Reading Poor & Foreign

What happens when you piss off your waitress.

"Excuse me, miss? We have to ask - are you Eastern European?" he asked, exaggerating each syllable like he thought I didn't speak English. The great grey eyes hiding behind horn-rimmed glasses blinked in anticipation.

I glanced around the dining room. My fellow servers were Malaysian, Vietnamese, Chinese - the bus and kitchen staffs were all native Spanish-Speakers. What he'd wanted to say was - "You must be foreign - because if you're just white, why are you working here?"


But he looked Eastern bloc himself - Ukrainian, Belarusian perhaps with a wide forehead and hair more peppery than salt. The woman in the booth next to him  let out a rich laugh, marveling at my confusion. The neon pink-lined smile went limp when I answered in my flat, Midwestern accent.

"I mean... I guess. Like a quarter? Polish. Does that count?" Cold War tactics. Don't let them see you sweat. "Now what can I get you to drink?"

My skin crawled in anger and disgust; the question hounded me all the way back to the beverage station. I am part Eastern European. So why did I feel so offended?

...

 Just a week before an Irish Catholic priest had beckoned me to his seat.  I grabbed the coffee pot and strolled over to pour another refill. Pot in midair, he gestured to me to come in closer before I could reach the near-empty glass.
 
"I heard you talking to the busboy in Spanish," he whispered, leaning low over his place mat and scanning the surrounding tables for informants. My blank face must have convinced him I didn't understand his meaning because he continued: "Are you...are you Mexican?" I straightened up and poured diner sludge into the tall hot chocolate glass - if you give Father a short mug, you'll be topping him up every five minutes. 
 
"I'm from Indiana."
 
"But before."



"Are you asking if I have papers?" I snapped with my bitch-face on.


A crisp $10 bill waited for me, tucked under the glass the good Father had left half-full.

...

What seemed like the next day, a Japanese woman stomped up to the cash register. A woman, maybe a granddaughter, trailed behind her, not taking her eyes off the ground.


"Dear - dear? You're half Asian, aren't you? Japanese, maybe?" Her pitchy voice pinched my eardrums. The younger woman looked up, mortified - doubly mortified, I realized, because we had a class together this semester.  


"No, I'm not," I said, forcing a smile. "Total's $27.13. Debit or credit?"

...

I'm not sensitive about my ethnicity - seriously. But it really gets my goat when people question me about it in the most presumptuous ways. Oddly, exchanges like those I described were a rare occurrence for me. And even though I'm biracial, people almost always assume I'm white - at school, in restaurants or on the bus.

No, I'm convinced these customers were spurred to test the limits of courtesy not only because I had an apron tied around my waist, but because of the environment. Nature versus nurture shit right here. 

Take a peak into our kitchen and at best you'll hear a smattering of English words like "hasbrown" or "cheese burger". The space between is filled with a Spanish-Yucatan Maya hybrid chatter. Stand behind the register long enough and you'll be speaking fluent Mandarin.

And then there's me - the white-looking, English-speaking out-of-place waitress. Many diners had to make me fit into the environment, forcing me into one of the Asian/Latino demographics of the restaurant. Others just assumed I was another Russian in the Richmond District of SF. 

The problem isn't being called those things (I am Mexican- & Polish-American), but being called them in an inquisitive tone by people who think they've solved the riddle: "Who is this girl to work in a run-down diner?" The answer can't be a straight penniless?
 

What is boils down to is vicious and blatant race-based classism (or viceversa, depending on your reasoning). In "affluent" spaces like the university or a mall, I (and many bi/multiracial people) read "white". People have laughed in my face when I identify as Chicana or mention being Mexican-American. But when I'm somewhere poor people hang or work, I'm suddenly foreign? Not only foreign, but undocumented?
 

The behavior I've witnessed speaks volumes about the saying: "Immigrants do the jobs Americans won't", but it's more than that. If you don't scale down who you are for consumption, someone else will do it for you.