Cultural IQ

Discrimination Against Blacks Often Hurts White Americans, Too

Posted by Linda S. Wallace  

Diversity classes haven’t actually prepared us to talk about the really scary stuff: the issues that make us squirm, glance down at the floor and hope for a fire drill.

Let’s consider the racial disparities in tipping at fine restaurants. Pity the fine-dining manager who has to explain to a waiter why he or she must provide quality service to customers who aren’t likely to leave a tip.

Pity the poor CEO who must explain in court why a group of African-American customers had to wait 30 minutes longer to get a table than white diners.

It is easier on us to avoid these dialogs, and settle the racial and gender discrimination lawsuits as they arise (Denny’s Corp., $54.4 million settlement; Cracker Barrel, $2 million consent decree resolving a sexual discrimination lawsuit; and Shoney’s Inc. $132 million).

The facts are indisputable: African Americans, as a group, tend to leave smaller tips at full-service restaurants and that may lead to unenthusiastic service by blacks and whites.  It is indisputable that the restaurant industry’s practices – and the racial biases that shape and influence management’s decisions and customer tipping practices – are costly for heavily minority communities such as Memphis,  investors and ultimately, diners.

The tense love-hate relationship developing between African Americans and Hispanics (who also tip less, according to surveys) and the restaurant industry doesn’t bode well for a $604 billion economic sector that employs more than 12.8 million.

Is gender or racial discrimination a sound practice in a nation where whites are projected to be the minority (47 percent) by 2050?

The pipeline of talent that might do the most to connect the industry with fast-growing, culturally diverse cultures are being discouraged from contributing their knowledge, wisdom and culinary tastes.

The Restaurant Opportunities Center, founded in New York to provide support to restaurant workers displaced from the World Trade Center by the events of September 11, has documented the extent to which gender and racial biases factor into decisions made by restaurant managers and executives.

It sent testers, both people of color and whites, to apply for jobs and found, not surprisingly, that whites were more likely to get call back interviews and get hired.

“Employers and several white workers agreed that workers of color lacked the skills, ‘table talk’ (the ability to converse easily and relate to a wealthy white clientele), and/or appearance to succeed as fine-dining waiters and bartenders,” the center said in a release.

“Interviews with workers of color, however, revealed that many were training less-experienced white workers who then immediately surpassed them into wait staff and bartending positions that paid up to five times more than what they were earning as bussers.”

While I was in journalism school, I was hired by the Alumni Office at the University of Missouri to do a surprisingly honest story for the magazine that asked, “Are the Tigers’ stripes white? The story explored the love-hate relationship between the university and the influential black high school coaches in Kansas City and St. Louis.  Mizzou was slow to knock on the door of these inner-city incubators for athletic talent, but  rivals, Nebraska and Oklahoma, were not so shy.

It may surprise you to hear that George Flippin, Nebraska's first black football player. arrived in  1891-1894.In 1892, Missouri refused to play against him, and demanded that Nebraska leave him behind. Nebraska refused, and Missouri forfeited rather than take the field and play against Flippin.

By the time Mizzou warmed up to the idea of racial integration, black students - althletes and scholars alike - were warned not to enroll. In the intervening years, it has struggled to develop championship teams, while  Nebraska and Oklahoma have built football dynasties. 

Restaurant executives, are you listening? Missouri fans - black and white - have paid the price.

“We’re not taught to talk about race and culture,” Gerry Fernandez, head of the Multicultural Foodservice and Hospital Alliance, told a restaurant industry publication.

“We don’t do it well. We don’t like to do it. We’re going to have to get more savvy on cultural communications, cultural competencies, and understanding nuances. If we don’t do that well, we’re going to lose the talent war. They’ll go to other industries who manage the conflict better.”

(Linda S. Wallace, a social entrepreneur and highly experienced organizational trainer, specializes in developing powerful message strategies that resonate with multicultural markets. Contact her at theculturalcoach@aol.com or www.theculturalcoach.com.)

When Visiting the Doctor, Should You Mention Racism as a Health Issue?

The next time you visit your doctor, you might not want to hold back on sharing that story about the  black guy who called you a honkie or the white insurance agent that unjustly refused you a policy.

