‘Because they tip for shit!’: The Social Psychology of Everyday Racism in Restaurants

Despite the notion that racism and discrimination are things of the past, racial minorities continue to experience such treatment in everyday interactions, often occurring in commercial transactions. In this paper, we analyze data from a survey of restaurant servers (N = 200) and a qualitative field study. Both were designed to explore the racial climate in restaurants. Our findings show that servers not only observe their co‐workers practicing discriminatory behaviors but also report doing so themselves. Referring to this trend as ‘tableside racism’, we argue that restaurant servers engage in racist discourse, which functions to create and sustain stereotypes about black patrons. These workplace interactions shape the service that is extended to black patrons, thus resulting in a self‐fulfilling prophecy wherein they receive poor tips and treatment from blacks that reflect inferior service. To illustrate the process of server discrimination, we situate our findings in a social psychological framework.     

Black–White Earnings Gap among Restaurant Servers: A Replication,Extension, and Exploration of Consumer Racial Discrimination in Tipping

There is a rich history of social science research centering on racial inequalities that continue to be observed across various markets (e.g., labor, housing, and credit markets) and social milieus. Existing research on racial discrimination in consumer markets is, however, relatively scarce and that which has been done has disproportionately focused on consumers as the victims of race‐based mistreatment. As such, we know relatively little about how consumers contribute to inequalities in their roles as perpetrators of racial discrimination. In response, in this article, we elaborate on a line of research that is only in its infancy stages of development and yet is ripe with opportunities to advance the literature on consumer racial discrimination and racial earnings inequities among tip‐dependent employees in the United States. Specifically, we analyze data derived from an exit survey of restaurant consumers (N = 394) in an attempt to replicate, extend, and further explore the recently documented effect of service providers’ race on restaurant consumers’ tipping decisions. Our results indicate that both white and black restaurant customers discriminate against black servers by tipping them less than their white co‐workers. Importantly, we find no evidence that this black tip penalty is the result of inter‐racial differences in service skills possessed by black and white servers. We conclude by delineating directions for future research in this neglected but salient area of study.     

Races without Racism?: everyday race relations in Singapore

In Singapore, race has a prominent place in the city state’s national policies. Its political ideology of multiracialism proclaims racial equality and protection for minority groups from racial discrimination. However, despite official rhetoric and policies aimed at managing and integrating the different ethnic groups, some scholars have argued that institutional racism does exist in Singapore. While it is public knowledge, with few exceptions, racist provocations and experiences of racism are not publicly discussed. In recent years, the advent of social media has made it possible for Singaporeans oftentimes unwittingly to express racially derogatory remarks. This has highlighted that racism is much more deep rooted. Yet, it still remains the white elephant in the room. This paper examines the sociopolitical context that has contributed to everyday racial discrimination and calls for a public acknowledgement of racism so as to combat racist practices.     

Racial identity, racial discrimination, perceived stress, and psychological distress among African American young adults

This study examines the direct and indirect relationships among racial identity, racial discrimination, perceived stress, and psychological distress in a sample of 555 African American young adults. A prospective study design was used to assess the influence of two dimensions of racial identity attitudes (i.e., centrality and public regard) on other study variables to investigate the relationship between racial identity attitudes and psychological distress. The results show some evidence of a direct relationship between racial centrality and psychological distress, as well as evidence of indirect relationships for both centrality and public regard through the impact of racial discrimination and perceived stress. In addition, racial centrality was both a risk factor for experiencing discrimination and a protective factor in buffering the negative impact of discrimination on psychological distress. Results are discussed within the context of identifying multiple pathways to psychological well-being for African American young adults within the context of racial discrimination.     

“To Hell with Them All!”: Perceived Discrimination,Interracial Contact,and Racial Attitudes

Can experiencing interracial hostility perpetuate interracial hostility? This article considers this possibility by examining the link between interpersonal discrimination and racial attitudes. Further, I situate discrimination into one’s totality of interracial exposure by analyzing whether other forms of interracial contact (friends, neighbors, or coworkers) condition the discrimination–attitudes association. Using representative data from the Chicago Area Study, I find that black, Hispanic, and white adults express greater feelings of racial threat and ingroup closeness when they report discrimination. The conditional effects vary across race/ethnicity. Among Hispanics, friendship mitigates these attitudinal consequences. For blacks, friendship is beneficial only for those not experiencing discrimination. Among whites, discrimination’s attitudinal consequences grow more extreme with greater neighborhood contact. Overall, the results suggest that (1) racial attitudes should be added to the list of interpersonal racial discrimination consequences and (2) discrimination is often a primary form of contact contributing to the development of racial attitudes.     

