Despite popular claims that racism and discrimination are no longer salient issues in contemporary society, members of racially underrepresented groups continue to experience disparate treatment in everyday public interactions. The context of full-service restaurants is one such public setting wherein African Americans, in particular, encounter racial prejudices and discriminatory treatment. To further understand the pervasiveness of such anti-Black attitudes and actions within the restaurant context, this article analyzes primary survey data derived from a community sample of servers (N = 200). Participants were asked a series of questions ascertaining information about the racial climate of their workplaces. Findings reveal substantial server negativity toward African Americans' tipping and dining behaviors. Racialized discourse and discriminatory behaviors are also shown to be quite common in the restaurant context. The anti-Black attitudes and actions that the authors document in this research are illustrative of the continuing significance of race in contemporary society, and the authors encourage further research on this relatively neglected area of inquiry.
Existing studies have found that restaurant servers sometimes deliver service that is informed by their customers' race. However, we know considerably less about the causes underlying such discriminatory behaviors within the restaurant context. In this study, we advance this literature by analyzing data derived from a survey of restaurant servers (N = 195) to assess the effects of working in a racialized workplace environment, characterized by racist and stereotypical discourse, on servers' reports of providing race-based service. Our findings reveal a strong statistically significant positive relationship between observing racialized workplace discourse and servers' self-professed discriminatory behaviors. Furthermore, we find that these effects are not mediated or moderated by servers' willingness to participate in the discursive spreading of racial stereotypes by discussing their customers' race with peers. We conclude by identifying suggestions that restaurant leaders might consider to reduce racial discrimination within the restaurant industry.
Inspired by inquiry-guided learning and critical self-reflection as pedagogical approaches, we describe exercises that encourage students to develop critical thinking skills through inquiry and reflective writing. Students compile questions and reflections throughout the course and, at the end of the term, use their writings for a comprehensive analytic self-reflection that examines their intellectual and sociological growth. Following Schwalbe’s (2008 ) urging to emphasize sociological thinking over disciplinary nuances in introductory courses, we describe several complementary methods for teaching students how to think like sociologists. We detail five inquiry exercises and three reflection exercises that build up to the final analytic reflection essay. The unique value of these exercises is that students not only engage the course material throughout the course but also learn to examine their own writing as data. In doing so, students learn to value the process of learning, inquiry, and critical self-reflection while acquiring and constructing self-knowledge.
In this article, the authors describe a class activity that uses a combination of strategies to overcome obstacles students face when learning about the reproduction of inequality in everyday life. Based on Schwalbe et al.’s (2000) piece on “generic social processes,” and following the idea of “making the strange familiar and the familiar strange,” the authors had students pretend to be aliens to investigate how generic social processes are used in the United States to both maintain privilege and cope with oppression. The activity facilitates students’ understanding of how inequality is reproduced through interaction rather than by “social forces.” The activity provides students with a hands-on way to grasp the reproduction of inequality from a social-psychological perspective. It also encourages students to see how valuable qualitative research is for helping sociologists understand how inequality is reproduced across contexts.
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