Matthew Yglesias (February 26, 2007) - Price Discrimination (Domestic Policy)

"Being Hispanic, we both like rice," said 46-year-old Lopez.

What a racist.

Posted by neil | February 26, 2007 2:24 PM

The comparison to students only stacks up if one thinks that a person who can speak Chinese--or other foreign language--is less capable of paying. They don't seem tightly correlated.

Posted by dj moonbat | February 26, 2007 2:25 PM

It's weird that they felt a need to justify the desire to have rice with their Chinese food.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | February 26, 2007 2:26 PM

I'm not really sure what's wrong with this kind of business practice; it's no different from offering student fares on airlines or senior citizens' discounts at movie theaters.

What strikes me about this is that language-based differences feel like proxies for discrimination based on race. Try imagining this the other way: if an English-language menu at your local Burger King had lower prices than the Spanish-language menu, there would (and should) be questions about whether this is acceptable practice.

Posted by brad | February 26, 2007 2:29 PM

The real scandal is that the Chinese-language menus frequently offer better food than the English-language menus.

Posted by blah | February 26, 2007 2:29 PM

"I'm not really sure what's wrong with this kind of business practice."

I'm not really sure you quite meant to say that, did you, Matt? There's generally nothing unlawful about student airfares or senior film discounts. But of course it has long been the case under federal law (i.e., since 1964), as well as under state and local law, that discrimination based on race, ethnicity and national origin is unlawful. (I assume you're not calling the Civil Rights Act into question, right?)

The restaurant here could, I suppose, argue that it is engaged in discrimination based on language rather than race or ethnicity -- but it won't do so, because language is so obviously a proxy for what is plainly prohibited (and there's a substantial line of cases so holding).

Posted by Marty Lederman | February 26, 2007 2:29 PM

And a new theme emerges at Matthew Yglesias' blog. Along with basketball, the use of statistics to examine same, hipster rock music, various movies, anti-semitism, false accusations of same, warmongering in an Iranian direction, etc., we find a new obsession: People Aren't Paying Enough For Their Stuff.

Posted by Quarterican | February 26, 2007 2:31 PM

I thought everybody knew this as well.

I always kind of filed it under, "Quaint, kind of funny, but really who cares."

Posted by Patrick | February 26, 2007 2:33 PM

How could most people know this?

Posted by Cryptic Ned | February 26, 2007 2:42 PM

I'm not really sure what's wrong with this kind of business practice; it's no different from offering student fares on airlines or senior citizens' discounts at movie theaters.

Or, you know, making people who can't speak English, come from a different country, or look different pay extra, stand in the back of the bus, or not get served.

I think your illness is messing with your critical reasoning abilities.

Posted by right | February 26, 2007 2:44 PM

Brad, you've got this backward. Chinese-speaking customers typically have lower incomes than English-speaking customers. If Burger King's Spanish menu was cheaper than its English menu, I'm not sure what would be wrong with that. It asks less of people with less disposable income and asks more of people with more disposable income. It's market segmentation to maximize profit, but in this case, it benefits the relatively less well off. I'm pretty okay with it.

I mean, sure you can frame it as "our language" vs. "their language," in which case it looks racist, but if you frame it in terms of economics, it's neither offensive nor bad.

Posted by jhupp | February 26, 2007 2:45 PM

So nobody here would shit a brick if a white run business was charging non-whites more? Good to know.

Posted by Gatchaman | February 26, 2007 2:46 PM

The point is that locals get to eat cheaper than the tourists, which may not be right, but it's not the end of the world either. All these silly analogies are completely beside the point.

Posted by Steve | February 26, 2007 2:48 PM

If Burger King's Spanish menu was cheaper than its English menu, I'm not sure what would be wrong with that.

Interesting, my sister-in-law, who owns a cafe in a gay neighborhood should charge the gay couples more, because it is safe to assume a gay couple with no children has more disposable income than a heterosexual couple with kids.

Posted by Gatchaman | February 26, 2007 2:49 PM

helpfully provide you with an English-language menu featuring higher prices

I've heard stories of this sort of thing. I've also heard stories about it going the other way too -- e.g. in some countries, to put on a good face for foreigners (as a matter of national pride), a foreigner can get a taxi for a reasonable price, without much bargaining required, from an airport to his/her hotel, but with a native, the taxi drivers will collude to keep the prices high, require lots of bargaining (in bad faith) etc.

I shall not mention the country or counties involved, but when I myself have been to restaurants of these persuasions, I have noticed a phenomenon that when I'm a random white guy at such a restaurant, the service is far better than when they get to know me and that I, through various friendships and even in-laws, am de facto one of them, the quality of the service goes down!

*

As blah's point about the real scandal (with which point I generally agree) ... in all fairness, I know many non-Chinese who, even if the full menu were available in English, really wouldn't go for the sorts of things that you cannot get on the English language menu. There may be some stereotypes made as to what we non-Chinese might not like, but what's left off the English language menu ain't left off for no particular reason.

Posted by DAS | February 26, 2007 2:56 PM

Two different menus aimed towards two different groups of people with two different prices. Sounds very separate but equal to me.

What's the harm?

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 2:58 PM

Gatchaman, as soon as I posted that comment, I knew I had oversimplified the point. Obviously, none of this is universally true, and as soon as anyone enters into the practice of market segmentation, you get that very problem. E.g., why should poor Americans pay more for drugs than rich Zambians? But unsegmenting that market, for instance, would also be problematic, wouldn't it? Because poor Zambians can't really even afford their own price, let alone some world market equilibrium. (Note: this is not an attempt to defend drug companies, who are mostly scum. It's just the quickest example that comes to mind.)

All of which is to say, yeah, there are some problems here, and it's not cut and dry whether this is right or wrong. But it does make some economic sense, I don't think it's an attempt to be racist, and it isn't the end of the world.

Posted by jhupp | February 26, 2007 2:59 PM

I assumed everybody knew this too. Calvin Trillin wrote about it years ago, mainly complaining that the Chinese menus had lots more dishes that the proprietors thought would only appeal to native Chinese speakers (or at least readers), cheating him not so much out of a fair price as the better food. Or what blah said.

Posted by Antid Oto | February 26, 2007 3:01 PM

My first corollary to the Gatchaman Theorem: those of mixed-races would pay prices apportioned according to their constituent races. My second corollary to the Gatchaman Theorem: those who know a little of the foreign language would receive the lower price, but be suspected of being from some sort of government agency of some kind.

P.S. Maybe Matt could provide an answer to my ("Meet your friends") comment here.

Posted by TLB | February 26, 2007 3:02 PM

I don't think the issue is one of different menus with no overlap in what they offer. The issue is one of two different menus that contain some of the same items where those items are priced differently.

Let me say a bit more about this. The people suffering from the discrimination here are people who can't speak Chinese. It's not as if we non-sinophones are some kind of incredibly put-upon and powerless minority here in the United States that needs city officials to be zealously defending our rights.