Discrimination, it appears, can adversely affect your health. That is the conclusion reached by Rice University sociologists Jenifer Bratter and Bridget Gorman in their study, "Is Discrimination an Equal Opportunity Risk? Racial Experiences, Socio-economic Status and Health Status Among Black and White Adults,"

The authors examined data containing measures of social class, race and perceived discriminatory behavior and found that approximately 18 percent of blacks and 4 percent of whites reported higher levels of emotional upset and/or physical symptoms due to race-based treatment. 

"Discriminatory behavior very well may be a 'missing link' in the analysis of racial and ethnic health disparities," Bratter said. "It's important to acknowledge and study its impact on long-term health. 

Given these findings, here's two questions cultural learners might ask: If communities successfully reduce discrimination, might they also bring down  healthcare costs? If companies eliminate racial, religious and gender biases, might their increase workforce wellness and boost productivity?

Unlike most of the research on this topic, Bratter and Gorman's study examines the health risks of discrimination among both whites and blacks, as opposed to just blacks. Their analysis was based on data from the 2004 wave of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, an ongoing collaborative project between U.S. states and territories and the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This racially comparative focus is important because we examine whether discrimination is equally harmful to the health status of black and white adults – or whether experiencing discrimination is disproportionately harmful to either black or white adults," Gorman said. "For example, since, on average, black adults typically experience more health risks in their social and personal environment than white adults (including higher poverty and lower-quality medical insurance), they may be especially vulnerable to negative health effects as a result of racial discrimination."

Both Bratter and Gorman hope that their research will raise awareness about the impact racial discrimination has on health and wellness. "Ultimately we hope that practitioners and researchers in the medical field recognize the dual contribution of social class and interpersonal treatment in shaping health outcomes among persons of all racial populations," Bratter said. 

This study appeared in the September 2011 edition of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior and was funded by Rice University.

So here's the question we might ask: If we reduce discrimination, might we also bring down  healthcare costs? Should companies consider making diversity part of their wellness programs?

African Americans Leave Smaller Tips: Does It Matter?

By Linda S. Wallace | Published  01/20/2012

For years, waiters and waitresses have taken to the Internet to complain about tips left by African-American customers and their discontent has been widely reported.

Now, after years of independent research, academics have reached the same conclusion: African Americans tend to leave smaller tips at restaurants than whites.

The answer that has eluded them is why? Do blacks tip less because wait staff discriminate against them and provide inferior service? Or do they tip less because they simply are not familiar with the tipping norms in their community?

Dr. Michael Lynn, a professor at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, recently designed a new online survey to put these and other popular theories to the test. The idea is to use research-based tools to determine cause and effect rather than rely on anecdotal personal opinions and experiences.

Finally, African Americans have a chance to weigh in and contribute to the industry understanding of this issue by visiting http://bit.ly/xq1h5b and filling out the survey.

“The purpose is to help me understand why blacks tip less than whites,” Dr. Lynn told The New Tri-State Defender (TSD). “I have tested a bunch of different explanations.”

In 2008, the TSD wrote an award-winning series on tipping that explained the connection between minority tipping practices and jobs. If customers tip less at sit-down restaurants, then these chains will likely have higher staff turnover. In May 2008, median hourly wages (including tips) of waiters and waitresses was only $8.01. Many servers rely on good tips to make ends meet.

If wait staff tips are too low, the chain experiences higher operational costs, which may then reduce profits. Thus, some industry insiders have reported that major restaurant chains have been reluctant to locate in African-American communities for fear that the below-normal tipping levels will hurt profits.

This situation closes off a key gateway into the workforce for many unskilled African-American youth – including those trying to get through college. The $604 billion restaurant industry employs more than 12.8 million, and is among the largest private-sector employers in the United States. If chains don’t locate in minority neighborhoods, many youth lose access to job opportunities. According to the National Restaurant Industry, the industry is expected to add jobs at a rate of 2.4 percent, compared with the 1.8 percent expected for the national economy. In the next decade, the industry expects to add 1.3 million positions.

If the underlying cultural differences surrounding tipping could be understood, Lynn said that he, and other industry experts, could develop suitable programs. But first, they have to know which issues to tackle!

In the survey, responders are asked questions about how much they regularly tip as well as those that measure cultural attitudes and beliefs. For instance: If you leave a small tip do you think that is likely to reduce the quality of service during a future dining experience?

