Race and Restaurants.
The video "Kids Speak Their Minds About Race" is a video by CNN on the views of race on kids, a large part dealt with dating and relationships. It starts out by showing a picture of two kids in the hallway. One child is standing behind another while the other is on the ground picking up papers. The children are asked simple questions, like "are they friends?", and the kids gave their thoughts. They proceed to go onto more difficult questions, such as "what would your parents think of you being friends with a black/white child?" The answers were quite surprising, some kids said their parents wouldn't be okay with that, even though the video was
made in 2012, we still hadn't gotten past race. They proceeded to ask older children what their
thoughts were too, and as the kids got older and older, the line between racial "do's" and
"don't" became much thicker, one girl even saying she wouldn't be okay with herself or her
family dating outside of her race. So what does this have to do with dining?
In the U.S., we still are really racist. In dining, it's all the more prevalent. It's quite
obvious that companies would like to do whatever they can to keep people's positive image of
the waiters and waitresses in their minds, but what's sad is that they'll go as far as to hire
only white servers, waiters, and waitresses. One example is New York, while keep in mind that
26% of New York is African-American, "only 10.5% actually get jobs in the restaurant biz, and
they're isolated to the lower class restaurants."(The New York Times) It's kinda crazy if you ask
me, it's been how long since we as a nation declared that the color of your skin shouldn't have an impact. We made
laws and still people somehow go without accepting this as a fact of life. But before jumping to
the conclusion that the restaurants are the problem, there's one more bigger problem.
So by now it's a fair question to ask, why do the restaurants do this? Well besides some of
the employers being racist, it's in the consumer. We see black americans getting the short end,
being paid less, and not getting as big or as many tips. Not only that, but we also are seeing
cases of segregation, still. One cold hard fact is that, it's not just the owners, but when a
family goes out to eat, if they're given a white waiter, they're more likely to tip more, and the
family that goes out to eat may be placed in the restaurant according to the color of their skin.
What's truly amazing is that it is the twenty first century, and it's been a long time that
race has had anything to do with anything. Problem is, it hasn't changed. Even now we have groups
such as the Klu Klux Klan threatening to use "lethal force" on protesters, and having an all out
cyber-war (totally serious) between internet hacktivists called Anonymous (these are the good guys), and the KKK.
(You can find that article, here, or google #opKKK if you don't believe me.)
Concluding, race is still an issue, and we see it in the dining industry. Whether it's the
company themselves hiring according to race, or people judging their servers according to race,
racism is still here. Sometimes it's something as small as looking at someone different, to all-
out cyber-war, it still exists.