Yes, I agree. Since I'm a white male, I really have no need for the Bill of Rights and frankly, it's a waste of my tax money to have city officials defending them.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 3:02 PM

'blah' brings up a useful point. If this is wrong and unacceptable, then is it any more acceptable for them to print a Chinese menu with different items that English-reading people don't ever order? I don't see a bright line between those two cases.

Nor is it impermissible for restaurants to offer the same food at different prices depending on how you order it. A combo meal at a fast food restaurant always costs less than the individual items ordered a la carte.

Posted by neil | February 26, 2007 3:05 PM

Matthew,

There's a long history in the South of certain white businesses overcharging blacks to discourage their patronage. Even after the Civil Rights Act, there was an investigation, I believe, that showed places where all sticker prices would be set high, and then reduced at the counter for whites in the community.

Presumably, the Chinese menu would be open to American whites, blacks, etc. who could speak Chinese. But it's the practical effect that's important for the law-- and the practical effect of the separate pricing structure is that those of Chinese nationality/race will be afforded special treatment over non-Chinese.

I don't think it's a big deal in this instance. (What's an extra buck for a good Chow Mein?) But setting the precedent of allowing de facto discrimination in this case, even if it is relatively harmless, could be exploited en masse and quickly become burdensome on a minority race or religion.

Posted by bchurch | February 26, 2007 3:05 PM

You know, it's really not that hard to learn enough Chinese to order a meal, if the difference in price is important to you. Some people seem to be thinking that it's as hard as changing your skin color.

Or could it possibly be that this has something to do with privilege?

Posted by James Killus | February 26, 2007 3:08 PM

You find two-tiered pricing like this anywhere in China. On any number of occasions I've been told by Chinese acquaintances that it's an embarrassing bit of racism, and that I should refuse to pay more as a foreigner.

Posted by Wade | February 26, 2007 3:09 PM

I can't believe Matt is serious about this.

Would it be okay if:

(a) the Chinese people were charged more?
(b) there was a third menu, in Spanish, that charged even more than the English one?
(c) you could only order off the Chinese menu if you looked Chinese?

If the answer to all these is somehow yes, please post next about how the Civil Rights Act is unconstitutional, immoral and should be abolished. Then you'd have a logically consistent point of view.

Posted by right | February 26, 2007 3:11 PM

Some restaurants will give regular customers special treatment, for instance better tables or making special requests that don't appear on the menu. Does anyone really have a problem with that?

Posted by Peter | February 26, 2007 3:11 PM

What this really boils down to is: if you know Chinese, you get a better deal at Chinese restaurants than if you don't know Chinese. Not only does this not seem wrong, it seems to be an inevitable consequence of capitalism.

Posted by neil | February 26, 2007 3:11 PM

This has absolutely nothing to do with being Chinese or not-Chinese. And, I sniff, I detect a hint of racism amongst those who leap to the assumption that there is a one-to-one correlation between 'people who look Chinese' and 'people who speak Chinese.'

Posted by neil | February 26, 2007 3:13 PM

Amazing how the discrimination is always a crystal-clear injustice when it's your own ox being gored.

Posted by Steve | February 26, 2007 3:14 PM

"Nor is it impermissible for restaurants to offer the same food at different prices depending on how you order it. A combo meal at a fast food restaurant always costs less than the individual items ordered a la carte."

Obviously, the difference between this case and getting a bulk discount (which is what a value meal is), is that a value meal is available to anyone who wants it, regardless of race, creed, nationality, etc. Printing discounts for Chinese speakers, while it may allow certain non ethnic Chinese speakers to receive a reduced price, has the general de facto effect that ethnic Chinese receive special treatment over non Chinese Americans.

Of course it's only one dollar and it's only Chinese food. But if this is legal, what would prevent a Mexican-hating grocer from printing up special spanish language prices that were prohibitively expensive, in an effort to keep the damn Mexicans out of his store?

Posted by bchurch | February 26, 2007 3:15 PM

According to my roommate, who speaks a little Chinese, you also get better service at some Chinese restaurants if you speak Chinese. Shocking, I know!

Posted by Joel | February 26, 2007 3:16 PM

My understanding is that the Chinese busboys are being paid more than the hispanic busboys too. I guess that's okay and is just an inevitable consequence of capitalism. The hispanic busboys should stop complaining just because they don't get the privilege that are accustomed to.

The male Chinese busboys are paid more than the female Chinese busboys, but they have families to support so that's okay too.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 3:16 PM

A value meal is only available to people who know how to read the menu and understand that it's being offered, just like in this situation.

But if this is legal, what would prevent a Mexican-hating grocer from printing up special spanish language prices that were prohibitively expensive, in an effort to keep the damn Mexicans out of his store?

Numbers are the same in Spanish and English.

Posted by neil | February 26, 2007 3:17 PM

A combo meal at a fast food restaurant always costs less than the individual items ordered a la carte.

Okay, I know this is mad petty, but not at In-N-Out.

Posted by Senescent | February 26, 2007 3:18 PM

"I'm not really sure what's wrong with this kind of business practice; it's no different from offering student fares on airlines or senior citizens' discounts at movie theaters."

Oh, totally. Because every student (or at least most students) are the children of wealthy parents attending elite prep schools or the Ivy League, just as most senior citizens are liable to be well off retirees rather than formerly middle and working class people living on a fixed income.

Posted by Linus | February 26, 2007 3:18 PM

Of course it's only one dollar and it's only Chinese food. But if this is legal, what would prevent a Mexican-hating grocer from printing up special spanish language prices that were prohibitively expensive, in an effort to keep the damn Mexicans out of his store?

I think the point being made is that hating Mexicans is wrong. Though hating* whites would be somewhat quaint and in line with true liberal values.

*Ofcourse I don't think the Chinese menu has anything to do with "hate" -- but people who would flip the f*ck out if a menu was charging Chinese people more than whites seem OK with it being the other way around.

Posted by Gatchaman | February 26, 2007 3:19 PM

Orders placed in Chinese can be more efficiently processed by non-English-speaking staff. English speakers are paying a translation surcharge.

Posted by Chris Conway | February 26, 2007 3:19 PM

All of those "it's only a dollar" arguments, those are the ones coming from the "like my new iPod? my new car? my new Mac? going to the arcade fire concert?" people.

elitist yuppies.

Anyway, Matt, I lost the logic in your argument at:

Let me say a bit more about this. The people suffering from the discrimination here are....

Forgive me, but I put in "Jews, Blacks, Gays, " instead of whom you met, rich white yuppies.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 3:20 PM

Ofcourse I don't think the Chinese menu has anything to do with "hate" -- but people who would flip the f*ck out if a menu was charging Chinese people more than whites seem OK with it being the other way around.

Once again, note the assumption of an exact correlation between 'people who speak Chinese' and '[ethnically] Chinese people.' Personally, I have known a lot of ethnically Chinese people who don't speak any more Chinese than I (whitey) do.

Posted by neil | February 26, 2007 3:21 PM

This is all starting to remind me of the Monty Python Dennis Moore sketch: "Wait a tic... blimey, this redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought."

Posted by Jeff | February 26, 2007 3:21 PM

This makes me want to be Chinese. I'm Indian American. Indians would charge other Indians more if they could get away with it. Forget any sort of racial solidarity.