Walking on the Edge: Towards a Sociography of Discrimination against the Buraku: Lectures on Discrimination in Letter Format

This article demonstrates a new methodological approach to recognize, analyze and write about discrimination against the buraku, which is one form of social discrimination in contemporary Japan. The structural discrimination proposed in this study is based on the concept of relational discrimination, which is derived from fundamental criticisms of the conventional concepts of material and psychological discrimination. Relational discrimination occurs when we are placed in a certain type of relationship and may become accomplices to discrimination or cause it, regardless of whether or not there is any individual prejudice or discriminatory consciousness at work. From this perspective, this article tries to fundamentally re-examine the binary thinking assumed in conventional sociology that there are minorities (those who are discriminated against) and majorities (those who discriminate against the minority). I focus on the complex ways of being human, and in particular on the transformations that accompany changes in particular relations such as from a person who does not discriminate to one who discriminates against others; from a person who is discriminated against to one who discriminates against others and from a person who is not discriminated against to one who is discriminated against. By focusing on the meaning of the deep suffering of a man who made discriminatory remarks to people living in a buraku community, and of a woman who married into a family living in a buraku community, I try to understand life ethics for people who discriminate and who at the same time are discriminated against.     

Racial Identity Matters: The Relationship between Racial Discrimination and Psychological Functioning in African American Adolescents

This study examines the interrelationships among racial discrimination, racial identity, and psychological functioning in a sample of 314 African American adolescents. Racial discrimination was associated with lower levels of psychological functioning as measured by perceived stress, depressive symptomatology, and psychological well‐being. Although individuals who believe that other groups hold more negative attitudes toward African Americans (low public regard) were at greater risk for experiencing racial discrimination, low public regard beliefs also buffered the impact of racial discrimination on psychological functioning. More positive attitudes about African Americans were also associated with more positive psychological functioning. The results further illustrate the utility of a multidimensional framework for understanding the role of racial identity in the relationship between racial discrimination and psychological outcomes among African American adolescents.     

The Black catalyst to tweet: the role of discrimination experience,group identification,and racial agency in Black Americans’ instrumental use of Twitter

The strong presence of Blacks on Twitter has attracted scholarly attention, but few empirical studies have provided a clear, theory-driven answer to the question of how Blacks use Twitter. Drawing on the uses and gratifications framework and the rejection-identification model, we examined how discrimination experience, group identification, and racial agency influence Black Americans’ instrumental use of Twitter. An online survey conducted with a national adult sample of 323 Black American Twitter users showed that the experience of discrimination in everyday settings indirectly predicted three types of instrumental use of Twitter (information seeking, opinion expression, and social networking) through serial mediation of group identification and racial agency. The direct effects of discrimination experience on the three types of instrumental use were not significant, nor were the indirect effects of discrimination experience on instrumental use only through group identification and only through racial agency. These results indicate that Black Americans’ goal-driven, purposeful use of Twitter may be understood as a form of problem-focused coping with discrimination experience. The current findings also suggest that Black users’ identification with their racial group and desire to make a positive difference in the Black community constitute a pivotal mechanism underlying their instrumental use of Twitter.     

Racial Identity,School Racial Climate,and School Intrinsic Motivation Among African American Youth: The Importance of Person–Context Congruence

Researchers have been concerned with whether strong racial identification promotes or inhibits achievement motivation among African American youth, but current literatures have paid little attention to the role of youths' contexts. In this study, we outline a racial identity–context congruence framework that predicts positive benefits of a strong, positive racial identity when the context is congruent with youths' beliefs. To test this framework, we examined school racial climate as a moderator in the relationships of three racial identity variables (centrality, private regard, and public regard) with intrinsic motivation for attending school in a sample of 11th graders. Overall, results support the congruence perspective and also demonstrate how feelings of belonging at school mediate the relationship between racial identity–racial climate congruence and school intrinsic motivation.     

Racial Quotas and the Culture War in Brazilian Academia

Dozens of Brazilian universities recently adopted racial quotas for negros, read Afro-Brazilians, in higher education. Anyone familiar with the Brazilian context will recognize this step as a paradigm shift in the state’s approach to ‘race’. State discourse in past decades touted a mixed-race population not beset by overt discriminatory practices. In response to this new approach, two well-defined clusters of professors in Brazil’s universities authored several dueling manifestos supporting and opposing race-based affirmative action. This article suggests a ‘culture war’ framing of the debate and delineates the contrasting historic ideologies of racialism and antiracialism that inform the divergent racial worldviews of each academic camp. It then explores four points of contention from the manifestos that characterize their conflicting perspectives. They differ in terms of (1) their images of the Brazilian nation, (2) their diagnoses of the mechanisms behind non-white underrepresentation in Brazilian universities, (3) their prognoses for a remedy via racial quotas, and (4) their motivations for entering the debate. At the same time, the article locates some possible common ground.     

