Dallas Restaurant Owner Gets Dragged After Going Into Respectability Rant When Customers Twerk In His Establishment
Hundreds of posts bashed Kelley for disrespecting Black women and deploying the worst kind of respectability politics.
November 30, 2020 at 9:02 pm
The owner of Dallas restaurant TRUE Kitchen + Kocktails is at the center of a firestorm after a video that was released on Sunday shows him berating patrons for twerking.
A Twitter video shows owner Kevin Kelley loudly cursing and yelling at a table of women for twerking while Megan Thee Stallion's hit "Body" blasted through the speakers.
Restaurant SUICIDE on camera. pic.twitter.com/9Bkr6q3lyF
— DJ Green Villain (@DJGreenVillain) November 30, 2020
"I invested a lot of money into buying this building and developing this concept so Black people can have somewhere nice to go to. Somewhere where we can feel good about ourselves as a culture," Kelley said before yelling at his DJ to cut the loud dance music and cursing at women sitting in the restaurant.
"All this twerking and s**t, take it to Prime, take it to Pink. Don't bring it here because we're a restaurant. Beyond that, 75% of our customers are ladies and I want men to show respect for how they carry themselves. How can I tell the men to respect [you] and you guys are twerking on the glass here? If you want to do it, get the f**k out of my restaurant. Don't do it again. If you don't like it, get out because I don't need your money. I need to provide something for my people," he added during the tirade.
Beyond the obvious questions of why large groups of people are packed into an indoor restaurant during a pandemic that is disproportionately killing Black people and why Kelley stood on his soapbox without a mask, debate raged online about his decision to bash his own customers and criticize their dancing as the DJ played dance music.
Hundreds of posts bashed Kelley for disrespecting Black women and deploying the worst kind of respectability politics, others in the comments defended the restaurant owner while trying to claim that Black people would not dance at other bars or restaurants in the same way.
He did not, under any circumstances, have to make it a scolding about twerking in general and respectability to a room full of mostly Black women. Period. It was misogynistic as fuck and y’all know it. But that’s what y’all think is “necessary” when talking to us.
— Bath & Bella Works ???????????? (@brownandbella) November 30, 2020