Still ‘a far way to go’ to rid restaurants of racism
Anyone over age 6 likely has ‘a story of their own’
Eight days after the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the arrests of two African-American men at a Philadelphia Starbucks for trespassing when they opted not to order anything has catapulted the issue of racial bias into the national spotlight.
Again.
That it happened at a store designed as a place to hang out makes it all the more poignant. It was a location where people do those most human of actions — eating and drinking. Despite the universality of restaurants, bars and yes, coffee shops, as age-old vehicles to socialize, they are also mangled by centuries of racism.
Long after slavery was abolished, the black-white dynamic around food service cast minorities as cooks and servers and whites as diners in private homes as well as restaurants. As recently as the 1960s, lunch counter sitins highlighted black discrimination in the area of food once more.
“It’s clear that what transpired at Starbucks is a vestige of our segregat- ed past,” said Andre Perry, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, one of the country’s leading think tanks. “We act like MLK 50 years ago was centuries ago. No. We’re still struggling with companies that do not value black people, and we should take this moment of all these anniversaries to take stock and see how far have we come.
“I think the Starbucks incident says we still have a far way to go.”
The April 12 incident inspired protests, calls for a boycott of Starbucks, an apology from CEO Kevin Johnson and racial-bias training for all employees at company-owned U.S. stores and the corporate offices.
And something else.
The mockery of African Americans came in the form of a bogus coupon for free coffee for blacks only, created and promoted on social media Wednesday by Internet trolls, possibly with ties to the resurgent white-supremacy movement. Those who fell for the prank were led to a website with the N-word.
The drumbeat of incidents of prejudice and racial profiling as it relates to dining defies the nation’s progress on other fronts.
“However intimate we feel eating is and breaking bread with other people is, for the entire history of this country and western society and other societies, who we do or do not eat with says a lot about what we think about people,” said Ijeoma Oluo, the author of So You Want to Talk About Race.
Last month, a Maine IHOP asked black diners to pay in advance for their food. A Portland, Ore., chef got into trouble for Instagramming a photo of fried chicken to mark the 50th anniversary of King’s assassination.
In February, Applebee’s was lambasted after staff at a Missouri location falsely accused two African-American women of dining and dashing without paying. New York University and Chi-
cago’s Loyola University were criticized for advertising Black History Month-themed menus that featured stereotypically African-American foods.
And that’s just the first four months of this year.
Two years ago, a Joe’s Crab Shack in Minnesota was caught using a photo of a black man’s lynching as part of a table decoration. In 2004, Cracker Barrel settled a lawsuit accusing the chain of discriminating against African-American customers and workers in 16 states, including instituting segregated seating and denying them service. A decade before that, Denny’s agreed to pay $54 million in a class action for treating thousands of black customers badly.
“It doesn’t surprise me it happens; it surprises me that it makes news at all,” Oluo said. “Sometimes, we sit and wait and wait and wait and we see everyone around us get served and we think, “Oh, please don’t let this be what I think it is.’ … I don’t think there’s anyone over age 6 who’d be surprised to hear this — or didn’t have a story of their own.”
Nor is restaurant racism limited to fast-food and family eateries, both of which are more casual types of dining where people from many races, religions, ages and socioeconomic strata converge. Half the waiters at full-service restaurants admitted that their treatment of customers depended on those diners’ races, according to research by Wayne State University associate sociology professor Zachary Brewster. That’s due to false preconceived notions that African Americans are bad tippers or more demanding customers.
“They use this justification to devalue black customers,” he said. “In most cases, it’s de-prioritizing service. Hypothetically, if two tables need their drinks refilled, I suspect discrimination would take the form of attending to the needs of the white table first.”
To avoid overt racism, African Americans used to turn to The Negro Motorist Green Book, which listed restaurants, hotels and gas stations that welcomed black motorists, especially in the segregated South. In the 1930s, mail carrier Victor Hugo Green began to compile that information from his fellow postal workers who knew the establishments on their routes. The indispensable volume was published for more than three decades.
Back then, insisting on staying at an inhospitable eatery could be a fatal mistake for black travelers.
Nowadays, it’s Starbucks that made the gross misstep, but its penalty is likely to be only a dip in market share, perhaps temporary, and a spate of bad publicity. Perry predicted the chain’s competitors “will do their best to leverage a mistake.”
He points out that 44% of Millennials are people of color. “For most of America’s history, you could ignore or shun the buying power of blacks, Latinos and Asians. You can’t do that anymore.”
“People think if you teach ‘treat all customers nicely,’ it’s enough. It’s not. People say, ‘I treat everyone equally,’ No, you think you treat everyone equally,” Oluo said.
“We’re not arguing whether or not there’s bias. There is. It’s non-negotiable.”