On another note, do you suppose Chinese drycleaners admit a drycleaning error to their Chinese customers?

Man, this post is filled with ethnic joke possibilities.

Posted by Amitava Mazumdar | February 26, 2007 3:23 PM

A combo meal at a fast food restaurant always costs less than the individual items ordered a la carte.

So that actually is price discrimination, which offers different prices for different bundlings of the same object depending on attributes of the order, especially quantity, or form of shipping.

It is basically legal, because it is different from noxious forms of discrimination that are based on petty attributes like race, religion, color, national origin, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 3:23 PM

In re: to the "just learn Chinese if this bothers you" comments.

You're right that language is not necessarily tied to race or national origin. But it is tied to race/national origin as a matter of fact.

So for example, if I owned a building in a section of town with alot of gay couples, could I keep them out by permitting only opposite sex roomates? What if I further stated that I didn't allow women with short hair, or men who like Broadway musicals (just to pick two commonplace stereotypes). Now surely, some gay people who jumped through the right hoops might still be able to rent from me. But if I'm successfully prohibiting enough gays from moving in, then I'm engaging in de facto discrimination. In the same way, if only an extremely small fraction of non ethnic Chinese are able to take advantage of the discount, then it's a defacto discrimination against non Chinese-- the existence of a possible rare exception doesn't change that.

And in regards to Matthew's update: it's not a big deal that people get a dollar off of Chinese food. The point is that allowing this kind of behavior in "harmless" situations can quickly turn into a widespread and more harmful discrimination.

Posted by bchurch | February 26, 2007 3:24 PM

Nor is it impermissible for restaurants to offer the same food at different prices depending on how you order it.

Seriously, comparing racial/ethnic discrimination to (Matt's) matinee movies or Combo Meal promotions is moving the goalposts out of the stadium.

Or could it possibly be that this has something to do with privilege?

I'm amazed at the idea that race-discrimination (by proxy) is only reprehensible if the victims are poor. This plays with fire a little bit, too. Much antisemitism is justified by perceived wealth or power of the group.

But it does make some economic sense, I don't think it's an attempt to be racist, and it isn't the end of the world.

Whether or not this behavior is economically rational has little to do with whether it is or isn't morally wrong to discriminate based on race. It's not the intent, it's the outcome.

Posted by brad | February 26, 2007 3:25 PM

Chris Conway makes the only conceivable argument as to why this form of price discrimination might be okay.

Orders placed in Chinese can be more efficiently processed by non-English-speaking staff. English speakers are paying a translation surcharge.

The rest of you are just apologizing for and defending a form of race based discrimination.

Pretty shameful.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 3:26 PM

Linus: You know the student fares and senior citizens are are LOWER right? I don't really get the point of your sarcasm.

It's obviously discrimination, (one can't deny the clear intent), and since it defends a minority most of us would care less, yes really. I in general find local parochialism distasteful, but I don't find this any different than "cops in your neighborhood won't give you a ticket for speeding because they know your car" and a thousand other ways everyone acts out tribal preferences.

And it really is nothing compared to actually visitting these other countries (or I imagine foreigners visitting us). Tourists are apparently fair game to everyone.

Posted by Tony V | February 26, 2007 3:26 PM

At my diner we charge Chinese speakers twice as much. Don't even get me started on how we overcharge the gays and blacks -- but I will admit I put my daugther through Bible college on the money we made selling sugar packets and napkins to lesbians (the Gay Menu is 100% al a carte).

Posted by Marcus Wellby | February 26, 2007 3:32 PM

Sounds like a job for Ralph Nader -- consumer advocate! Oh, wait, he's spending his time trying to destroy the nation. Again. Never mind.

P.S. Actually, non-native speakers are fair game no matter where you go, so I can't really build up too much of a head of steam about this.

Posted by IP Guy | February 26, 2007 3:32 PM

Nothing is stopping any of you non chinese speaking people from learning chinese. It would be one thing if the discount was only for ethnic Chinese, but it is not, anyone who can learn chinese can earn the discount. I remember McDonalds giving away gift certificates for getting A's on report cards. Think of this as the same type of incentive, gain knowledge get a good deal. Furthermore, you could request a chinese menu even if you don't speak the language and order something random.

Posted by nathaniel | February 26, 2007 3:37 PM

It seems to me like if you start getting freaked out about anything of the form "A person who knows x can get a better deal on y than a person who doesn't know x", for any values of x and y, you're going to find yourself on a dreadfully slippery slope.

Posted by neil | February 26, 2007 3:38 PM

"I cut my finger. That's tragedy. A man walks into an open sewer and dies. That's comedy." -- Mel Brooks

Posted by James Killus | February 26, 2007 3:45 PM

"But if this is legal, what would prevent a Mexican-hating grocer from printing up special spanish language prices that were prohibitively expensive, in an effort to keep the damn Mexicans out of his store?

Numbers are the same in Spanish and English."

But the items they correspond to are not . . .

I guess I don't get Chinese food often enough to care (I prefer Thai and Vietnamese). But in principle, there's something not quite right about charging people of different ethnicities (most Chinese speakers are Chinese, most non Chinese speakers are not Chinese) different prices. You'd almost think there was an American history theme here.

Posted by aleks | February 26, 2007 3:46 PM

Wow, Matt says he thought "everybody" knew this goes on.

Yet, from the article we learn that "Eric Ng, president of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, said most businesses and restaurants in Chinatown are "honest and fair."

"We have never heard of something like this before."

So should we assume that Mr. Ng is a liar?

Posted by Brian | February 26, 2007 3:48 PM

Neil,

When knowledge x is sharply divided on racial lines, again, you've got de facto discrimination. The Jim Crow voting laws never came right out and said they weren't allowing blacks to vote. They just gave everyone a "test", and it just so happened that almost all blacks-- newly freed and almost entirely uneducated-- fared poorly on the test. Those defending the law could have (and probably did) say that blacks should just study harder. But the de facto effect of the law was discrimination against blacks, and again, the possibility for a few rare exceptions doesn't mitigate that.

Posted by bchurch | February 26, 2007 3:48 PM

There you have it -- having a Chinese-language menu in a Chinese restaurant is like Jim Crow.

Posted by neil | February 26, 2007 3:50 PM

Neil,

I didn't say the situations were the same. Just that the exact same logic you're using to justify this situation could be applied in favor of Jim Crow laws. If that seems ridiculous to you, maybe you need to take another look at your reasoning.

Posted by bchurch | February 26, 2007 3:52 PM

"There you have it -- having a Chinese-language menu in a Chinese restaurant is like Jim Crow.
Posted by: neil on February 26, 2007 03:50 PM"

The problem with anonymous discussion is that no one feels their reputation is at stake and therefore there's no reason (beyond personal integrity) to be any more honest about your opponent's arguments than that.

Posted by aleks | February 26, 2007 3:54 PM

The "I thought everybody knew this" people remind me of that New Yorker cover from a few decades back that shows the New Yorker's view of the world.

Of course most people don't know this. That's the sort of local knowledge that no one outside NYC would have much reason to know. (And fewer people than you think read Calvin Trillin.)

