A common belief about African-Americans--perhaps a cliche--is that they often and regulary overeat. While there maybe be merit to the the idea--and the experience--the black community has an extensive repretorie of "eating" jokes rather than "fat" jokes, the high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, and digestive aliments in the African-American community are certainly no joke.

I was thinking about this as I ate lunch today.IO was alone. I had hoped to share share laughter and ideas. Instead, I swallowed excessive amounts of fried shrimp, garlic cooked string beans, fired potatoe sticks, steamed broccoli, rice noddles, wok stirred onions and peppers, pork chops, hot and sour soup, and shrimp fired rice. I did not know it was Nelson Mandela's birthday, although I had watched CNN and Headline News all morning.

I knew that the young waitress smiled immediately when she saw my face, and that gave me comfort and made me feel welcome. She immigrated fro Viet Nam less than three years ago, and speaks English expressively and well. Her "don't hurry" as she put the check down felt like "home,"---an invitation and reminder rather than the usual polite and cliched "thank you."

It was this feeling of peace, the celebration of its prosperity embued in this endless and overwhelming buffet, a buffet that communicated that the society we share is larger than our lives, but yet that society serves and offers to us its riches and fruit, its dreams that are made manifest, it was this unity of food, and a simple smile that attracted me to sit and get silly.

Before entering, I had left a company whose clerks I also knew. I had taken a project with me to show one of them my work. When I walked in she was one the phone. Talking to a girl friend about a boy friend. I had to ask her to check me out when I was ready. In between, she flipped through the books I brought, but her attention was gathered tot eh unseen problems on the phone.

The clerk in the first store was African-American. She is the exception to the common stereotype that black clearks are emotional, hostile, rude, combative, defiant, and sloppy, and indifferent. She laughs easily, smiles often, and is quick to assist. Yet today her priorities were misplaced. The customer was second to her friend's issue.

At the restuarant I borrowed a paper, the USA Today. As I read I thought of young African-american clerk whose youth lead her to switch focus. I thought of the young Vietamese girl who cleared tables, lifted a bucket of vanilla for the ice cream machine, and refilled glasses of tea and water. She had found work, learned a language, knew how to have fun, and remembered faces.

Both women move in and out of stereotypes, but both are independent and diligent. 

Isn't that what makes the USA today?