San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Hostile world:
Black culinary professionals on discrimination.
If you’re a Black person who has worked in Bay Area restaurants for some time, you’ve likely experienced one or more of the following: Been passed up for promotions in favor of white colleagues with less experience. Fired with no legitimate reason given. Noticed you’re one of few Black people in the room — and the only ones being bullied.
“I’ve gone through tons of experiences at many different jobs where I see other Black people working and being uncomfortable, going to management and either having management give lip service and do nothing or say they’ll look into it and instead retaliate by taking hours away,” said Malcolm Thompson, who has worked at 10 Bay Area restaurants over the past decade. “For me, it always seemed like a better idea to find another job.”
The discomfort they feel can lead many Black workers to rapidly bounce from place to place or leave the industry altogether. This adds to structural inequities in restaurants, where people of color tend to labor in the kitchen for low wages while white individuals occupy higherpaying frontofhouse jobs (such as server positions that make lucrative tips) and management roles.
“Being a person of color in the kitchen, you have to prove yourself but you have to also make sure you don’t outshine your white counterparts, because next thing you know, you’re out of a job for no reason,” said Oakland chef Joseph Hall, who recently left restaurants for catering because of discrimination.
The Chronicle interviewed seven Black chefs and servers in the Bay Area hospitality industry, who described consistently experiencing discrimination, sometimes over decades of service. The experiences they relate fly in the face of the liberal political stances and calls for inclusivity that many Bay Area restaurants have long espoused. Now, just as the #MeToo movement inspired women to speak out against rampant sexual harassment in restaurants, the Black Lives Matter movement is motivating Black workers to demand more equity from the industry, to no longer allow improper or unjust behavior just because it’s common.
De facto segregation among restaurant staffs is a problem nationwide, but the Bay Area has the widest wage gap of any metropolitan area between white workers and people of color in upscale establishments, according to a 2019 report by Restaurant Opportunities Center United, a restaurant worker advocacy nonprofit. People of color are half as likely to be hired for a frontofhouse job at a fine dining restaurant as white people, according to a 2015 report by the nonprofit. Among San Francisco’s estimated 27,000 restaurant workers, just 3% are Black, according to census data.
Implicit bias plagues the industry, even in restaurants run by wellmeaning owners, said Teófilo L. Reyes, deputy director of programs at Restaurant Opportunities Center United. Most restaurants have informal hiring practices, which leads to white workers
recommending their white friends for jobs and promotions. Owners often say they struggle to find qualified applicants of color, which might be due to what Reyes called selfselection bias.
“People who have to put up with implicit bias for their whole lives don’t apply for positions they think they won’t be hired for,” he said. “It creates a vicious circle that amplifies the problem.” Maya Simone says she was qualified for the frontofhouse positions she began applying for in 2017. She got lots of interviews, she said, but no calls back, and says she knows why.
“I would see their faces drop when they would see I was a Black person,” she said, describing the interview process. “Because I was going to be the face of the restaurant, as soon as they saw me they weren’t hiring me.”
After negative experiences at multiple Oakland restaurants, Simone found a haven in Alchemy Collective Cafe, a majority Black and queer workerowned coffee shop in Berkeley. She’s swapped war stories with Rex Campbell, a trans person who recently went public with their time as a cook at Oakland’s hit Cambodian restaurant Nyum Bai. When Nyum Bai posted on Instagram about Black Lives Matter in June, stating the restaurant will “promote equal rights for everyone,” Campbell was appalled. While working at Nyum Bai for six months, they said, they were sexually assaulted by a fellow cook and, despite reporting it to owner Nite Yun, Campbell was still scheduled to work alongside their alleged assailant. That led Campbell to quit.
“Hollow echoes of support for Black people are bulls— if you actively harm Black folks who work for you,” Campbell wrote on Nyum Bai’s post.
Yun deleted the comment and called Campbell, wanting to apologize in person, she told The Chronicle. But deleting it backfired. It was seen
as an attempt to silence Campbell, and the post drew hundreds of angry comments and calls to boycott the restaurant. Yun has since deactivated Nyum Bai’s Instagram account.
