My guess is that Mr. Stein was wearing a yarmulke or kipah.
I think the bottom line regarding this incident is that allowing waitstaff to fill in their own, off-the-cuff descriptions of customers rather than using table numbers to designate bills is an absurdly stupid policy to begin with, and a customer service nightmare waiting to happen. To that extent, I find it hard to feel sorry for the restaurant owners. Regarding the waitress, IF she was fired solely because of this incident, then there may have been some unjust scapegoating involved--but none of us know enough to reach that conclusion.
If this had happened to me, I would probably have asked for the manager and simply explained the above, rather than heading to the Attorney General's office to file racial slur charges.
XHendrix24 said:
If someone mistakenly identified me as of Hispanic descent (I'm fairly tan and have brown hair - I'm actually Italian/Irish), I wouldn't be offended, I'd just correct them and then forget about it.
The difference is that, clearly, you feel you have nothing to fear from being singled out as Hispanic.
I am Jewish, but frequently assumed to be "Irish" because of my red hair and green eyes. If a stranger came up to me in public and demanded, "Are you Irish?" I might feel nonplussed, annoyed, or even amused. If a stranger came up to me in public and demanded, "Are you Jewish?" I would probably feel the same things, but also some fear and intimidation.
Why are they zeroing in on that? How does this person feel towards Jews? Will anyone come to my defense if they start harassing me? This response may be visceral but it is not paranoid, any more than would be the same response towards someone demanding, "Are you gay?" It is not the words that "offend" (or more aptly, frighten) but the history of menace behind them.
From personal experience I can say that the more singled out you feel and the less familiar the social environment, the worse that fear is. I grew up in rural Mississippi in the '70s, and heard "Christ-killer" probably more times by the time I turned 14 than most American Jews today will hear their whole lives. It never stopped us from wearing yarmulkes or putting menorot in the window or mezuzah on the doorposts, or anything else that told the world we were Jewish. So I am not thin-skinned or lily-livered about racial slurs in the slightest. I would have to be an idiot to have no fear at all, though.