In this “post-racial” society a new study finds that poor service while dining out might have more to do with the color of your skin than with an unusually moody waiter.
Sarah Rusche, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at North Carolina State, found that nearly two-fifths of waiters surveyed admitted to treating customers differently depending on their race.
“Many people believe that race is no longer a significant issue in the United States,” she said. “But the fact that a third of servers admit to varying their quality of service based on customers’ race, often giving African-Americans inferior service, shows that race continues to be an issue in our society.”
The study, published in the Journal of Black Studies, took a sample of 200 servers at 18 different restaurants in the state. 38.5 percent of waiters, mostly White, said they lowered their quality of service to Black customers because they assumed them to be less polite and poor tippers.
More than 50 percent of those surveyed said they have witnessed their colleagues discriminate against Blacks, while nearly 90 percent said they have overheard co-workers gossiping about the race of their customers.
“‘Tableside racism’ is yet another example in which African-Americans are stereotyped and subsequently treated poorly in everyday situations,” Rusche said. “Race continues to be a significant barrier to equal treatment in restaurants and other areas of social life.”
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