Anyway, put me down for: (1) I presume this sort of discrimination is illegal; (2) whether it is or not, it damned well ought to be, to prevent more odious forms of discrimination from being legal; but (3) in and of itself, it's not particularly worth my getting worked up about. It's Somebody Else's Problem, and hopefully they're on the job, but if they're not, it won't break my heart.

Posted by RT | February 26, 2007 3:55 PM

"Linus: You know the student fares and senior citizens are are LOWER right? I don't really get the point of your sarcasm."

Indeed sir. Discounts for students and old people are a crude and probably inefficient attempt at class-based affirmative action but at least they are making some effort to be class-based. Variable pricing based on language is a kind of ethnically based affirmative action aimed at a minority who tend to outperform whites on any number of measures.

Posted by Linus | February 26, 2007 3:57 PM

There you have it -- having a Chinese-language menu in a Chinese restaurant is like Jim Crow.

Is there no principle strong enough to stand on for its own sake?

Posted by brad | February 26, 2007 4:00 PM

aleks, it seems to me the biggest problem with online discussions like these is that to make a compelling case on what is a rather odd case, or at least one that is out of the mainstream of most American commerce, takes a lot more fleshed out, full arguments than two paragraph responses back and forth interrupted by other two paragraph responses that continually divert the line of thought. I mean, hell, it seems to me that as long as we're going to compare this to Jim Crow, we may as well compare it to affirmative action. But to fully justify either comparison takes a lot more than four sentences.

Posted by jhupp | February 26, 2007 4:09 PM

I always thought this was something that was known by everybody, too. I certainly experienced my fair share of price discrimination travelling abroad. (Has anyone been to the Taj Mahal lately? I believe the price ratio is 37.5:1, foreigner to native.) I'm not going to weigh in on either side of the argument except to say it doesn't worry me but you have to apply the law in all cases.

Posted by eriks | February 26, 2007 4:13 PM

This has absolutely nothing to do with being Chinese or not-Chinese.

So there's no problem with charging spanish speakers more. Super.

Posted by jpe | February 26, 2007 4:13 PM

"So should we assume that Mr. Ng is a liar?"

Yep. I will also assume that he's a terrible driver. You see, it's not that he's chinese that proves out the stereotype; it's that he speaks chinese. And, as we've been reminded throughout this thread, basing something on language is totally different than basing it on race.

I would also like to add that I'm quite sure, based on his ability to speak Chinese, that he's an asshole on the subway.

Posted by jpe | February 26, 2007 4:17 PM

I'm not sure if aleks was dissing me for being flippant, or bchurch for making such a ridiculous comparison, but either way it was probably well-deserved.

Posted by neil | February 26, 2007 4:17 PM

Can't we just call it a proxy for their extra service costs as the waitress stands at your table for an hour trying to figure out what you're trying to say in your stupid hick accent, while the chinese speakers just say "ching chong bing bong" (did I pronounce that correctly, Rosie?) and that's it?

Posted by dbt | February 26, 2007 4:18 PM

I'm a NY'er, and I never really knew this practice went on. I mean, I'm not terribly surprised either. And to some extent, it just seems to me like members of an ethnic group giving fellow immigrants a hand. I'm sure this has been done for ages. And while I don't know if it should exactly be legal, I also don't think it should be terribly high up on the enforcement priority list.

A related thing I've noticed -- and this is only noted, I don't see anything wrong with it -- is that you'll see signs on the subway (usually public service announcements) in both Spanish and English, and the two versions will have slightly different messages. I guess sometimes it's thought that different messages will be more effective with different ethnic groups.

Posted by Glenn | February 26, 2007 4:22 PM

Jeez, there's a lot of outraged white people in this thread.

I think Matt's point is fundamentally right--of course this is against the law, and it's wrong, and it Should Not Be Done.

But give me a freaking break, it's one of the few times that racism works against white people as opposed to working to their advantage. And the net consequence is that unbelievably cheap specialty food that we only eat occasionally is marginally less cheap.

Yeah, it should be addressed, but it's just not that big a deal. In our society of limited resources, we certainly shouldn't respond to it as aggressively as we should respond to disenfranchisement of black voters. That would be like throwing the book at all people going 60 in a 55MPH zone, but ignoring all the people going 95.

White people paying $1 more for rice than Chinese people when they go to Chinatown is wrong, but it isn't The Horrors of Discrimination. It's the minor inconveniences of prejudice. You wanna suffer The Horrors of Discrimination, try having a name like Shaniqua Williams, having a "black" accent, and getting a decent paying job, okay?

Ideally, the people who are getting all upset now while their legitimate concerns about discrimination are being blithely dismissed will have a little empathy the next time a Hispanic person complains about what a pain in the ass racial profiling is, and how they're worried their kid is gonna get shot dead by police.

Posted by anonymous | February 26, 2007 4:22 PM

Charging Spanish speakers more? What do you mean by that? Surely you don't mean 'charging more to people who have the ability to speak Spanish' because that would not be analogous to the situation.

So you probably mean, what if you charged people more if they ordered in Spanish? I'm quite sure it's the case that in general, if you go to American restaurants and insist on ordering only in Spanish, you will receive an inferior level of service, for entirely pragmatic reasons. More generally, if you are somebody who doesn't speak or read English, you will be unable to get the best possible deal at the American restaurants you go to, for reasons that have nothing to do with anti-Hispanic prejudice and everything to do with the simple fact that a more informed consumer will get a better deala more informed consumer will get a better deal

Peeking around the corners of the posts by outraged people is the unstated assumption that it's plainly unfair for sneaky Chinese folk to refuse to provide all the relevant information in a way that English-speaking Americans can understand. This principle doesn't seem nearly as easy to defend as Jim Crow is to attack, for some reason.

Posted by neil | February 26, 2007 4:24 PM

I'm not really sure what's wrong with this kind of business practice; it's no different from offering student fares on airlines or senior citizens' discounts at movie theaters.

Anon, I think you and I are reading two different Matts.

I think you are right when you suggest that people that read this blog that disagree with you are probably closet white supremacists. I think Matt's reading public is mostly white supremacists. They are not arguing from a principled position, and in fact they are mostly hateful, ignorant, bigoted people. Especially when they disagree with you.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 4:29 PM

JHupp,

I doesn't take much more than 4 sentences to flush out the argument here. Neil says that de facto discrimination is OK, so long as the standard used isn't race itself, but rather some proxy that happens, as a mere matter of fact, to strongly correlate to race. I pointed out that this sort of reasoning could be used (and in all probabilty, was in fact used) to justify early Jim Crow laws, which didn't explicitly discriminate based on race, but used various reading and writing tests as a proxy. Neither you, nor Neil, have seen fit to address the substance of my argument, but dismissed it as ridiculous out of hand-- in Neil's case, without even properly understanding what it is that I was arguing.

By the way, if you could make a compelling argument comparing this situation to affirmative action in any amount of sentences, that'd be a pretty neat trick.

Posted by bchurch | February 26, 2007 4:30 PM

Actually, Neil, it's the fact that there are two sets of books. If I went into a Chinese restaurant where there was nothing in English, hey, no big deal. And if the service is worse, again, not unanticipated and no big deal.

