Kids Speak Their Mind About Race

Mariah Bauer

Race in Restaurants

            The video “Kids Speak Their Minds About Race” which is broadcasted by CNN is letting people know how children feel about race.  They interview children who go to mostly white schools and schools with diversity.  The children in this study are shown different pictures of a child on the floor with his books everywhere and then another kid standing over him.  Based on the race of the child standing up people formed different opinions about what the standing up child was doing.  If the child was in the minority race children believed that the child on the floor had been pushed and that’s why his books are on the floor.  The next question they asked kids in these two school settings was “How do you feel your parents would react to bringing another race home?”. The reactions of the children depended also on race and also if they are the male or female bringing the opposite gender home.  Most children believed it was OK for a black guy to bring a white girl home.  They did not believe it was OK for a black girl to bring a white male home.  So there is a slight double standard set in this situation.  This video shows that even in 2012 race was and still is a big issue in the US.

            In the year of 2013 you may think that we have gotten past the whole racial discrimination in public places topic.  Sadly we have not.   At Wild Wing Café in North Carolina a black family had waited two hours to be seated and saw a huge empty spot in the restaurant and asked why they could not be seated there the restaurants response was “that wouldn't be possible, as another customer had requested Brown's party sit elsewhere because she felt “threatened."” This was all because a young white lady had encountered an altercation with a member of the party earlier in the night.   This shows that race is still prevalent when a restaurant is willing to lose a group of 25 people all because a white person does not want them to be seated by her.  All the Brown family wanted from this story was for an apology from the company.  He tried calling the store directly and all HQ but neither of them responded to his calls so he went to Facebook.  He put a rant on Facebook about what had happened and suddenly the restaurant payed attention to him.  This also shows that the restaurant wasn’t willing to do anything for a black family until many people could see their mistake.  This shows that they value one type of customer over another. 

            In an article on tipping I found that Americans are higher tippers then the African American population.  This study done by Cornell University found that blacks tip on average 20% less than white people (NPR). Most white and blacks are equal in the fact that they don’t know the appropriate tipping range in America is anywhere 15% to 20%. The average tip from a black person is roughly 13%.  The average tip from some of white decent is roughly 16.5% of their bill.  The black people’s defense to the reason that they tip less is they prefer more take-out food.  The fact that they prefer takeout food shows the fact that they may tip lower because they don’t know how to tip because they rarely eat at sit down restaurants.  So this article states in the long run that people don’t really know how to tip no matter what race it is.  Restaurants think that people need to be educated on what is appropriate to tip.  Restaurants try to have lower wages for their employees but compensate them in tips.  So if they have low tippers it could result in a lawsuit of not paying their employees minimum wage.  Overall this article shows that restaurants won’t say it but they wish all races would tip a little bit more.

            When you go to a restaurant do you think about the race of your waiter? In the Rosebud Restaurant Group they refused to hire African American wait staff.  Finding restaurants to work at is the main problem for blacks looking for employment.  A lot of restaurants will not hire black wait staff if it is in a predominately white community.  This article in general shows that white business owners to blacks seem to always be discrimination against them even if they don’t believe they are.  The restaurants may just not like the applicants but blacks take it offensively when there is only white wait staff.

            To conclude Kids Speak Their Mind Against Race, everyone now sees that race is a big deal in this country even if it is behind the scenes.  I think that people do it unintentionally without realizing it just because of the way they are brought up.  Overall race is still a big deal in this country’s restaurants systems even though people like to say the race barrier has been broken down in the US.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-09-17/news/chi-federal-agency-sues-rosebud-restaurants-over-racial-discrimination-claims-20130917_1_federal-agency-eeoc-chicago-area

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1329241

http://www.today.com/news/restaurant-investigating-diners-claim-they-were-kicked-out-over-race-8C11016258

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OKgUdQF-Fg