It takes only a few minutes to complete the survey. Try to answer the questions honestly. Industry experts such as Lynn say they need an accurate snapshot of the complex issues connected to tipping practices to help restaurants respond in a manner that benefits their customers, their staffs and their investors.

 

 Related Stories:

Tri-State Defender's Award-Winning Tipping Education Campaign

NY Times: Harder for Americans to Rise from Lower Rungs

By JASON DePARLE

WASHINGTON — Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.

Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate for president, warned this fall that movement “up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America.” National Review, a conservative thought leader, wrote that “most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates of mobility.” Even Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who argues that overall mobility remains high, recently wrote that “mobility from the very bottom up” is “where the United States lags behind.”

Liberal commentators have long emphasized class, but the attention on the right is largely new. Is it harder today for Americans to go from poverty to prosperity?

Record-High Number of Discrimination Charges filed in 2011

 

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received a record 99,947 charges of discrimination in fiscal year 2011, which ended Sept. 30, the highest number of charges in the agency’s 46-year history. 

EEOC staff also delivered historic relief—more than $364.6 million in monetary benefits for victims of workplace discrimination.  This is also the highest level obtained in the Commission’s history.  The fiscal year ended with 78,136 pending charges—a decrease of 8,202 charges, or ten percent. In previous years, the pending inventory had increased as staffing declined 30 percent between fiscal years 2000 and 2008.

“I am proud of the work of our employees and believe this demonstrates what can be achieved when we are given resources to enforce the nation’s laws prohibiting employment discrimination,” said EEOC Chair Jacqueline A. Berrien. “The EEOC was able to strategically manage existing resources and take full advantage of increased resources in the past two fiscal years to make significant progress towards effective enforcement of the nation’s civil rights laws.”

Due to EEOC’s enforcement programs in both the private and federal sectors, 5.4 million individuals benefitted from changes in employment policies or practices in their workplace during the past fiscal year.  Additionally, EEOC’s public outreach and education programs reached approximately 540,000 persons directly.

The agency continued to build a strong national systemic enforcement program. At the end of the fiscal year, there were 580 systemic investigations involving more than 2,000 charges under way.  EEOC field legal units filed 261 lawsuits—23 of which involved systemic allegations affecting large numbers of people; 61 had multiple victims (less than 20); and 177 were individual lawsuits.   

The EEOC’s private sector national mediation program also achieved historic highs, obtaining more than $170 million in monetary benefits for complainants, and securing the highest number of resolutions in the history of the program—9,831.  This is five percent more than the number of resolutions reported in fiscal year 2010.

In the federal sector, where the EEOC has different enforcement obligations, the Commission resolved a total of 7,672 requests for hearings, securing more than $58 million in relief for parties who requested hearings.  It also resolved 4,510 appeals from final agency determinations.

The EEOC’s FY 2011 PAR is posted on the agency’s web site at http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/plan/index.cfm. Comprehensive enforcement and litigation statistics for fiscal year 2011 will be available in early 2012.

The EEOC enforces federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. Further information about the Commission is available on its web site www.eeoc.gov.
 

College Students Offer 10 Tips to Improve Civility

“Ten Tips to Improve Civility”

1. Listen to opposing views.
2. Seek shared values.
3. Acknowledge the legitimacy of opposing positions.
4. Identify the problem at-hand, focusing on it rather than on larger conflicts.
5. Avoid political caricatures, labels and generalizations that may not truly represent the views of your adversaries.
6. Accept that disagreement will exist without giving up your own convictions.
7. Clarify what is being said before attacking and/or responding.
8. Recognize the value of solutions beyond those offered by traditional party platforms.
9. Consider the consequences of what you say and do.
10. Hold yourself personally accountable for your own political actions.

Student leaders representing 14 colleges and universities released these 10 tips to improve civility last year in a joint statement designed to guide the public discourse of elected officials and their constituents.

“Ten Tips to Improve Civility” was issued during Pathway to Civility, a national conference of college Democrats, Republicans and independents.

 As we head into 2012, a presidential election year, all of us lifelong learners might think about asking members of our Facebook family, neighborhoods, clubs and organizations to commit to following these simple rules. 

