Black Life’s Manners

“Even in the most modern books, there was just almost no mention of the whole notion of how race affects society,” says Bates, a regular contributor to The Times’ op-ed page. “Basic Black” is the product of the Los Angeles-based authors’ personal travails and an effort to provide some guidelines for those prickly moments that either render people silent or all-points ballistic.

Getting Back to Basics

Scenario 1: For an important business luncheon, you’ve made a reservation at the splashiest new restaurant in town. But when you show up and give the hostess your name, she looks as if you are speaking a dead language. You are shuttled into a dark corner of the bar, where your 15-minute wait blooms into 45. When you inquire, you are greeted with an armful of apologies but then plunked down at a table next to the kitchen’s constantly swinging door.

Scenario 2: You’re at a big dinner to recruit a new employee and you— resident wine expert— have the task of choosing the wine. You pick a favorite from the list. But when the waiter uncorks the bottle, he pours the taste in the glass of your white guest.

Scenario 3: You’re at a party at the home of your company’s CEO and another top official launches into a joke that has more than racist overtones.

It’s those modern indignities— all the more stinging as overt bigotry has taken on a more subtle cast— that journalist Karen Grigsby Bates and historian Karen Elyse Hudson have chosen to mine in their new etiquette book, “Basic Black: Home Training for Modern Times” (Doubleday).

Their charge: Helping African Americans to remember their center, their foundation, the roots of their “home training” and all it encompasses.

“Even in the most modern books, there was just almost no mention of the whole notion of how race affects society,” says Bates, a regular contributor to The Times’ op-ed page.

“Basic Black” is the product of the Los Angeles-based authors’ personal travails and an effort to provide some guidelines for those prickly moments that either render people silent or all-points ballistic.

“If it’s making you see red, then step back a minute, collect yourself and be able to point out, in a cogent manner, why you’re offended,” Bates explains, her voice as soft and mellifluous as a yoga instructor’s. “It’s important that you not let that kind of behavior slide.”

To the high-ranking joke teller, “Take him aside and say: ‘I’m sure that was a slip. That was totally atypical of you, but I need to let you know I find that incredibly offensive. I’m sure it won’t happen again, but I’m also sure you would want to know if you inadvertently offended me— we just don’t tell jokes like that in our circles.’ ”

To the waiter who has mistaken guest for host: “Excuse me, but this is my task. I ordered it.”

And to the hostess who “hasn’t quite gotten the word that segregation’s over,” write Hudson and Bates, “Tell her ‘I’m sorry; this isn’t acceptable. We’d rather sit somewhere over there, please.’ If you are told they’re all reserved, simply smile and insist ‘I’m sure you’ll work something out,’ and remain standing. If the restaurant worried about you being conspicuous before, a stand-in may bring speedy resolution.”

What both Bates and Hudson offer is a paradigm that they hope will help children, their parents and their parents’ parents to better clear the rising hurdles of modern decorum, a dizzying world where knowing how to navigate treacherous racial / cultural divides is as important as knowing which glass to use with the Burgundy.

“As we begin to walk on other playing fields,” write Bates and Hudson, “we have progressed from being barred from joining certain organizations to not only being active members but assuming leadership roles. Mentors have been few and far between.”

The effects of integration, they note, have been far broader than just changing the face of neighborhoods, schools and workplaces.

“Many people think of etiquette in its traditional forms: how to set a formal dinner table. . . . In our world, etiquette is so much more. . . . It’s all about being comfortable in unfamiliar situations. . . . It’s how to conduct yourself when a controversial vote or action has taken place and everyday life in the workplace takes on a new level of discomfort. Before you know it, a single word from you or a co-worker can precipitate an ever-widening gap in understanding.”

Los Angeles— with its petri dish of races, cultures, religions and ethnicities— gave the authors a fertile setting to collect do’s and don’ts, missteps and mishaps.

