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Racialized Customer Service in Restaurants: A Quantitative Assessment of the Statistical Discrimination Explanatory Framework *
Author(s) -
Brewster Zachary W.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
sociological inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.446
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1475-682X
pISSN - 0038-0245
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-682x.2011.00396.x
Subject(s) - explanatory power , context (archaeology) , racism , salient , sociology , service (business) , sample (material) , variation (astronomy) , server , marketing , public relations , social psychology , psychology , business , computer science , political science , history , gender studies , law , epistemology , world wide web , philosophy , chemistry , physics , archaeology , chromatography , astrophysics
Despite popular claims that racism and discrimination are no longer salient issues in contemporary society, racial minorities continue to experience disparate treatment in everyday public interactions. The context of full‐service restaurants is one such public setting wherein racial minority patrons, African Americans in particular, encounter racial prejudices and discriminate treatment. To further understand the causes of such discriminate treatment within the restaurant context, this article analyzes primary survey data derived from a community sample of servers ( N = 200) to assess the explanatory power of one posited explanation—statistical discrimination. Taken as a whole, findings suggest that while a statistical discrimination framework toward understanding variability in servers’ discriminatory behaviors should not be disregarded, the framework’s explanatory utility is limited. Servers’ inferences about the potential profitability of waiting on customers across racial groups explain little of the overall variation in subjects’ self‐reported discriminatory behaviors, thus suggesting that other factors not explored in this research are clearly operating and should be the focus of future inquires.