At the end of each week, we might ask ourselves this question: Did I follow as many rules as I broke? Let's agree that individuals who follow these rules consistently are winners. 

Looks Do Matter in Job Interviews

People with birthmarks, scars and other facial disfigurements are more likely to receive poor ratings in job interviews, according to a new study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Houston.

 "Discrimination Against Facially Stigmatized Applicants in Interviews: An Eye-Tracking and Face-to-Face Investigation" was published online last month in the Journal of Applied Psychology and is one of the first studies to examine how individuals with facial blemishes fare in job interviews. The findings show that interviewers recalled less information about these candidates, which negatively impacted evaluations of the applicants.

 "When evaluating applicants in an interview setting, it's important to remember what they are saying," Rice Professor of Psychology Mikki Hebl said. "Our research shows if you recall less information about competent candidates because you are distracted by characteristics on their face, it decreases your overall evaluations of them."

 Hebl co-authored the research paper with University of Houston professor and Rice alum Juan Madera.

 The research included two studies, the first of which involved 171 undergraduate students watching a computer-mediated interview while their eye activity was tracked. After the interview, they were asked to recall information about the candidate.

 "When looking at another person during a conversation, your attention is naturally directed in a triangular pattern around the eyes and mouth," Madera said. "We tracked the amount of attention outside of this region and found that the more the interviewers attended to stigmatized features on the face, the less they remembered about the candidate's interview content, and the less memory they had about the content led to decreases in ratings of the applicant."

 The second study involved face-to-face interviews between candidates who had a facial birthmark and 38 full-time managers enrolled in a part-time MBA and/or a Master of Science in a hospitality management program, all of whom had experience in interviewing applicants for their current or past staff positions.

Despite the increase in age, experience and education, the interviewers had a tough time managing their reactions to the stigma, Madera said. In fact, the effects of the stigma were actually stronger with this group, which he attributed to the face-to-face interview setting.

 "It just shows that despite maturity and experience levels, it is still a natural human reaction to react negatively to facial stigma," Madera said.

 Both Hebl and Madera hope the research will raise awareness about this form of workplace discrimination.

 "The bottom line is that how your face looks can significantly influence the success of an interview," Hebl said. "There have been many studies showing that specific groups of people are discriminated against in the workplace, but this study takes it a step further, showing why it happens. The allocation of attention away from memory for the interview content explains this.”

 This study was funded by Rice University. For more information or to schedule and interview with Hebl or Madera, contact Amy Hodges, senior media relations specialist at Rice, at 713-348-6777 or amy.hodges@rice.edu

 

What Spurs Students to Stay in College? Try Diversity

 Dan Berrett of the Chronicle of Higher Education reports this morning that good teaching and exposure to students from diverse backgrounds are some of the strongest predictors of whether freshmen return for a second year of college and improve their critical-thinking skills, say two prominent researchers.

 Patrick T. Terenzini, a professor of higher education at Pennsylvania State University, and Ernest T. Pascarella, a co-director of the Center for Research on Undergraduate Education at the University of Iowa,  are co-authors of a highly influential book, How College Affects Students, and at a conference on Sunday they sought on Sunday to synthesize what recent research says about student learning, while also weighing in on recent controversies in higher-education research.

Read the report

How to Train Your Brain to be Inclusive

 

Companies with More Women Are Perceived as More Ethical

Industry leaders and activists came together last month n New York City to discuss ways to keep companies competitive.

The event, moderated by Ann Bartel, the Merrill Lynch Professor of Workforce Transformation at Columbia University, brought to light some surprising facts: despite numerous studies linking improved corporate and shareholder performance with a firm’s diverse board, most Fortune 500 companies continue to lack true boardroom diversity.

While women represent 51 percent of the US population and African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanics together represent 34 percent, only 28 percent of board seats are held by women and minorities.

Three panelists presented the business case for diversity: Ilene H. Lang, president and CEO of Catalyst and founding CEO of Alta Vista; Monika Mantilla ’96, president and CEO of Altura Capital; and Carlos Orta, president and CEO of the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility. Catalyst and the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility create resources to assist corporations in finding and promoting qualified and diverse board candidates. Altura Capital helps institutional investors find new investment prospects among companies with emerging, diverse leaders.

