Gary Chicaros is a restaurant, which has been open for 44 years now, located in Enid, Oklahoma where an important string of events has happened recently. The owner, Gary, of it openly discriminates against certain people of race, color, ethnicity, disabled people, homosexual people, and people who don’t have a job and pay taxes. Residents of the town say that the owner is running his restaurant under policies that are offensive and discriminatory.
Gary is quoted saying things like “I think I can spot a freak or a faggot when I see one” and “I don’t deal with these people walking down the street with no jobs and on welfare”. This caused a wave of Facebook comments saying he refuses to serve blacks, hispanics and people with disabilities like Matt Gard who is a man in a wheel chair. Matt was quoted saying “Now, he tried to find a weak excuse not to let me in with my wheelchair or the weak excuse of having loud people with me.” But after all Matt knew that he was denied for being disabled.
Gary sells offensive t shirts that have derogatory slogans against homosexuals. One of them has the N word on it and another shirt has threats of violence towards Muslims, minorities and democrats. Gary proudly sports his shirts wherever he goes. At the end of his interview he is quoted saying “if I go over there a slap you, then you should be offended, not if I call you chink” and “I really don’t want gays around. Any man that would compromise his own body would compromise anything.” All of this was not taken lightly by the public. Some people took the straight forward approach by posting on yelp (a website that you can review restaurants on) saying that “The owner Gary James is an awful person who discriminates against gays” others took a different approach saying that “Food is great!! Nice to be in a white community! Love the Glory Hole in the bathroom.” (http://jezebel.com/internet-floods-yelp-with-gay-reviews-for-homophobic-re-1520014665) All of these people are posting about how this restaurant is actually a gay bar rather than saying it is owned by a racist white man.
Video of the interview:
We have to remember that this is happening in Oklahoma. Now I am not saying that this makes it okay but you have to remember this is how people were raised. I am not saying that this makes it the right thing to do. But, this is an older white gentleman who grew up in the south and was raised to think the way that he does. With that being said the man who owns this restaurant thinks that just because he is white that he is better off than all of the other races in existence. This type of behavior reflects that of cultural racism which is talked about in an article called “The Central frames of Color-Blind Racism” written by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. In this case Gary, the owner of the restaurant, is racist towards people who he believes are not as good as white people. This may come as no surprise but according to Bonilla-Silva, Gary shares these same ideas with today’s white supremacist organizations. Gary does not care that people call him a bigot; he doesn’t even see himself as a racist. This man believes that whites have more privilege than other races do. This privilege makes him feel superior to others in this ‘free’ country.
Without the help of Yelp and Facebook however this man would be as widely known as he is now. The people who are discriminated against come together on these websites and post almost satirical posts about this guy’s restaurant. For example some people are saying “Absolutely amazing! The trannies were in full force Monday night and they looked faaaahbulous!” (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Garys-Chicaros/136482116399150) Clearly this is not true about the restaurant, but people have been posting stuff like this all over his Facebook page. Another outrageous comment like this one “The food isn’t worth eating, but Gary’s sloppy blowjobs keep the guys cumming back for more!” shows that people believe that since they are over the internet they are shielded. In a separate study, done Barbara Monroe, where University of Michigan students get paired up with high school students and become pen pals over the internet. The high school students believe that since they are not face to face with the reader of their letter they can talk about more than they usually would in person. This is the same thing in this incident of the restaurant. These people who are commenting on Facebook do not think that anything will happen to them. The worst part is that these comments are not even anonymous, and they could have some repercussions. They believe that via Facebook they can say whatever they want, but in reality I do not think that anyone of them would be saying things like this to Gary’s face.
Gary is without a doubt a white supremacist. According to Jessie Daniels in an article titled “Race, Civil Rights, and Hate Speech in the Digital Era” which comes from a book titled “Learning Race and Ethnicity”, White supremacy is defined as “a central organization principle of culture, politics and the economy rather than merely an isolated movement.” (Daniels, p130) So what this means is not only do white supremacist dislike people of color and race but they also dislike people who don’t make as much money as them or who don’t have the same political views as them. Gary uses overt hate speech in real life to scare customers off that he doesn’t want. Quoting from the same article mentioned above overt hate speech is defined as “Explicitly racist language that are widely regarded as unacceptable public expressions of racism in the contemporary political climate.” (Daniels, p129). From this we can observe that Gary is without a doubt using overt hate speech. His T shirts have derogatory words towards those of different races, sexual orientations, color and economic status.
Additional Links:
http://gawker.com/oklahoma-restaurant-wont-serve-freaks-faggots-or-1518446794
Race and Social Media 