approval of Lincoln Park’s 90% White community which packs the place 8-days-a-week.
Some days, I find myself visiting TWC just to rubberneck because it is truly a car wreck… I’ll sit and watch all the white customers laughing at the Black women and encouraging them to do their “black minstrel thing” as they give what amounts to their spare change for a meal. I watch all the white people go in and do their blackcents as they mimic the Black employees. I watch the looks of horror from random Black folks who occasionally stumble into TWC. I also watch as the white couple that owns TWC smiles approvingly and quietly collects their profits in the background. But mostly, I go there to watch the “I’ve got to be black on some else’s terms just to make a living” hustle; the same one I saw and lived thru in the advertising world.
The odd thing is that whenever I go to TWC, the employees are pretty nice to me. They throw around words like “ho” and “nigga” but never towards me. They curse, but never at me. They’re rude, talking-out-of-their-necks “sistahs” to everyone else except me. No matter when I go there they talk to me the same way many black folks do each other when whites aren’t around—as human beings. It’s not that they know me, recognize me, or like me… I think it’s that they know that it’s a hustle and by treating me reasonably well they’re letting me know that they’re somehow in on the joke.
But still, no matter when I go I always leave TWC asking myself the same question: “Does being in on a crime make you any less criminal?”
Some days, I find myself visiting TWC just to rubberneck because it is truly a car wreck… I’ll sit and watch all the white customers laughing at the Black women and encouraging them to do their “black minstrel thing” as they give what amounts to their spare change for a meal. I watch all the white people go in and do their blackcents as they mimic the Black employees. I watch the looks of horror from random Black folks who occasionally stumble into TWC. I also watch as the white couple that owns TWC smiles approvingly and quietly collects their profits in the background. But mostly, I go there to watch the “I’ve got to be black on some else’s terms just to make a living” hustle; the same one I saw and lived thru in the advertising world.
The odd thing is that whenever I go to TWC, the employees are pretty nice to me. They throw around words like “ho” and “nigga” but never towards me. They curse, but never at me. They’re rude, talking-out-of-their-necks “sistahs” to everyone else except me. No matter when I go there they talk to me the same way many black folks do each other when whites aren’t around—as human beings. It’s not that they know me, recognize me, or like me… I think it’s that they know that it’s a hustle and by treating me reasonably well they’re letting me know that they’re somehow in on the joke.
But still, no matter when I go I always leave TWC asking myself the same question: “Does being in on a crime make you any less criminal?”