Where it changes is where there are two sets of menus. As noted above, this isn't the Horrors of Discrimination, but it's fucked up and should be addressed by the city in a timely manner.

Posted by jpe | February 26, 2007 4:30 PM

The conversation here seems to sidestep the fairly obvious
reason some Chinese restaurants charge less to Chinese language speakers and more to others. It's certainly not that they are trying to account for income disparities. And it's not that even that they are discriminating against non-Chinese speakers (although that gets a little closer to the truth). And it certainly is not a translation fee.

The fact is that the ability to read and speak Chinese is a damn good proxy for willingness to pay a certain price at a Chinese restaurant (note the word willingness not ability). As a general rule, Chinese people (especially recent immigrants -- those most likely to prefer Chinese language menus) are pretty damn particular about their Chinese food and its cost. Chinese restaurants know this and adjust their prices accordingly.

They also know that those foolish Westerners who are too dumb to know that fortune cookies aren't actually served after meals in China are also too dumb to notice sometimes not so slight differences in quality in their Chinese dishes and will be willing to pay a bit more than their Chinese reading and speaking counterparts.

Posted by Brian | February 26, 2007 4:31 PM

I think Neil is right to seize on the whole complexities of language translation make it okay for price discrimination. That's why I charge people that can't speak English more rent -- it's because I can't understand what the hell they are saying.

So English speakers get a better deal at my apartment complexes, and rightfully so, eh Matt?

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 4:33 PM

I think Matt didn't analyze his initial response to that sufficiently enough to produce a more nuanced version of what he was thinking.

I think the issue is the difference in practice and principal. In practice, I often go to chinese restaurants in San Francisco where I know the prices are a bit better on the notices on the walls, which are written in chinese. But it doesn't bother me personally. (It helps that the prices at the chinese-food restaurants I go to are already vastly lower than most non-chinese restaurants.) And I have no emotional sense whatsoever of ill-will when I walk in the door, as opposed to, say, some bars I've walked into where people just didn't know me. Think American Werewolf in London. Furthermore, I imagine that if you were a person who was not ethnically chinese but did speak it, and you ordered off the chinese-language menu, you'd get the cheap price and perhaps a look of embarassed apology. This is different from Jim Crow type discrimination, where the racial animus is such that the discriminator would likely just think up another reason to exclude you.

Given the emotional tenor of these experiences, I think it's legitimate to say that there's some sort of non-raced-based social information hidden in the varying prices, which would add validity to Matt's idea about students and seniors, especially since it seems to me that most of this dual pricing takes place in big cities where there's a large community of people actively immigrating. In this context, language would be a more effective proxy for ability/willingness to pay. Now, I know that non-chinese speakers are not explicitly privy to this fact, but if they were, and the menus were labeled as "recently arrived" and "been here for a while," and the prices were not wildly different (as is the case with the two language menus) it wouldn't be so upsetting.

And that, I think, dilutes the racial/jim crow side of this. Not entirely, but to an extent that probably (I would think, at first glance) makes the costs it incurs with respect to very minutely reducing the consistency of application of equal rights laws less than the kind of rancor that making a big deal out of this would produce, especially to the degree that it casts the differences between people who speak chinese and those who don't as a difference that is definitively racial and one whose antipathies are significant enough to require legal mediation.

Posted by Tim Sullivan | February 26, 2007 4:37 PM

Here's an interesting (and potentially totally off-base) point.

John Liu, NYC's first politically prominent Asian, recently announced a shockingly large $1m war chest, and has said that he's going to run for "citywide" office.

New York City's ethnic groups tend to vote in blocs, but no one group has a perfect bloc or a statistical majority. So it's all about inter-ethnic alliances. If there is antipathy between ethnic groups, it makes it harder for the politicians leading these ethnicity-linked blocs to form the ethnic coalitions necessary to win.

I've got zero idea if politics is behind this. It's the kind of thing a savvy non-discrimination office would probably go after, because it's a "dog bites man" story that's going to get a lot of play.

But it's also immediately obvious that getting non-Chinese ticked off at Chinese is to the political advantage of everyone who supports candidates other than John Liu.

Posted by anonymous | February 26, 2007 4:40 PM

The "bed of rice" part of the initial complait is interesting. Typically (at least in California) if you get your food over a bed of rice, that's a "lunch menu" item. You can also get the same item, but more of it, in "a la carte" form without the rice. Some places do charge more for rice if you order off the "a la carte" menu, and not just for non-chinese people. Places I frequent regularly will let me order a "lunch menu" meal even while other people are only given the "a la carte" menu. You have to know the rules though - it would be shameful to order a bunch of lunch plates for a group, while if you're by yourself that's quite acceptable. And for a celebration, it would be shameful to order rice at all - it's cheap to expect your guests to fill up on cheap starch and not pay for them to eat real dishes. The question of cultural literacy is as important as that of language.

Posted by Homechef | February 26, 2007 4:41 PM

Jeez, there's a lot of outraged white people in this thread.

Perhaps, just perhaps, we are not in fact upset about the dollar. I don't live in NY, and my food tastes run in a different direction, so this impacts me not the slightest.

That would be like throwing the book at all people going 60 in a 55MPH zone, but ignoring all the people going 95.

Huh? You mean, because I find this offensive, I don't find any other forms of discrimination offensive?

What's wrong with thinking that we should be consistent, and that this sort of discrimination is just wrong, in whatever direction it runs? And, in fact, that drawing a bright line is important for the sake of the enforceability of these cases in general?

I think you misjudge the motive: I suspect no one is upset about their lost dollar here, or the injustice of (their) being persecuted. It's a bad practice, it has echoes of worse forms of discrimination, which frequently still show up. That's all.

Posted by brad | February 26, 2007 4:42 PM

Remember, too, that the post started with this particular challenge:

I'm not really sure what's wrong with this kind of business practice

In this context, it feels as though Matt is accepting the use of language as a proxy for race in general, which is pretty odious, even if the consequence in this instance seems small.

Posted by brad | February 26, 2007 4:46 PM

Cultural literacy? Obviously it's racist to operate a restaurant that doesn't draw on exclusively American culture.

Posted by neil | February 26, 2007 4:47 PM

I think it's legitimate to say that there's some sort of non-raced-based social information hidden in the varying prices

Yeah: they're ripping people off because they can. Similarly, I'm sure a contractor that relies on unconscionably low wages paid to undocumented hispanics is pleased as punch when he can get them. The lack of animus doesn't mitigate the immorality of the advantage taken.

Posted by jpe | February 26, 2007 4:51 PM

Like many others, I had no idea this went on. I'd assumed it was illegal and therefore less blatant.

One suspects that this is not just an ordinary case of price discrimination where you charge people are likely willing to pay less lower prices and people who are likely willing to pay more higher prices. But we don't allow price discrimination based on certain factors, like race and sex. That means you also can't price discriminate by using something else as a proxy for race or sex. You can't, for example, make a list of the names most likely to be given to black people and charge people with those names different prices than you charge everyone else, even if the "black"-name prices are lower.

