By Molly Sanchez
Local comedian W. Kamau Bell wrote on his blog yesterday that he experienced racism at one of his neighborhood brunch spots. He wrote that when he went to visit his wife and her friends who were sitting outside Elmwood Cafe in Berkeley last Monday, an employee harassed him. As Bell described it, the employee said “something to the effect of ‘scram’ … maybe it wasn’t exactly ‘scram’ but it was certainly directed at me and it was certainly the kind of direction you should only give a dog.” According to Bell, the employee proceeded to explain her actions by accusing Bell of “selling something.” Bell suspects that this was an instance of racism (it should be noted his wife and her friends are white and Bell is black) and he added that this sort of thing happens to him all the time. “We live through this shit every day,” he said, and he finds it crazy that in “a city so allegedly liberal that even the most progress-y progressives make fun of it, [this] is where I as a black man was being told to ‘GIT!’ like it was 1963, Selma, Alabama, and I was crashing a meeting of The New Moms of the Confederacy.”
I spoke to Michael Pearce, the owner of Elmwood (he was not there the day of the incident) late yesterday and he called Bell’s treatment at his cafe “appalling and horrifying.” Pearce says that he’s still trying to sift through the details of exactly what happened to Bell but implied that “there was somebody on the floor who we were trying out that day, they weren’t actually hired yet,” and that this new recruit could be the source of the controversy. Pearce recently got in touch with Bell’s management team and is eager to organize a “public forum with press and community leaders to really have a dialogue about this issue.” He adds that he personally is “just trying to do whatever it takes to make this right,” and hopes that the forum will be a learning experience.
Bell updated his blog this morning confirming that the forum was in the works. He is quick to remind his fans that he is “not calling for anyone to be fired, not asking for a boycott. We are going to have a public conversation. #SoYouCanComeToo.”
Photo via Bell’s website.
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