Sociology researchers publish article on racial profiling in U.S. restaurants
Zachary W. Brewster, Ph.D. and assistant professor of sociology, and Ph.D. candidate, Shelytia Cocroft, together with Michael Lynn, published an article entitled, "Consumer Racial Profiling in U.S. Restaurants: Exploring Subtle Forms of Service Discrimination against Black Diners" in the June 2014 issue of Sociological Forum. The article explores the varied consumer perceptions of servers' behaviors toward black and white restaurant patrons.
Dr. Brewster has published several articles on racial discrimination in the workplace and the restaurant industry. His research interests include work and organizations, medical sociology, race and ethnicity, everyday racism/discrimination, inequality and social stratification, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Shelytia Cocroft has been a graduate teaching assistant in the sociology department from 2010 to this past April. Her area of specialization is Medical Sociology. She is presently working on her dissertation on brain health among elderly African Americans.
Abstract
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 entree, 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.