New York had tried to buy Jessie a shot, and Jessie had declined because she’d already had enough to drink. New York tried to buy it anyway, but the bartender, a white dude, wouldn’t let her. New York got on some “Oh, a brown woman can’t buy a drink? My money’s no good here?” type shit, and Jessie took it at face value and tried to explain to her that the bartender was not legally allowed to sell a drink if the person the drink was intended for expressed unwillingness to imbibe it.

I walked back into the room just in time to hear Jessie say, with deep conviction and obvious frustration, “It’s not about race!”

They both looked at me like I was that dude Paris and they were the goddesses laying claim to the golden apple that started the Trojan War. I had no idea what had happened while I was taking a piss, but I said, “It’s never a good look to be the white girl claiming it’s not about race.”

So, I'm a bartender, and I take "not serving alcohol to people who are inebriated" and "not serving alcohol to people who don't want to drink anymore" very fucking seriously. I've had friends die from drunk driving (as the drunks and as the victims), and I've had friends be fired from jobs because they served too much and were responsible-ish for someone else's bad decisions.

How am I to take this interaction?