Dori: Is this really a racial incident? You decide

The other day, I was at the grocery store and ready to pay. I saw one of two cashiers put a sign on her conveyor belt that said, “This checkstand is closed.” So I went to the one that was still open. Pretty simple, right?

Down in Portland, a woman in Portland ran into a scenario kind of like that — except, she thinks that it was racism. She said that she was refused service in a bakery while two white women were still served.

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The bakery normally closes at 9 p.m., but according to a Facebook post by the bakery owner, they were unusually busy on the night of the incident. At 9:03 p.m., one of the employees turned off the “open” sign. At 9:04 p.m., two white women walked in and lined up to be served. At this point, the customers in the establishment were informed that the bakery was officially closed. Two minutes later, at 9:06 p.m. a woman named Lillian Green walked in and was told that the two women in line were the last ones who were going to be served.

That’s when Lillian went outside and made a video (I want to warn you, there is explicit language in this video). Lillian said that she is trying to make this video blow up on Facebook and elsewhere. Maybe you can make the argument. You’ve got two white women in line to be served and she walks in, the door isn’t locked yet — why not just serve one more person?

I will tell you, this is a very progressive, “woke” business. The owner talks all the time on social media about how they are “a welcoming and supportive environment for all customers who share our values of inclusivity and dismantling the white supremacist hetero-patriarchy.” An owner of a bakery like that is himself being accused of being racist because he wouldn’t serve a woman after closing time.

This might be the most “woke” story ever. The two women working that night have been fired. The owner of the bakery wrote that, “Knowing we are doing business in a gentrified neighborhood in a racist city within a racist state of a racist country, we see it as a moral and personal responsibility to use our platform and privilege to support marginalized communities.” Yeah, this is as “woke” as a news story could possibly get.

Was this an act of racism or has it been blown out of proportion? Let me know in the comments.

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