One suspects that in this case language proficiency is being used as a proxy for race/ethnicity. Perhaps it's not, but I find that claim pretty implausible.

Posted by Elliot Reed | February 26, 2007 4:52 PM

"So should we assume that Mr. Ng is a liar?"

He's the president of some sort of organization doing damage control. Yes.

I don't suppose anyone would be interested in the distinction between "probably wrong" and "something the city Civil Rights Commission" should spend its time worrying about?

Posted by witless chum | February 26, 2007 4:54 PM

No wonder Limbaugh has so many listeners. God, the injustices that get perpetrated against white people in this country.

Posted by Steve | February 26, 2007 4:55 PM

Tim,

"This is different from Jim Crow type discrimination, where the racial animus is such that the discriminator would likely just think up another reason to exclude you."

You're right, and we can all recognize that this isn't motivated by egregious racism. And I think you recognize in your comment that anti-discrimination laws are based on principle-- not gut feeling, no matter how common sense. Our decision as a country to disallow de facto discrimination seems to catch this store's policy, however unintentionally or unfortunately; the principles involved are directly analogous to Jim Crow, even if the violations themselves are of a vastly different degree.

In other words, it would be impossible, in a practical sense, to craft a law that would allow this Chinese restaurant to continue this practice, and at the same time prevent Jim Crow laws against blacks in the South. If we're going to continue to prohibit de facto discrimination as a matter of law, we're going to run into situations like this. And if we value consistency in the application of the law, we've got to enforce it in this situation. Now of course it's not the most pressing thing going on in NYC right now, and some amount of prosecutorial discretion may be OK, especially if the store agrees to voluntarily stop this practice.

Posted by bchurch | February 26, 2007 4:56 PM

The big hoopla over this trivial case reflects the tension between the stated and unstated versions of what Polite Society in 2007 stands for:

Explicit: "Discrimination is abominable."

Implicit: "Discrimination against minorities is abominable."

Posted by Steve Sailer | February 26, 2007 5:08 PM

Well, shoot, learn to read Chinese numbers. There's only ten of them, and 1-3 are pretty much freebies.

Posted by scarshapedstar | February 26, 2007 5:09 PM

I am reader from Philadelphia who reads this with the whole "Joe Vento / Order in English" fiasco from this past summer...

Short story: Joe Vento, proprietor of Geno's Steaks, prominently displayed a sign at his cheesesteak stand which stated (paraphrasing), "This is America. When you order, please do so in English." The city had a huge problem with this, cited discrimination, and the whole thing is still working its way to a conclusion. The owner states that he has not turned anyone away for not ordering in English and is merely making an anti-illegal immigration statement.

The traditional progressive line is that the owner here is discrimating against hispanic immigrants.

Does Matt (or anyone else taking his viewpoint) feel that this situation is equally silly? I mean, in this case, no one has even been materially injured (i.e. no one has been denied service). Or is this situation not OK, because the group of people have been naturally disadvantaged (i.e. Hispanic immigrants)?

Posted by JF | February 26, 2007 5:09 PM

Yeah: they're ripping people off because they can.

It hasn't been proven that the Chinese menu contains the same quality of the same item for a lower price, so I think people are quickly jumping to unwarranted conclusions (and histrionic ones at that). Several people have proposed legitimate reasons why a different-but-similar menu could have different prices.

Similarly, I'm sure a contractor that relies on unconscionably low wages paid to undocumented hispanics is pleased as punch when he can get them.

Just out of curiosity, you are aware that these guys get low wages because they're undocumented, not because they're Hispanic, right?

In other words, it would be impossible, in a practical sense, to craft a law that would allow this Chinese restaurant to continue this practice, and at the same time prevent Jim Crow laws against blacks in the South.

Nonsense.

Posted by neil | February 26, 2007 5:10 PM

As liberals, I suppose we should all adopt the broad "outcome, not intent" standard for racial discrimination. And as a lawyer, I understand the need for universal application of legal principles.

But excuse me if I can't share in the shock, shock that discrimination goes on in ethnic businesses. Look, there's all kinds of preferential treatment that goes on in these businesses. In Southern California, home to huge ethnic immigrant populations, job openings for Chinese restaurants are advertised only in Chinese language newspapers. Isn't this discrimination against non-Chinese-reading job applicants? Shouldn't we be outraged?

The reality is that most of these restauranteurs prefer Chinese-speaking employees for ease of communication. And just as importantly, for a lot of Chinese and non-Chinese alike, a restaurant that has a number of non-Chinese waiters don't "feel" authentic; I know my Chinese relatives would never deign to eat in a Chinese restaurant staffed by whites. So you've got an important economic rationale for ethnic preference. The actual practice makes a heck of a lot of sense for these businesses. On the other hand, you have discrimination that affects, what, maybe 0.001% of the entire population? Outcome-based discrimination looks at the actual discriminatory effect, remember.

As for the differential pricing of Chinese food, besides the "translation surcharge", there's another economic justification for the difference: Chinese restaurants will often prepare the same dish differently for non-Chinese patrons, who are assumed to have non-Chinese tastes. So in some restaurants, you have non-Chinese kung pow chicken that's appreciatively dissimilar to a Chinese kung pow chicken in taste. I would think that this alone justifies the pricing differences.

Posted by Ryan | February 26, 2007 5:10 PM

Thank you, Ryan. It is quite interesting to see how quickly the commenters (and, to be fair, Matt too) leap to the assumption that the yellow devils desire to use their inscrutable trickery to 'rip off' whitey, entirely bypassing the possibility that the prices are different between the two menus because the food is different.

Posted by neil | February 26, 2007 5:13 PM

No wonder Limbaugh has so many listeners. God, the injustices that get perpetrated against white people in this country.
Posted by: Steve on February 26, 2007 04:55 PM

That is certainly my takeaway from this thread. (It gets worse when the target is male, and maybe is divorced, those guys really are worse than scum. But they are mostly employed in cushy jobs so it's okay to hate against them.)

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 5:13 PM

No one is calling them yellow devils apart from you, and frankly I find your use of that term and your accusation that we are racists to be ignorant and bigoted.

And it seems that neither you nor Ryan read the damn article because the problem is apparently over the same items being differently priced, not different items. And as the restaurant claims, there is only one menu.

neil, would you please refrain from making your bigoted remarks? frankly, I find them offensive.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 5:17 PM

While we're on the topic of restaurant racism, I think there should be an investigation into how Indian restaurants dial back "hot" for their Caucasian customers. It's culinary bigotry.

Posted by Joe | February 26, 2007 5:18 PM

Up here in Harlem, the same thing happens at the Dominican restaurants. There are no menus... the list of dishes are posted on the wall, in Spanish (sometimes with English translations) and without prices. Order in English, pay a higher price.

What's the big deal?

Posted by TG | February 26, 2007 5:20 PM

This thread is starting to rival the Tom Schaller "hero dog" post a few days ago for unusually high level of comments. Interesting what really gets people's motors running. (That's not a criticism, by the way, just an observation.)