The Nature of Freedom

A narrative of racial progress abounds in U.S. history, making it difficult for teachers to present complex interpretations of racial/ethnic discrimination. Historical complexity challenges such simplistic notions of race/ethnicity and encourages critical thinking. Adding anti-essentialist historical content about Latinx communities is one way to complicate perceptions of race relations in the United States. When combined with historical inquiry, or the act of “doing” history, anti-essentialist historical content can help students articulate a more complex understanding of history. Studying Mendez v. Westminster, a 1940s California case about Mexican American desegregation, offers an opportunity for educators to leverage these historical and racial/ethnic complexities. Specifically, we highlight how to (1) provide background on the historical and racial/ethnic context of the 1940s, (2) highlight Mexican Americans’ racial/ethnic and language complexity, and (3) use historical inquiry to expose the multidimensionality of Mexican American discrimination.     

Understanding Employment Discrimination: A Multilevel Approach

This paper reviews recent research on employment discrimination on the basis of sex, race, and ethnicity in US work establishments. Unlike blatant discrimination of the past, contemporary discrimination is typically more subtle, often unintentional, and develops in relationship to the social context in which it is embedded. Focusing on this covert and dynamic nature of discrimination, we review recent research that identifies factors at the individual, workplace, and societal level that contribute to variation in sex and race discrimination across employment contexts. At each level, we conceptually distinguish between factors that influence employers’ sex and race biases and factors that affect potential victims’ capacity to identify discriminatory experiences at work.     

Consumer Racial Profiling in U.S. Restaurants: Exploring Subtle Forms of Service Discrimination against Black Diners

In this article we advance scholarship on consumer racial profiling (CRP), in general, and the practice as it occurs in restaurant establishments, in particular, by presenting findings from a survey of restaurant consumers that was designed to ascertain the degree to which discriminate service is evident in black and white customers' perceptions and evaluations of their servers' behaviors. We found no evidence of interracial differences in subjects' perceptions of being the recipients of subtle server behaviors that are discretionally conveyed (e.g., recommend entrée, compliment food choice, joke with, etc.) or those that constitute standard markers of service quality (e.g., eye contact, smiling, expressing appreciation, etc.). We did, however, find some evidence of CRP in customers' perceptions of their servers' attentiveness/promptness. Additionally, we found that African Americans tend to subjectively appraise their servers' performance less favorably than their white counterparts and this is the case even when other indicators of service discrimination are held constant. Findings taken as a whole suggest that servers' extend similar cues of hospitality but do so in qualitatively different ways (e.g., less sincere) across racial groups. We discuss the implications of these findings and conclude by encouraging additional scholarship on the subtle nature of racial discrimination in consumer settings.     

MORTGAGE LENDING IN BOSTON: A RECONSIDERATION OF THE EVIDENCE

Is there statistical evidence of racial discrimination in home mortgage markets? The Boston Fed recently addressed this concern head-on, by collecting all available data from loan applications in Boston. They find that the extent of discrimination is reduced after one accounts for all of the confounding variables measured in these applications, but that it remains statistically significant. However, their strong conclusions are unwarranted due to the use of invalid statistical methods. Correctly evaluated, their data provide no significant evidence of racial discrimination in mortgage markets. (JEL K31, J7)     

When Do People Deploy Genetic Determinism? A Review Pointing to the Need for Multi‐factorial Theories of Public Utilization of Scientific Discourses

For over two decades, scholars in the humanities and social sciences have attended warily and thoughtfully to the growing influence of biological and especially genetics‐based explanations of human behavior. Concern about genetic determinism has formed a focal point of this attention, because it was presumed to provide a lynchpin for discriminatory effects arising from genetics technologies. Substantial empirical research has now demonstrated that genetic determinism is in fact linked to discriminatory attitudes including prejudice, Social Dominance Orientation, sexism, and racism. Fortunately, however, the research has also indicated that most lay people’s deployment of genetic determinism is both limited and strategic, primarily serving self‐interests such as protecting valued behaviors (which are not health conducive) or avoiding blame. The disjunction between predictions based on existing social theories of discourse and empirical research on individual‐level practices highlights the need for a theoretical integration of biological biases, individual actions, and social structures in future social theories, especially theories about health behaviors, science studies, and public understanding of science.     

