In-your-face racism against black consumers rife in SA
Service providers have always treated whites with much more care and empathy
Consumer racism is when blacks are routinely treated less favourably than whites by companies. Unconscious bias, stereotyping and implicit prejudice of black people are embedded in the culture of many companies. Racism by individual white staff members contribute to disparities in the treatment of black consumers.
During colonialism and apartheid, inferior products were often sold to black customers.
Marketers and businesses would target certain products, services and advertising for “blacks only”, based on often prejudiced assumptions. Black customers were also on occasion guinea pigs for untested products. Many of these practices continued in the post-apartheid era.
Though customer segregation is something of the apartheid past, black and white customers are often still differently treated, with whites getting more care and blacks less.
In many cases customer service racism is now subtle. Company staff could be more polite to whites. Formerly white schools will often be less caring in their treatment of black pupils and parents.
Many hospitals similarly still treat black patients worse than whites. Whites often get better after-sales care. Complaints by blacks are often handled with less judiciousness.
Blacks get worse sales deals than whites, whether it is car or property sales. When buying property in predominantly white suburbs, estate agents in some cases still look for white buyers, rather than black ones.
During the apartheid era, financial institutions “redlined” townships and did not provide home loans in predominantly black neighbourhoods, on the basis that blacks are unlikely to be able to afford or to repay loans. This practice continued.
Blacks are often perceived as not being legitimate customers. Many black South Africans have stories to tell about a white staff member in a shop following them throughout the store to “check” on them the assumption they are only browsing instead of shopping or worse, plan to steal items.
Insurance companies in many instances charge blacks more, deeming them supposedly more “risky”. Micro-lenders routinely exploit blacks desperate for
The Clicks controversial hair advert is one example of the bias that exists in many companies towards customers.
cash with punishingly high terms. At mainstream banks, whites may get preferential interest rates on loans. Banks often appear less lenient, and quicker to seize assets, whether homes or cars, from blacks who default.
Thina Bambeni is
currently suing Nedbank for loss of earnings after she was forced to sell her Kempton Park home in January 2018 to pay a R377,700 court order amount when the bank sued her for being in arrears.
In her court papers filed at the South Gauteng High
Court, Bambeni accused Nedbank of racism, saying the bank was harsher on black clients, quickly moving to dispossess their homes. Nedbank has denied the claim, and rejected “any allegations of improper and or racist treatment against clients”.
Separately, Emerald van Zyl in 2005 accused banks of overcharging interest on mortgage loans to black clients. He accused banks of charging double interest in the first month of the loan, to black clients, which causes mortgages to be in arrears from the start of repayment.
In 2018, Van Zyl took FNB’s FirstRand Finance to the Equality Court for discrimination against more than 4,000 black customers for allegedly charging them up to 40% more than whites on their home loans. Van Zyl’s Equality Court claim relates to black clients of former Saambou Bank, which was taken over by FNB.
SA companies should stop denialism of racism against black consumers. Companies must regularly audit their customer service for racial bias.
Companies must invest more in raising awareness of racial prejudice in the treatment of their customers. Training should include focusing on undoing employee racial prejudices, and emphasising that employees must treat all customers, no matter their race, equally.
Black customers being prejudiced by companies must raise the alarm, put it on social media and take companies to court. They should boycott companies unwilling to tackle consumer racism.
that is tearing our country asunder and rendering black lives insignificant.
And yet, there is a pattern in both our response to racism and acts of racism. We respond to the provocation with uproar and threats of a consumer boycott that rarely ever lasts.
The reason for this is that we have not, as black people, built alternatives to compete with those of white people who continue to disregard us and treat us with contempt. Where is the blackowned alternative to Clicks or Dischem?
It is not there, not only because we have been put in the margins of economic activity, but because even those of us with the resources are not investing adequately in the empowerment and development of black communities.
Until this happens, we are going to continuously find ourselves responding to deliberate racist provocations by a racist white minority that knows that even with our numbers, our bargaining power, it is holding us by the balls.