God damn it racists ruined a pleasant family outing!

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So my family today wanted to have a nice family outing at a restaurant for several reasons: first it's a Sunday and on Sunday my entire family is normally off and has a day off; second tomorrow's my mom's birthday and we wanted to celebrate an early birthday at a restaurant; and 3rd, this week has been super stressful on all of us - what with my brother getting shot by the gang (dont worry it wasnt fatal, he's alright now) plus a lot of other stressful events this week it made sense for all of us to relax and have fun at a restaurant to ameliorate this week's unpleasant ordeals.

Before I continue the story let me just preface a few important details about my family background to add context to this story. My family is Palestinian (technically my mom is Palestinian and my biological father is Russian, but I dont recognize that side of the family so for now I'll say my family is Palestinian since I dont ever see or live with my biological father. When I say father for the rest of this story I mean my Palestinian stepfather) and they are Muslim, with all my sisters wearing the Muslim headscarf as well as my mother. My family also dresses pretty traditionally so besides just wearing the headscarf my mom and sisters wear the abaya, which is this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abaya

Now because my mom and sisters were born here they can speak fluent English like any regular American, however they still know and choose to speak some arabic because we grew up in a house where both arabic and English was spoken so why my family regularly switches between both languages when they speak. that's all the contextual background information needed for now.

Anyways we go to the restaurant, a nice steakhouse, and im not exaggerating nor hyperbolizing when I say that as soon as we enter the restaurant everyone just stays quiet and stares at us. I live in MN which is a very diverse place in some areas with a sizable muslim population so people can be very tolerant, but certain parts of Minnesota which are more homogenous and isolated from the cities aren't as used to seeing muslims or foreigners so we pretty much stood out in an all white restaurant. Granted our family has received stares and uneasy tension before going out in public, but it was never ever anywhere close to this scale and we certainly never felt this out of place. the person who checked us in was super nice and smiley so that alleviated some of the consternation, but the front desk woman was probably the exception today for good treatment. when we sit down we try to just act natural and not draw too much attention to ourselves and just go through the menu. I notice though that even when we're seated random white guys, the older type of white guys who seem to not like foreigners like my family, just stare at us coldly. My family tried to act casual and ignore the elephant in the room of people looking at our table hostilely but as a person whose more tough and hotheaded I can't just accept such disrespect so I told the guy staring at us if he had a problem. the guy just looks at me coldly still and doesn't answer, as if he was contemplating to attack like we did something to that guy. eventually he looks away, but he mutters something under his breath which I actually dont remember what he said but I dont want to find out since it was probably nasty.

Another guy is staring at us, and yeah to be fair the guy kinda looks drunk but he's laughing and even spitting in our direction. I really had the urge to walk up to the guy and call him out, but I really wanted to salvage the day and not start any fights. my family kept telling me in arabic to ignore the people being rude, but as someone with a lot of pride who doesn't take disrespect easily it felt hard to just ignore this, but I obliged. our waitress comes and while she wasnt being overtly rude at 1st she didnt smile and seemed kind of like "I gotta do my job so I dont want to be here" vibe. now as someone who also works and hates certain days of my job and isn't always 100% mr. professional amicable I empathize with waitresses and other working folk if they aren't always jovial and bubbly so I didnt think much of it. she was straightforward, blunt, and kind of brusque to the point of being super rude, but we overlooked it and tried to rationalize that hey she's probably having a bad day so let's give her the benefit of the doubt even if as a waitress she isn't all that friendly. Except as we observe she is actually a lot more sociable and friendly with the other tables and white diners, but with us she has that "I really dont want to serve you guys but my job requires I serve you so ill only do the bare bare minimum" attitude that became noticeable as it became ultra obvious she has something against us. Even though we came earlier than other families we noticed that other families had their food ordered much earlier, by a significant margin of time mind you, and she was always smiling and saying friendly phrases with the other tables like "oh im sorry" when she forgot something for one table or "how may I help you today" with every other table she went, except ours. at 1st I chalked her poor customer service on her just having a bad day, but after a while of noticing how she was much better with other tables but with ours she was at her worst and started to even become overtly rude with us everyone on our table agreed that they suspected some racism; I mean it didnt help that the general atmosphere of the restaurant felt racist given the attitude of even the customers towards us as soon as we walked in, nor did it help that this woman came off so different with how she treated us versus every other white family for a while I seriously began to think she may be bipolar.

obviously we're bored waiting for our food as tables who came even 15 minutes later than us were getting their food before us so we just talked to pass the time. now its a restaurant mind you and everyone talks in a restaurant with the group they're with, so when some cranky old white woman tells us to be quiet when we're just casually speaking among ourselves I get really pissed and am no convinced that this whole thing is just blatant racism because literally everyone is talking in the damn restaurant and she conveniently chose to look at us and tell us to be quiet. I know she did that because as I said above our family speaks in English and arabic, so us speaking arabic probably got her upset. in case you're thinking im just overreacting and thinking its racism when it was just an innocent cranky old woman here's the rest of the exchange:

me: Excuse me but this is a restaurant and I can talk as much as I damn want.

woman: your kind dont belong here.

me (bemused and mouth open like "did this woman say what I thought she just said"): what do you mean our kind don't belong here.

woman: you rag head (she actually said that!) who want to blow yourself up don't belong here.