Racial Discrimination and Human Rights in the Global Context: The International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination

This essay will discuss racism and racial discrimination by locating them within a context of international human rights. It is argued that conceptually racism and racial discrimination within an international human rights paradigm sharpens our understanding of these concepts from both a global and regional vantage point. The main idea is to provide a thematic and procedural overview of key international human rights instruments that address racial discrimination. It will situate racial discrimination in the context of international human rights and provide a critical discussion focused on the International Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and other human rights instruments that address racial discrimination.     

Problem drinking patterns among African Americans: the impacts of reports of discrimination, perceptions of prejudice, and "risky" coping strategies

This research builds on a series of recent studies that have reported independent effects of personal experiences of racial discrimination on poor mental health outcomes. We suggest that for one mental health outcome, problem drinking, discrimination experiences have an impact not only via abridged socioeconomic attainment and the frustrations associated with institutionally limited opportunity structures, but also by directly increasing the likelihood of problem drinking. Moreover, we argue that personal experiences with discrimination help to foster a set of beliefs about the utility of drinking as a means of reducing stress that in the alcohol literature is referred to as "escapist" drinking. Escapist drinking is proposed as an intervening mechanism that is associated with a higher probability of alcohol-related mental health problems. Using data from the 1999-2000 National Survey of Black Workers, we find that, independent of socioeconomic attainment, personal reports of discriminatory experiences have direct influences on problem drinking. Consistent with our hypotheses, we also find that the effects of personal reports of discrimination are at least partially mediated by the endorsement of beliefs that drinking provides an effective coping mechanism. We conclude that racial impacts on mental health outcomes reflect more than the "simple" effects of constrained socioeconomic attainment.     

Is discrimination an equal opportunity risk?: racial experiences, socioeconomic status, and health status among black and white adults

Using the 2004 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we explore the relationship between racial awareness, perceived discrimination, and self-rated health among black (n = 5,902) and white (n = 28,451) adults. We find that adjusting for group differences in racial awareness and discrimination, in addition to socioeconomic status, explains the black-white gap in self-rated health. However, logistic regression models also find evidence for differential vulnerability among black and whites adults, based on socioeconomic status. While both groups are equally harmed by emotional and/or physical reactions to race-based treatment, the negative consequences of discriminatory experiences for black adults are exacerbated by their poorer socioeconomic standing. In contrast, the association between racial awareness and self-rated health is more sensitive to socioeconomic standing among whites. Poorer health is more likely to occur among whites when they reflect at least daily on their own racial status-but only when it happens in tandem with mid-range educational achievement, or among homemakers.     

“A Run-in with the Cops Is Really Few and Far Between”: Negative Evidence and Ethnographic Understanding of Racial Discrimination by Police

ABSTRACT

Statistics show that blacks are subjected to disproportionately more policing than whites, and more often interpret their encounters with police as affected by racial discrimination. The ethnographic evidence supports the numbers, but this body of work, I suggest, has been too focused on blacks’ experiences with prejudicial policing. A fruitful but largely unexplored way to advance the ethnographic study of police discrimination is to collect and analyze data from the group receiving preferential treatment from officers: whites. In practice, this often involves collecting and analyzing nonevents, such as not being stopped by police. This article’s purpose is to outline and illustrate the benefits and difficulties of such research by drawing on Lewis and Lewis’s 1980 typology of “negative evidence” and findings from my study of 30 white drug dealers.     

When Should Differences Make a Difference:

This study criticizes the Supreme Court's current approach to constitutional gender equality and suggests a new type of review for gender-based classifications under the equal protection clause. The debate over acceptable gender classification hsa forced the Court to decide whether distinctions on the basis of gender-specific physical characteristics discriminate on the bsais of gender, whether legislation on the basis of generalized physical characteristics is discriminatory when applied to individuals who deviate from the average, whether states reinforce sex role stereotypes when legislating on the basis of gender-specific physical characteristics, and whether legislation that purports to benefit women actually serves to further inequality. In wrestling with this issues, especially the last, the Court has also been forced to explain both logically and legally why racial classifications are different from gender classifications The purpose of this study is twofold: the first objective is to argue that the Supreme Court should adopt an approach to legally sanctioned gender differentiation that would review gender classifications with the same hostility as racial classifications; related to this is the second objective, which is to show that a strict-scrutiny equal protection analysis is compatible with a special treatment approach for pregnancy benefits legislation. The two tasks will be undertaken by presenting critiques of the Court's current approach to gender equity and by suggesting an alternative direction for gender-based equal protection doctrine, one that will accomodate positive pregnancy legislation.