“There’s not black manners, brown manners and white manners,” Bates stresses. “There’s only good manners and bad manners.” But within the parameters of “good manners” there are shades of difference produced by a particular culture, tradition or rearing.

“We recognize that there is a certain protocol to doing certain things. But at the same time, we have to acknowledge that in our community, for example, lots of times we do dress differently for celebratory occasions. Even though it’s in the middle of the day, we might get a lot more fancied up than the so-called mainstream population, because it is a celebration. In the book, we give the traditional and real world variant so that people can choose.”

The same rule applies to other rituals, traditions.

“When asked by our white colleagues to give them an example of ‘cultural differences in etiquette,’ we have frequently cited the ritual of funerals,” they write. “We feed people. . . . From the first hot meal that arrives in the family’s kitchen as soon as the sad news is known to the last piece of cake lovingly wrapped and pressed on a departing guest, food has always been our solace and sustenance.”

The book was not born of one experience, but one experience too many.

Not just workplace tensions but other indications of fading gentility and frayed breeding— “Things faxed to you as an invitation that say that the event’s the next day,” Hudson says. “Engraved Crane’s bridal invitations that have where the bride is registered and what her pattern is.

“It became a cumulative thing— realizing that people just don’t know what to do. They just didn’t grow up having to do something like that.”

Some of the decay, or amnesia, has come with a generally more relaxed society. Some of it has come from the disintegration of family time, a result of the speeded-up pace of daily life that the authors refer to as “microwave lifestyle.”

“We’re too busy to sit down to dinner together more than once a week,” they write, “and the manners we once absorbed, unconsciously, have been displaced.”

In black culture, manners and etiquette are included under a broader umbrella, a shorthand catchall that has a cultural resonance reaching back generations. The authors define “home training” as instilling “behavior that is reflective of proper rearing,” and proper rearing was cultivated during that family time— when outside distractions were at a minimum.

That has changed for American culture at large— so rules for modern times had to acknowledge not only generational vantages but racial, gender and geographical differences as well.

With this complex charge, Hudson and Bates parcel out the usual “which fork, which knife” etiquette book fare— wedding planning, table settings, thank you notes, proper attire for formal / informal functions.

But along with those dictates, there was a deeper goal. “We didn’t want to feel like we had just fallen off that retired Junior League track,” Hudson says. Instead they offer this advice in the spirit of cultural pride. Their respect for tradition and rules radiates from a central belief that knowing the rules is a way of paying respect to one’s ancestors and culture— even if one chooses to personalize them.

Thus the chapter “Lift Ev’ry Voice” becomes the cultural hearth— the nod to family mementos. Here one finds guidelines for sharing and mentoring, economic empowerment, giving back to your community, heritage and grace.

“Basic Black” underscores that life is not lived in a vacuum. It stresses the importance of not just the what but the why, of being culturally dexterous— knowing what to wear to a mosque is just as important as knowing the significance of a bar mitzvah. And in gleaning that understanding, one begins to comprehend the vast number of cultural prisms through which life is glimpsed.

But as one traverses these worlds, remembering your base as you climb is central to remaining grounded. Success, Bates and Hudson stress, should never mean assimilating to the point of trashing your past.

“We wanted our book to be a guideline,” Bates explains. “That if you are armed with the knowledge of what we do and what the rest of the world does, you can make an informed decision about what you want to do.”

It’s this choice that tests the strength and resonance of home training in the real world.

“It goes back to remembering who you are,” Bates says. “A lot of us will find ourselves in situations where we’ve been absorbed in a populace that looks very different from us— whether it’s a school situation or you’re the only family on the block. Even though you get along with everyone really well, there still is a [black] consciousness that we would love people to remember in their daily life.”

But, Hudson cautions, “It’s more than just the ‘burden’ of being black. Our bottom line is structured on treating others as you would treat yourself. It’s holding on to the understanding that we have gotten where we are because of what has come before us. And that we are living monuments to that past.” — By Lynell George, 1996

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia