Posted on 04/18/2013 3:08:12 PM PDT by blam
Racist 'Retail Redlining' Is Still A Big Problem In America
Emily Badger, The Atlantic Cities
April 18, 2013
David Mekarski, the village administrator for the south Chicago suburb of Olympia Fields, told a startling story this week at the American Planning Association's annual conference about a debate he recently had with a restaurant official.
Why, he wanted to know, wouldn't quality restaurants come to his mixed-race community, where the average annual household income is $77,000, above the county average?
The reply: "Black folks don’t tip, and so managers can’t maintain a quality staff. And if they can’t maintain a quality staff, they can’t maintain a quality restaurant.”
A gasp then rippled through the room in front of Mekarski. "This is one of the most pervasive and insidious forms of racism left in America today," he says.
There's a term for the phenomenon he's describing: retail redlining. The practice is a more recent and less studied variation on redlining as it's been historically recognized in the housing sector. In the context of retail, grocery stores, and restaurants, redlining refers to the "spatially discriminatory practice" of not serving certain communities because of their ethnic or racial composition, rather than their economic prospects.
It's a newer phenomenon in part because there are more upper-income minority communities in America today. Households that can afford the same stores and restaurants as comparable white communities now want to know where the retailers are. The practice is tricky to study, though, because these types of communities are still relatively few in number (with hard-to-find comparison communities), and because it's difficult to distinguish a retailer's "unconscious racism" from its legitimate business reasons for locating a store or a restaurant.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
It's more than tipping.
You don’t say. It isn’t hard for black criminals to enter a high income black neighborhood to commit crimes.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t evil Redlining what banks used to do before the Community Reinvestment Act made the huge push into sub-prime mortgages?
There are plenty of black multi-millionaires like Jay-Z, Beyoncé, P Diddy et al. What’s stopping them from using their own money and opening restaurants and grocery stores in the ghetto?
We all know what.
In other words, the government should be able to require you to put your business in a certain location.
I think the bigger question is why aren’t blacks in those areas filling the obvious gaps of quality restaurants with their own restaurants?
WHy are they waiting for others to move in? Why are they not doing it themselves, if they see a problem? Who says you have to have outside chains come in? Why aren’t their own entreprenuers filling a gap, if there’s such a great demand for it?
If you always are on the lookout for racism, you’ll always find it.
And the whole tipping thing, I am sure that’s not the only reason, but it is a real business reason as the wait staff makes a lot of their income on tips. If there’s a demographic of diners known in the industry to not tip well, that would have to be taken into account.
Apparently instead of “women and minorities hardest hit”, the story this time is “women and minorities hardly tip”.
Filled in the missing part there.
We need a million dollar line of credit for every unworthy borrower or its racist!
Since when is it racist for a business to determine where it wants to do business? How about if they don’t want to set up shop in a dangerous part of town? Just because that part may be more black or hispanic, that doesn’t make it racist.
For these folks it’s always racism.
How about not wanting to set up a business in an area where every perceived slight is automatically called “racist”?
“Black folks don’t tip, and so managers can’t maintain a quality staff. And if they can’t maintain a quality staff, they can’t maintain a quality restaurant.”
This is true. Now having said that, how do I prove I’m not
a racist? Not that I really give a hoot, just curious.
Nothing personal to you Shadow.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t evil Redlining what banks used to do before the Community Reinvestment Act made the huge push into sub-prime mortgages?”
Yes, in theory, they drew red lines on the map in areas where they could not make loans pay. These turned out to be black areas. But it wasn’t a theory. Loans made on properties in those areas defaulted at many times the rate in other areas. ACORN sued with government supplied money and won. The banks had to make loans specifically in those areas. But Fannie May and Freddie Mack bought the bad paper and bundled it. So, the banks were not actually taking risks with their own money. That’s how the property bubble inflated. Then, when the interest rate on the adjustable rates went up, 7% of the loans defaulted. But the bundled paper greatly multiplied the effect and caused a cascading failure. This is now happening again.
Beyonce could open up a chain of “Bow Down Bitches” restaurants.
The problem is self-inflicted as denonstrated by the self-evident videos of the problem.
Los Angeles Riots and looting RAW Footage 1992
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pltyHB1MoPQ
You don’t need an expensive study for this. Just go to any nice restaurant and ask the waitstaff.
Both my daughter and my granddaughter (her niece) have worked/work at high-end places and they will both tell you the same thing.
Even the black waiters/waitresses didn’t want to wait on other blacks.
I guess they’ll have to keep eating at government restaurants. :)
Jay-Z, Beyoncé, P Diddy et al Don’t tip either.
If you were black, that would be “proof”.
Of course they then would dismiss you as an Uncle Tom. Or an Oreo.
The article was asking why higher end chain restaurants weren’t moving to wealthy black neighborhoods. Not asking why mid-market grocery stores weren’t moving into poor black neighborhoods.
Read that--We have no real way to determine business people's motives, but we're going to scream racism anyway.
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