In April, Keisha Lance Bottoms, former mayor of Atlanta, tweeted: "I was just turned away at @CapitalGrille at Perimeter Mall because I have on leggings." Their dress code prohibits "gym attire,” but Bottoms wasn't the only one wearing leggings at the restaurant!
Twitter users searched through social media photos tagged at the restaurant's locations to find plenty of white patrons sporting leggings and gym attire. Bottoms followed up: "...Rules are the rules, just wonder if the woman who came in immediately after me, who I did not see come back out, was also denied service."
Restaurant dress codes are frequently used to target us.
Another Atlanta restaurant turned away a Black man for wearing Air Force 1's, which he'd worn there before, while a white woman wearing sneakers sat at the bar. In Baltimore, a restaurant denied entry to a Black child while a similarly dressed white kid sat dining.
And none of this is new.
They've been popular since at least the 1970s, when businesses began implementing them as a loophole for segregation. Dress codes primarily rely on staff discretion, making it easy to bend the rules for whites while banning us.
Businesses aligned with white supremacy use dress codes as thinly veiled anti-Blackness. We shouldn't have to deal with this. We must continue creating and supporting Black businesses and only spending money where we’re respected!