I couldnt even believe I heard that. oh and btw no one said anything to the woman or even bothered to intervene, everyone was either a bystander or a couple of guys I saw even nodded when the woman said that! I was god damn livid since Im the type of guy who doesn't take BS from anyone so I told that dirty pig off and stormed out of the restaurant indignant. remember that guy I mentioned earlier who I said seemed drunk and was just staring at us and laughing at us? when that woman made that comment he laughed even harder and was like "tell 'em". im not a violent guy despite my years of martial arts under my wing (mostly Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Tae Kwon Do) but if there was ever a moment in my life I had the urge to knock a god damn punk out using the martial arts I know it was today and I really really had the strongest urge to bust that laughing donkey's face with a solid punch or 2 but held myself back with every ounce of willpower I could. I can't describe to you how annoying that man was, but if I was even a little less controlled and disciplined I really really wanted to bust his jaw and smash his face to the floor, he had objectively the most punchable face ive ever seen in my life and with his constant laughing at us and harassing us attitude I just wish I could have knocked him out. ive dealt with a ton of rude and horrible customers when I used to work as guest service manager years ago in retail and I was able to be as cool as a cucumber with everyone. this guy was worse than everyone ive ever dealt with. ever. bar none.

im clearly visibly pissed off like ive never been before and my face is turning red and so as im walking some random guy just yells "are you going to blow yourself up". by that point I was so livid and pissed I knew if I turned around and asked who said that I would've lost my cool and threw a punch or two so I just kept walking and left. my family follows suit with my mom crying and sisters looking sad knowing how horrible this week was for us and how we just wanted to enjoy ourselves at a nice restaurant, but bigots and jerks seem to have nothing better to do than harass other people.

I never get this angry or mad to this extent since a huge parts of my martial arts training was discipline and mental training, but when every tom dick and Jane in that restaurant acts like an anti-social sociopath just because they see someone from a different culture and ruin an escape outing meant to de-stress and heal from a horrible week it makes me so mad that people can be this hateful and evil. Im especially livid and full of rage at how my mom never can get a damn break in life, with her own stressful family situation, son getting shot a few days ago, plus tons of work related stress, and what was supposed to be a peaceful Sunday meant to not only make us all happy for the rest of the work/school week gets ruined because some people just grew up hating others they never even met. despite this all happening hours ago I still feel so angry and wish I can see that smug little piece of (im not going to say the word since I take pride in not using profanity but fill it in your head) and put him in a nice little neck crank and teach that thing a lesson. I never ever swear, and not using profanity is something I take great pride in, but today was the 1st time I ever swore in forever and for several hours both during the incident and after I was just throwing profanity and bad words around I honestly regret using.

im too angry and even after punching the punching bag in my house for an hour straight I still feel tons of anger. when life seems to never give you a damn break and the closest thing to nice time out for fun gets ruined like that because a damn racist society hasn't shed its hateful views of others it begins to make you lose your (you know what word i would use if I were to swear)! !

sometimes I honestly wonder, if this is the anger and rage I feel from 1 incident like this I honestly dont know how the blacks in this country dealt with the type of BS they had to put up with for most of American history. honestly going through this 1 incident makes me realize how much of a Saint and man of God MLK was and is to have put up with 1,000,000,000 times worse racism than I did and not ending up hating whites, because truthfully if this was my reaction to this I dont know what my reaction would have been like living back in MLK's time when even worse racism was way more normal. The only thing that keeps me calm and makes me defuse my temper is realizing that millions of Americans had to put up with far worse, with some still putting up with even worse today, for most of American history yet they never gave in to hate or defeat. I have to be honest when I say I dont know how they did it. I truly dont.

Sorry to hear that you should be able to go to a restaurant without any harrassment

Sounds like you guys needed a break :/

Too many racists in America, it's easy for them to judge solely by appearance, which I blame on social indoctrination and lack of real education. Remember this is the country that still allows the CONFEDERATE flag to fly, even though it's the symbol of a nation that SECEDED and DECLARED WAR on the US.

But I hope you meet more tolerant people in the future and that your days get better. Good luck and I hope your brother and your family stays safe.