The three panelists offered three reasons corporate boards should diversify.

First, the business case: research suggests that better decision-making occurs with more diverse groups, and diversity is correlated with better financial performance.

Second, the talent pool: women now earn more than half of all professional degrees, Lang explained, and changing customer demographics makes diversity more crucial than ever.

The third factor, Lang said, is reputation: research indicates that companies with more women are perceived as more ethical; leadership demographics that reflect customers is viewed positively, too. However, a supportive atmosphere for one group doesn’t necessarily mean the same for another minority. “Companies that are great for women may not be great for Latinos, for instance,” Orta said.

“If you want the best and brightest talent for the next 20 to 30 years, this is what it’s going to look like,” Lang said. “And if women and minorities are the future of your customer base, you need leaders who understand those customers.”

“I believe we are changing the world,” she said. “It is revolutionary to live in a system that works for all.”

Watch Out for Those Hypothetical Questions

November 2011

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — As Americans tune in to the debate preceding the next election, some will hear hypothetical questions about candidates. You might get a phone call, for example, asking how likely you would be to vote for so-and-so if she'd hired an illegal immigrant, or if such-and-such a candidate opposed gay marriage.

Questions in this form are so common that we rarely give them a second thought. After all, trial lawyers sizing up prospective jurors, or market researchers testing the waters through focus groups, routinely use hypothetical questions in their work.

"But what seems innocuous can have insidious effects on an individual," says Baba Shiv, Sanwa Bank, Limited, Professor of Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He and his colleagues have shown that hypothetical questions don't merely measure our current attitudes: such questions can actually sway opinion and affect behavior. And, in their most recent study in this line of research, they showed how and why this distortion occurs.

Designers of political "push polls" understand the basic effect already: ostensibly asking for your true opinion, the push pollster in reality aims to spread rumors and taint your view. (The most notorious example was a push poll during the 2000 Republican Primaries that asked South Carolina voters whether they'd vote for John McCain if they learned that he had fathered an illegitimate child.) Since hypothetical questions cloak a malicious act under the cover of legitimacy, Shiv calls them wolves in sheep's clothing. "Because they're hypothetical, they're not subject to criticism. If I make an outright accusation, I have to defend it, whereas with a hypothetical, I can say, 'I didn't say that. It's a hypothetical question.'"
   
In an experiment published in 2001, Shiv and his colleague Gavan Fitzsimons, a professor at Duke University, looked at voting behavior, finding that hypothetical questions like those used in push polls decreased the percentage of participants voting for the targeted candidate. In this latest set of experiments, the researchers, who also included scholars from the Alberta School of Business and the University of Southern California, probed deeper to discover what gives hypothetical questions their power. Hypothetical questions, they found, work by heightening what psychologists call "accessibility" — "what information becomes top of mind," Shiv explains.

Under normal circumstances, any stereotypic beliefs you may have about politicians or conservatives or any other group are generally buried in your mind, so they won't have much effect on how you behave. "But if a stereotype becomes top of mind, this top-of-mind knowledge will have an impact on behavior," Shiv says. For example, if one of your stereotypes of politicians is that they're corrupt, then hearing a hypothetical question about a politician who took bribes will remind you of that stereotype, making you even less likely than before to vote for that politician in the near future.

That certainly sounds sneaky, but what makes the process especially insidious is that it happens subconsciously. "Even if you alert people that this situation is hypothetical, they don't latch on to that. They simply focus on the content, and not the context."

For example, in one experiment, the researchers gave a pretrial jury selection questionnaire to a group of actual prospective jurors. They asked some of them, hypothetically, how finding out that the defendant was a gang member would affect their impartiality in the trial. Even though the questionnaire explicitly told participants not to use the questions to draw conclusions about the case, participants who saw this question ended up giving more guilty verdicts and meting out harsher sentences, at least on paper, than did participants who hadn't been exposed to the hypothetical.

Shiv, of course, is reluctant to encourage anyone to exploit the power of hypotheticals, but he suggests they can be a fallback when you don't have all the facts to make your case. The more important takeaway, though, is to notice when others are using hypotheticals — and to raise your guard. "Whether we know it or not, we're being influenced by innocuous-looking tactics."

— Marina Krakovsky