The Biscuit of Diversity
This, certain folks on the interwebs will boldly tell you, is the true creeping destruction of America. Bless their poor, unfortunate, maladjusted little hearts...
I’m wearing my West Virginia University hat in a Carolina restaurant and sipping southern sweet tea while the bustle of a busy business swirls around my booth. This is one of my favorite breakfast spots. Familiar and comfortable, a habit well worn from an untold number of meals over the better part of two decades. Like most places these days, the servers are scrambling and hustling to overcome short staffing. The booths and tables are full. The pass is humming with sliding plates and clanking glasses going from kitchen to serving staff.
This place has a Greek name, fitting the Greek family that has owned it for decades. The kitchen staff is uniformly Hispanic and working non-stop for the Saturday morning rush, efforts coordinated with periodic instructions called out in Spanish. The servers mostly speak Spanish and English, switching between the two without breaking cadence or the rhythmic chaos of a busy service. This city breaks down demographically as 43/41/16 when it comes to black/white/other, which translates to some kind of just about everyone represented at the table, booths, and counter..
A family of five, four adults and a teen, takes the booth across from me. Since it is designed for four, the youngest is quickly informed by the two older ladies in stereo instruction that a chair for the end will be required. Which he dutifully retrieves. I chuckle, having done more than my fair share of “kids table” duty in my very large family at various gatherings where there was food. And there was always food, which you got plenty of regardless, but the adult table conversation was a privilege. The adults talk. He doesn’t. I can relate.
My server is their server. She drops me my biscuit and taters before turning to the folks across the way. They compliment her accent and hustle, and ask where she’s from. From New Jersey, came the reply, then the explainer of being Mexican and Turkish, born in Mexico, but from Jersey before coming here. The black folks in the booth reply they have never been to Turkey, or Mexico, but have some family from New Jersey, which they haven’t and don’t intend to visit for chuckling but unspecified reasons. Our hard working server shares a laugh, drops their silverware, and departs with their drink orders.
Meanwhile, my hillbilly self starts to enjoy a country ham, egg, and cheese biscuit which any of my Appalachian ancestors could recognize and have been eating in the last 200 odd years, perfectly prepared by Hispanics, in a Greek diner in a North Carolina city..
Greatest country ever, America, where E Pluribus Unum is both on The Great Seal of The United States of America and in the booths of a breakfast spot.
This, certain folks on the interwebs will boldly tell you and occasionally will say out loud in real life, is the true creeping destruction of America. “Diversity” is used as a pejorative for the wrong kind of people changing things to them. What they really mean is anyone who is not like they are in some or all ways: doesn’t think like them, look like them, act like them, pray like them, talk like them, vote like them, see the world revolving around them like they do.
Whether through ignorance or maliciousness, such self-centered nonsense is antithetical to a true understanding of American greatness. Bigotry, soft or otherwise, is a ruining ingredient if added to the secret sauce that makes this experiment in a free people self-governing the modern miracle that it is. Anyone from anywhere can affix themselves to the American dream and achieve whatever their ambitions drive them to do. Or at least should be able to, if the small minds of bigotry will stay out of the way and let all boats rise on the tide of an America big enough for everyone to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The internet isn’t real life, but folks bring their real life baggage to it. Plenty of folks are discovering there is a big, bold world out there to discover, learn from, embrace, and find your place in. For too many discovering there is a big, bold world out there has the effect of informing someone that their corner of the world and the amount of folks like them isn’t nearly as big as they thought it was. Those folks, not liking their sudden minority status of no longer being the top fish in a small pond food chain, tend to lash out and react in ungood ways. Doing so online doesn’t really change anything about the situation, but does let them vent, and - to those poor unfortunate maladjusted souls - tells the wider world far more about what they really think and feel that they perhaps intended to.
Pity they can’t set aside buzzwords, pejoratives, hashtags, and prejudices and just enjoy a biscuit, hard work, friendly neighbors, and the amazingly beautiful tableau of multicultural America trying to eat breakfast. Sitting in online silos waiting for the doomsday of whatever carefully curated media catastrophe some folks have convinced themselves is coming is a right, but it is no way to live.
They miss so much good, these folks so scared to death of human interactions that might be the least disagreeable or challenging that they bunker in and sandbag the door with online nonsense. Can’t see the sunset from the silo, nor will you catch the breaking dawn of America’s bright and promising future. Nor will you get an impressive biographical story of a hard working person blessing your morning in addition to serving up a darn fine breakfast. Or the simple joy of watching a family spend time together with noticeable parallels to your own upbringing though obviously different. Or ever learn more about yourself in learning more about others. Far from the lie of destroying someone's culture and heritage, increased knowledge and broader perspective refine and enhance your own background.
What a joy it is to watch people when you take a second to appreciate the similarities, learn from the differences, and find a way to join them in having a smile and a laugh at it all despite whatever other problems might be waiting after a good biscuit and a spot of fellowship.
And it was a mighty fine biscuit, at that.