I'm really sorry you went through that, Salad.

Just your luck you had to run into a bunch of drunken idiots and (maybe) the restaurant staff, too.

Don't let this deter you from going to other restaurants in your region. You won't get this sort of harassment in most places.

Americans arent really that racist as I witnessed, it was just my luck that all the racist ones decided to be in the same restaurant at the exact same time as my family outing

I always enjoy eating out and going to restaurants and this never happened before to this extent. It's just my luck that a much needed family outing has all the racists congregate in the same spot at the exact same time.

You might be right, Salad. I just used to live in Texas, so that might not be representative of America as a whole. At least I hope so.

I'm really happy your brother is okay first of all. I think you exercised amazing self control. That was a horrendous and unprovoked experience for your family, I'm so sorry.
The same thing happened to my daughter in Budapest, Hungary. She and her husband went to MacDonalds and were speaking Hebrew to each other, they are Israeli. The server refused to take their order. It's time for an end to all prejudice. Hope your mum had an excellent birthday despite the foolish people you encountered.

I've traveled to Illinois, Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan, New York and Indiana and I've never ever witnessed this level of racism ever. Now granted MN is far from a racist state overall and we're actually one of the more tolerant and open minded states. But for some reason the few pockets of racism that exist in Minnesota just happened to conveniently all gather together to converge on that one restaurant my family and I went to. But otherwise I love MN and I take pride in my state. The incident I witnessed yesterday doesnt represent my beautiful state but was an unexpected and unlucky aberration that i never saw coming

As a mixed race immigrant who's fairly traveled in America, I can tell you that I've had a bad experience in Minnesota. I was driving from Nashville to Seattle. I'd began my trip during my dinner break from Walmart at midnight. Around 6am, I pulled into a Minnesota truck stop on I-90 for breakfast. Sitting at the counter, I placed my order. To my right, and in clear loud English, a man said to his friend, "If a nigg*r sat near me, I'd shoot him." Just in case I didn't hear it, he actually repeated himself. Man, I was so anxious to leave that when the breakfast finally did arrive, I scarfed it down in seconds.

BTW, before I'd sat at the counter, I'd used the bathroom first. Scribbled right on the bathroom wall was a derogatory statement about Natives which I don't recall. That should've been my first clue to haul ass.

There have been other incidents, like me being denied apartments when I knew full well they were available, computer store clerks talking down to be like I'm an imbecile, etc. Even here in the building I live in there's a racist who I call "the Antichrist" behind her back. Unfortunately, they've been emboldened these days to not hide their hatred in the shadows anymore. Sad.

If the steakhouse is part of a chain rather than stand-alone, write to the corporate office. You might also warn other on social media about this establishment. I'm white, male and descend on one side from Welsh-English who came to New England in 1634. I wouldn't eat at a place like that if I were aware of the name and location of the restaurant. If the waitstaff and management let the harassment go on unhindered, they are complicit. I don't knowingly patronize racist establishments.

why didn't you break his jaw?

Southern Minnesota is pretty rural, farm country. Hurrying back to my car after breakfast, all I could think about was a pickup truck full of rednecks dragging me by a rope around my neck, attached to the back bumper, then shot and buried in a grave where no one would discover my carcass for 15 years or so. Yeah, breaking his jaw was definitely out of the question. Plus, I'm not a violent person.

@salad--

I admire your self-control. I get flak for stuff too (religion usually; people like a nice toothless ineffective religion in other people, not Catholicism, which gets in the way.) But nothing like what you were dealing with--that is just wrong.

Sorry you had to see that--I'm down here in South Carolina & that kind of racism is very rare round here. That's most unfortunate that you had to deal with that kind of idiocy and hatred.

Keep on posting here; we've got your back.

All the rest of you--that's pretty weird stuff. RedRobin--do you think you could take training for concealed weapons? I'm not a violent person either; considering I'm not a very big man there is no hope for me if I was violent. But I am thinking about carrying a gun of some kind...I had someone threaten to shoot me at a traffic light one time and have decided ever since then to start thinking about how to acquire some sort of revolver.

@Borromeo - When I was 30, I attempted suicide and landed in a psych hospital for two months. Given my loooooong history of depression, I don't even own a knife, much less a gun. These are simply items I'd use on myself! Anyway, I live in a very safe, liberal, small arts town now, so my worries about being attacked are nil. I do, however, live in an apartment building with The Antichrist. She has racist tendencies but seems harmless...hopefully.

RedRobin, good thinking. The suicidal stuff in autism is kind of the hardest part, I think.

I like knives and guns. But if depression is getting at you then your best self-defense is not owning one...that's kind of cool and good on you for it.