Protesting a racist lynching poster boosted the restaurant’s business
Evidence
Nonmacher first pinned the poster to his restaurant wall in 1979, and it hangs there still today. Before his death in 2013 at age sixty-eight, Nonmacher was asked if the poster was racist. “I laughed and I’m still laughing,” he said, referring to a locally organized protest of the restaurant in 2011. “I won’t take it down.” And why would he? Business at Nonmacher’s had been good, and thanks to the attention drawn by his poster and the protest over it, getting better. An enthusiastic counterprotest had packed the house with paying customers from open to close, as patient would-be eaters brandishing American flags stretched out into a line past the parking lot and down the block. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 10
Categorization
- SEED: A stark case study for an essay on how publicized racism itself becomes a commodity — moral offense converted into foot traffic — paralleling outrage-driven media economics today.
- XREF: connects to: A lynching-themed anti-Iranian poster actually boosted restaurant business — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 30