White privilege is very much a thing of the past, but black privilege has been a real ongoing disconnect from the effort to keep peace between the races in the United States for several decades now.

I was reading an encounter about a guy who had posted something for sale online. Some random mutt comes along and offers this ridiculous lowball bid. The seller just posted "LOL". The mutt pulls out the race card because they did not get what they wanted.

This reminded me of an incident with a friend of mine, and Denny's. He liked smoking a cigar while sitting, and having coffee. There was no standing rule against smoking a cigar. This was quite a few years ago when restaurants still had smoking sections, before the health nazis pushed their bullying agenda as far as they have now.

Before he lit his cigar he would always ask the folks at the other tables if they would be bothered by the cigar. He realized the smell of cigars was troublesome to some folks. If anyone did have an objection he would not light up. Always polite and respectful.

As it happened this one night he asked the other customers, who all said it was fine with them if he smoked his cigar. He lit up, and we had been talking for a few minutes when this new night time assistant manager came over telling my buddy he had to put the cigar out because he had got complaints from nearby customers. There was a couple of problems with this excuse. As I said my buddy had asked those around us, and in the short time it was between him lighting up, and the manager coming over nobody at any of these tables had gotten, nor had anyone else from any where on the dining floor, and talked with the manager. When he said what he had to say the people spoke up defending my friend, but the manager stood his ground saying if the cigar was not extinguished he would have to ask everyone at our table to leave. Not wanting to mess with all our evenings he put the cigar out.

A few evenings later he came walking up the sidewalk with this big Cheshire cat kind of grin. The next morning he called this 800 number for Denny's. He explained the situation and at the end of his tale he then asked the person he was talking to if the manager was harassing him just because he was black. They fell all over themselves apologizing, and assuring my friend it had nothing to do with his being black. Talking over the phone, of course, the corporate rep had no idea my friend was white with bleached blonde hair spiked so he resembled Billy Idol a little bit. He told us it seemed odd that they had asked for his mailing address but that day he learned why. They had sent him a voucher for four free meals, to be anything on the menu, he and his table guests wanted. So my buddy treated three of us to a nice steak dinner that night.

And we would have been fine with the apology our table got from the night manager the following evening when we came in.