If you’re black, stand back: Discrimination and hospitality

That the words discrimination and hospitality should figure in one sentence is truly ironic. Some years ago, we went out for dinner as a team facilitating a workshop in an African capital.

As we entered the restaurant, I was stopped for a security check. My five co-facilitators, all white, were not.

The security guard spoke to me in a local language she assumed I knew, because I looked like her.

Discrimination against locals by fellow Africans in the hospitality industry is not news, so what happened next makes this worth narrating.

One of my co-facilitators, Farah Council, an American said, “Hey everybody, Alice just got profiled. Let’s do something.” She led the entire team out.

They walked back with opened handbags and insisted on an arms raised-please frisk us thoroughly individual security check.

Discrimination against locals is common in tourist economy-reliant African countries as the image of the tourist is Jambo Caucasian Bwana.

This is well documented. Barack Obama in Dreams from my Father describes facing discrimination in a Nairobi restaurant with his sister Auma.

He, of course, was not president yet. Waiters ignored them, scurrying past to serve white people.

More recently, Mutuma Mathiu, writing on his recent Easter holiday break in the Daily Nation, said, “In the DNA of our waiters and hotel managers, local tourists are second-class guests, getting the worst rooms, worst tables and being served last.”

What makes waiters, for example, perpetuate this bias against fellow black Africans?

Many Africans are socialised in a Eurocentric culture. They absorb the beliefs and values of Western culture through education, books, films and role models including the idea that to be white is better than to be black.

The belief in the hospitality industry that whites tip better than other people exemplifies this socialisation. This mindset is so entrenched that not even a big tip from a black person changes it.

Waiters sometimes justify their behaviour to the the people they discriminate against by saying, “Wacha kwanza nishughulikie wageni unajua tourism imeenda chini (Let me first attend to the visitors; you know our tourist industry is doing badly),” signifying awareness of wrongdoing.

The University of California’s Saru Jayaraman writes about how tipping in America was invented as a legal way to ensure cheap labour while avoiding paying regular wages to freed slaves.

In the Soviet Union, after the Revolution of 2018, waiters were reported to throwing tip back at restaurant patrons...

Is it that hospitality industry managers recognise cultural and institutional discrimination but have no strategies to respond?

What does the hospitality industry’s code of conduct say about discrimination? Does it refer to constitutional rights on respecting and protecting the rights of others and individuals too?

Could it be that the hotel industry’s training manuals have not been updated since the colonial era to counter discriminative practices?

Are staff advised that wageni is everyone, and their job description is to welcome everyone irrespective of race, gender and ethnicity? Is this pluralism of guests presented as an opportunity rather than as a disadvantage?

Do hotel managers encourage good service by providing positive messages on local tourists to reduce the impact of the belief that the Caucasian is the tourist and the tourist is the Caucasian?

Do staff report experiences when they too were discriminated against, giving them space to come to terms with their own sense of identity?

The hospitality industry needs to not only address individuals caught discriminating but the system that produces discriminatory people.

Managers may be challenged to evaluate behaviour, as it’s not as quantifiable as a chef making a meal satisfactorily.

However, discriminatory practice is not ethically or legally ambiguous.

At the security checkpoint, my friend Farah Council acknowledged the power differential afforded to her by structural systems of advantage because she is Caucasian and challenged the sense of entitlement the security guard conferred on her. This, however, is a short-term solution.

African societies must begin to develop an unconditional culture of ending social acceptance of self-discrimination.

Wairimu Nderitu is the author of Beyond Ethnicism, and Kenya: Bridging Ethnic Divides. E-mail: [email protected]