Campbell told The Chronicle they found Nyum Bai’s work culture “toxic,” with racially insensitive remarks being common and their preferred personal pronouns not taken seriously. Even beyond the assault, Campbell felt discriminated against, unable to shake the feeling that Yun mentored other cooks more and didn’t believe them when Campbell requested time off for health issues.
“I think it’s so embedded in our culture to dismiss what Black people say and make them question their own intuition around their capacity. That’s the legacy of slavery itself,” Campbell said.
Within days of the social media fallout, Nyum Bai employees formed a collective and presented Yun with a list of demands, including the firing of Campbell’s alleged assailant and training for managers on antiracism and LGBTQ issues. The alleged assailant was laid off when shelterinplace closed restaurants; Yun said he will not be invited back.
“What I’m learning right now is at Nyum Bai, we were just working with our heads cut off, not really paying attention to what is a healthy kitchen culture,” Yun said. “Looking back, I didn’t have the capacity to do the emotional work with (Campbell), and I think that’s where I failed as a leader. But my intention was never to hurt them or make them feel it’s an unsafe workplace.”
Yun plans to provide mandatory diversity training for staff and herself, to hire a human resources department for the first time and provide an outlet for anonymous feedback. She’s also convened an advisory board of members of the Black community and restaurant industry to hold
“I would see their faces drop when they would see I was a Black person. Because I was going to be the face of the restaurant, as soon as they saw me they weren’t hiring me.”
Maya Simone on her job search
Nyum Bai accountable.
It’s too late for Campbell, who has left the industry for good. Other Black cooks say they have left restaurants for similar reasons.
Kyle Anthony McGrath spent years working as a private chef, aiming to avoid the discrimination he saw at restaurants. But when the San Francisco native moved back to the Bay Area last year, restaurant jobs seemed like the quickest employment option.
But his recent experience at Belcampo, the local restaurant chain and farm devoted to humanely raised meat, wound up being his final straw. Earlier this year, he worked as the junior sous chef at the Oakland location, where he said other cooks hazed him, cracking jokes and calling him names that made him feel unwelcome. Each night, he’d return home to Fairfield and vent to his mom, who corroborated his story.
After about three weeks, he noticed two knives missing from his personal knife kit, which he’d had since culinary school. He believes they were stolen. His knife kit is unique — a silver barbecue tool box — and wouldn’t be mixed up with anyone else’s collection.
“I assume it was to try to get a reaction out of me,” he said. “But why wouldn’t I be angry if my knives were stolen?”
McGrath reported it to the head chef, but nothing happened for two weeks, he said. So he made a formal complaint to the general manager. Two days later, he said, he was fired.
Anya Fernald, CEO of Belcampo, said McGrath was fired for multiple instances of misconduct, that Belcampo has a strong record of Black leadership and that she was unaware of any hazing.
“We do not tolerate this type of behavior,” she said by email. “Our company policies advocate for a diverse and inclusive environment at work and offer our team members clear and actionable steps to take to report discrimination.”
McGrath disputes Fernald’s claims. He was written up for just one verbal altercation the day before he was fired, he said. Another employee called McGrath “mayate,” the Spanish equivalent of the Nword, he said, and he told the person he wouldn’t call him that if they were out on the streets.
“It’s tough to have a passion that you can’t explore because you don’t fit the mold,” he said. “I don’t get the opportunity to show what I can do and what I can bring to the table because I keep getting shut down. I keep getting classified as this big, angry Black chef with a bad attitude.”
After leaving Belcampo, McGrath focused on catering and popups under the moniker Properly Seasoned, serving barbecue rubbed with the Ethiopian spice mix berbere. He just secured a spot for the popup within Crooked City Cider in Oakland, which is scheduled to launch in August. For Black cooks tired of feeling disrespected in restaurants, these alternative venues and catering have become a lifeline — even more so with the industry ravaged by the coronavirus.
Not just employees but also Black business owners in the Bay Area food industry report they can’t always escape racial bias. Oakland’s Montperi Catering owner Lamont Perriman recalls running an ad for his business years ago and gaining little traction for a few months.
“Was it really that people couldn’t believe I was cooking the food I was listing, or was it because they didn’t want to hire me because I was Black?” he said.
He decided to remove his photo, he said, just to see what would happen.
His phone started to ring.