My husband and I had an extremely upsetting and humiliating experience at The V in Maple Lake that we believe was blatant racial profiling.
We are from the Buffalo area and rented a cabin on Maple Lake for the weekend to spend some time back in the area and go fishing. On Saturday evening, we decided to stop at The V for dinner and order some food to go.
The young woman serving us was very sweet, and while we waited for our food, we sat at a table and spent about $200 on pull tabs. We weren't causing any problems, weren't being disruptive, and were simply waiting for the food we had ordered.
Right before our food was ready, the owner, Harney, approached our table and asked how things were. We said, "Good, thank you." He then turned specifically to my husband, who is African American, and asked him, "Where were you born?"
It immediately caught us off guard. Instead of moving on, Harvey continued pressing my husband about where he was from and where he was born. He eventually asked him, "Were you born in Jamaica?"
My husband, clearly uncomfortable and trying to laugh off the situation, quietly told him, "No, I was born in Chicago."
At that point, I told Harney that the conversation was making us uncomfortable and asked him to please leave us alone. His response was to tell me that he "wasn't talking to me" and that he wanted to know the people who came into his restaurant.
My husband is an incredibly kind and respectful person and did not want to escalate the situation. Harney then said that if my husband didn't want to talk to him, "he can tell me himself." My husband calmly responded, "We're good, man."
Harvey's response was to tell us that we could leave.
I reminded him that we had already ordered and were waiting for our food, and he told us he didn't care.
We were absolutely stunned. We walked into this establishment as paying customers, spent money, treated the staff respectfully, and bothered no one. Yet the owner singled out my Black husband to repeatedly question where he was "really" from, specifically asked whether he was born in Jamaica, dismissed me when I said the conversation was making us uncomfortable, and then told us to leave when we asked for the questioning to stop.
This happened openly, in front of a room full of customers. It was embarrassing, degrading, and completely unnecessary. Not to mention that the business owner was visibly impaired and the entire conversation had slurred speech and slow reaction turning his head to speak to me.
There was absolutely no reason my husband's birthplace or ethnicity needed to be interrogated while we were simply sitting at a table waiting for our dinner. We should have been able to walk into a local restaurant, order food, spend our money, and be treated with the same basic dignity and respect as every other customer in the room.
We left feeling that my husband had been racially profiled and that we were no longer welcome once we objected to the questioning.
I would not recommend this establishment to anyone. No paying customer should ever have to experience what we experienced simply trying to get dinner on a Saturday night. read more