More on-point, I do think the commenters who are (at least implicitly) arguing that a principle is a principle, and you have to enforce it across-the-board, are mistaken. There are lots of situations in the law where you wish to make a statement of principle by outlawing something, but it's recognized that some violations of that principle are worse than others, so you count on prosecutorial and enforcement discretion to make that distinction. There's nothing wrong with that, provided that the discretion isn't used in invidious ways (like, for example, racial profiling in pulling over speeders).

Posted by Glenn | February 26, 2007 5:26 PM

This so-called discrimination is even less important than the pledge of allegiance controversy--and that's saying something.

I mean, really. Let the "Human Rights Commission" turn its limited resources and attention onto actual problems. Though perhaps they're bored and have nothing better do to?

Posted by Korha | February 26, 2007 5:27 PM

Of course it's bigotry by proxy. And of course this is a small matter compared to, say, Jim Crow. That still doesn't make it right, especially in a country that's supposed to strive toward ending racial discrimination. I have never lived in New York (been there often thought), but I am kinda surprised though how many people didn't know about this. This is the type of thing that happens a lot in "Little ________ (insert just about any ethnicity here)" around the world. It should be written up as illegal, but expecting this to be successfully implemented is a bit fanciful. The state kind of ignores NYC's Chinatown a lot.

"Chinese-speaking customers typically have lower incomes than English-speaking customers."

It depends if you mean Chinatown Chinese-speakers or non-Chinatown Chinese speakers. While there isn't a perfect correlation between language and ethnicity, there is more emphasis put on Chinese-American children at some point learning some form of Chinese than, say, Irish-American children learning Gaelic. Incomes of people living in Chinatown tend to be low, but the average Chinese-American has a higher income than your average white-American.

Posted by Reality Man | February 26, 2007 5:28 PM

On a funny note, a lot of the menus I saw in China in places without English menus did have a lot of Arabic numerals on it. I barely saw any of the Chinese numerals on public signs (ling, yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi), at least a lot less than i had expected. Maybe that was just a south China thing though.

Posted by Reality Man | February 26, 2007 5:31 PM

This sounds like a violation of laws barring discrimination in public accommodations. It's illegal, and they should be fined and punished. It's good that it's illegal - discrimination on the basis of race or national origin (even through proxy) is wrong unless you have a strong reason to engage in it (such as to try to change structural racism).

Posted by MDtoMN | February 26, 2007 5:37 PM

Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.

Posted by Walsh | February 26, 2007 5:37 PM

Oh yeah, and I want to second Glenn about the large amount of comments in this thread. Seriously, this is what's getting people all worked up? It's an interesting phenomenon to say the least, perhaps even bizzare.

Posted by Korha | February 26, 2007 5:38 PM

(just so you dimwits understand, when Walsh says that in the movie, it's not a good thing.)

Posted by Walsh | February 26, 2007 5:38 PM

Yeah: they're ripping people off because they can. Similarly, I'm sure a contractor that relies on unconscionably low wages paid to undocumented hispanics is pleased as punch when he can get them. The lack of animus doesn't mitigate the immorality of the advantage taken.

Hmmm. That's a pretty unfair equivalence. Exploiting someone by paying them a wage that does not allow them to live with a quality of life that we'd deem conscionable (is that a word?) because of their unrecognized status is vastly more immoral (depending, I suppose on what we mean by conscionable, but I'll assume that we have reasonable ideas about this--enough for proper food, shelter, healthcare, room to save, some leisure and some spending money, something like that) than charging them a dollar extra for their General Tsao's chicken when you're reasonably sure that, based on the language they speak, that dollar means hugely less to them than it does to you.

Posted by Tim Sullivan | February 26, 2007 5:45 PM

"than charging them a dollar extra for their General Tsao's chicken when you're reasonably sure that, based on the language they speak, that dollar means hugely less to them than it does to you."

You sir, are a bigot.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 5:46 PM

"Oh yeah, and I want to second Glenn about the large amount of comments in this thread. Seriously, this is what's getting people all worked up? It's an interesting phenomenon to say the least, perhaps even bizzare.
Posted by: Korha on February 26, 2007 05:38 PM"

I would think part of it has to do with genuine outrage, but part of it has to do with "angry white male" syndrome. Ever since Nixon and especially since Reagan, the Republicans have won by appealing to a sense of white male heterosexual Christian victimization. How the census group that runs just about everything is routinely victimized i can never tell. If you make a point about African-Americans getting worse mortgages than white people with comparable credit, you get dismissed as shrill, a class warrior, etc. and are not going to appear much on the evening news and get respect at the same time while older-generation libertarians try explain it away. You can make the stupid arguments of Bill O'Reilly and you get your own show. Discrimination against white people in this country receives swift attention, but discrimination against anyone else festers.

Posted by Reality Man | February 26, 2007 5:47 PM

Definitely part of a plot by the Chicoms to slowly bankrupt Westerners.

They've even stealthily refused to change the name of the dish to Beijing Duck to lull us into a false sense of security.

Posted by SoCalJustice | February 26, 2007 5:51 PM

Reality Man, yeah, I meant Chinese people living in Chinatown. Sorry, that should have been clearer.

Posted by jhupp | February 26, 2007 5:53 PM

I always charge non-english speakers more rent, because I know they don't share my values and will trash my place. Not a whole lot more, just $20 or so more each month.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 5:57 PM

If you make a point about African-Americans getting worse mortgages than white people with comparable credit, you get dismissed as shrill, a class warrior, etc. and are not going to appear much on the evening news and get respect at the same time while older-generation libertarians try explain it away.

When it's other peoples' ox being gored, it's easy to imagine that there could be any number of race neutral reasons why these things "just happen." When the exact same thing happens to you, it's completely obvious that intentional discrimination is at work.

Also, racism is a difficult issue and we can't fix every little thing overnight, y'know? But when one tiny little manifestation of racism jumps up and bites white people, well hey, that's an obvious wrong that ought to be a priority to fix! We can argue all day about whether black people pay higher interest rates for impermissible reasons, but we all agree that higher prices in Chinese restaurants are wrong, so let's fix that before we get on to the trickier issues.

Posted by Steve | February 26, 2007 5:58 PM

I agree, I think that most of Matt's readers are angry white men. I hear Rush Limbaugh telling his listeners each day that Matt's is a blog they should read.

Yes, I agree, the people in this thread that are disagreeing with you guys are just angry white guys.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 5:59 PM

You sir, are a bigot.

Jerry,

As much as this makes me want to just call you a name back it seems that, given the emotional stakes of this issue, and the necessity forassumptions about good-faith in navigating it, I should just ask you why, exactly, the phrase you quote makes you think I'm a bigot. Obviously, it's not obvious to me.

Posted by Tim Sullivan | February 26, 2007 6:00 PM

I don't see anyone in this thread except for you saying we shouldn't look at other issues. I don't see anyone in this thread except you saying A is more important than B.

Better strawman please.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 6:01 PM

"when you're reasonably sure that, based on the language they speak, that dollar means hugely less to them than it does to you."

that's an argument based on generalizations and assumptions about race.

I'm sure you're a fine guy to have a beer with, I just thought someone should point out to you that you are a bigot.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 6:02 PM

We can argue all day about whether black people pay higher interest rates for impermissible reasons, but we all agree that higher prices in Chinese restaurants are wrong...

Judging by the comments, not to mention the original post, we really don't all seem to agree.

And all this chatter about how we are all Aggrieved White Males is insane. This is MY's blog, not Powerline. (And, as an earlier poster noted, why does anyone assume that if you are not Chinese you are white anyway?)

Nobody said this should be priority number one, or that it is more important than (insert injustice here). Just that discrimination based on race (via language) is a bad practice, and letting it go becomes encouragement/justification for similar, more insidious cases.

Posted by brad | February 26, 2007 6:07 PM

The best sushi restaurant in San Francisco is a little hole-in-the-wall with a sign that is in Japanese. If you are there near closing time, there is a fixed (low) price deal that is all-you-can-eat of the already prepared sushi that they would otherwise have to toss at the end of the day.

I'm certainly not goint to tell any of you guys where it is, because I'm a bigot.

Posted by James Killus | February 26, 2007 6:11 PM

Unless you think the Human Rights Commission has unlimited resources, anyone arguing that this should be a matter of government concern is necessarily asking for other matters of discrimination to take a back seat. And it's clear that there are any number of disparities in our society which are far more in need of redress, at least to those of us who can bear the thought that once in a blue moon, there might be an inequality in society that doesn't work to our advantage.

"We must stop this practice to send a message to more signficant offenders." How about if we stop the more significant offenders, instead?

Posted by Steve | February 26, 2007 6:14 PM

Sorry gang, I disagree. Racism, tribalism, whatever, it always stinks. That's just lame.

Posted by chris | February 26, 2007 6:21 PM

Jerry,

It's not an argument based on race. It's an argument based on generalizations about the relationship between language and class in a very particular contenxt. See, what I'm saying is that language in this case is not a proxy for race. It's a proxy for class. I don't know if you read the whole thread, but I originally argued that the difference in menu pricing is a way to distinguish immigrant (non-wealthy) populations, from established populations, and that, in the minds of these various restaurant proprietors, language was a reasonable way to make this distinction. And having been the subject of this language-as-proxy-for-class based discrimination and understanding the difference in the meaning of a dollar between me and someone just scraping buy,I can't get too worked up about it. That doesn't make me a bigot.

Posted by Tim Sullivan | February 26, 2007 6:22 PM

The real scandal is how bad chinese food is in New York. I've traveled with my (Chinese) wife to China twice; we frequently eat in restaurants that are unmatched in New York. Also, Chinese "homestyle" food is, for me, frequently better than restaurant food. And most homestyle food can't be found in restaurants.

Well, scandal is a strong word. But I don't understand the problem with NY Chinese restaurants. Ruth Reichl once wrote a piece on it.

Posted by John | February 26, 2007 6:23 PM

While we're on the topic of restaurant racism, I think there should be an investigation into how Indian restaurants dial back "hot" for their Caucasian customers. It's culinary bigotry. - Joe

The wife of a former flatmate of mine is of Indian parentage (he's actually from India originally), but she has, due to growing up as a 'Murkin, zero spice tolerance. When we all went out for Thai, sometimes she and I would order each others' dishes so that she'd get food mild enough for her, and I would get the food spicy enough for me.

Posted by DAS | February 26, 2007 6:23 PM

Best sushi AND already prepared? I have to take your word that you're a bigot, but I know you have questionable taste in sushi.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 6:24 PM

Tim,

I understand your argument. I don't buy your argument. It's separate but equal all over again. Bigot.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 6:26 PM

Tim,

Like I said, I charge non-english speakers more for rent than english speakers. Not because of some sort of language as proxy for race thing, no way, I'm no bigot! It's just that that *class*, if you know what I mean, doesn't share my values towards keeping property clean.

Know what I mean? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink?

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 6:29 PM

Jerry,

Why don't you buy it?

Tim

Posted by Jerry | February 26, 2007 6:30 PM

Jerry,

What matters in sushi is the time between the fish is caught and the eating of it (for the raw fish sort; for cooked sushi different standards apply). Preparation is only a mid-point. But saying more would be to give too much away.

As for the self-identification as bigot, I try to abide by the standards of group discussion. Apparently the price of bigotry here is $1. I had no idea it was so cheap, but I'm always on the lookout for bargains. Must be my ethnic background.

Posted by James Killus | February 26, 2007 6:36 PM

Um, because it's a stupid argument? Since when when going to restaurants do restaurants get to price based on class, or assumed class, or indications of class?

Is that really a common practice where you're from?

Where I'm from, it's much more likely that these sorts of differences are racially based. That's called racism.

You are spinning a racial policy into some made up non existent class policy, are you rationalizing doing so because the class seems to be rich and able to afford it.

Like I said, I charge more rent for non-english speakers because they don't have the same values towards cleanliness that I do. I'm not bigoted, I do that to all non-english speakers.

I charge more for hot dogs to immigrants that can't speak English, because I have to charge them for my time in translating their funky language. Hey! A guy has got to earn a living, and since they are probably here on H1-B visas, I figure they can afford it.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 6:36 PM

What matters in sushi is the time between the fish is caught and the eating of it (for the raw fish sort; for cooked sushi different standards apply). Preparation is only a mid-point.

You could be right, though that is not how it is commonly portrayed. What do I know, I eat at Isobune where the sushi is (mostly) already prepared and floating around on little boats.

Your statement that the cost of bigotry is $1 confuses me. I think any pricing differential based on race is bigotry. Are you saying it's not until the price gets to a certain threshold? It seems you are the one trying to put a dollar amount on it.

I also suspect a poor white non-ipod owning, yuppie family might have a different point of view on that $1 than you do, maybe you can tell us more since you are the moral spokesman for white people.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 6:41 PM

"The real scandal is how bad chinese food is in New York. I've traveled with my (Chinese) wife to China twice; we frequently eat in restaurants that are unmatched in New York. Also, Chinese "homestyle" food is, for me, frequently better than restaurant food. And most homestyle food can't be found in restaurants."

Try Grand Sichuan on St. Marks, its really good. They've got the best hongxiao dofu I've had - much better than anything I've seen in China.

Posted by vermin jones | February 26, 2007 6:48 PM

Jerry,

Perhaps we should ask the "poor white non-ipod owning, yuppie family" that is taking part in this discussion for their opinion about the pricing, as I ran out of spokesmanship 'round about the time I ran out of spokes. That was just before the wheels came off, and well, you know how irritating that can be. The two-wheeled bigot doesn't need as much gas as the four wheeler ("Let's Go in Your New Tetragot"), but the wheels are always squeaking and don't ever seem to get enough grease.

Posted by James Killus | February 26, 2007 6:57 PM

" Let me say a bit more about this. The people suffering from the discrimination here are people who can't speak Chinese. It's not as if we non-sinophones are some kind of incredibly put-upon and powerless minority here in the United States that needs city officials to be zealously defending our rights."

That's absurd. Its about race, not language. I've been to plenty of restaurants and stores in China that had dual prices, and none of them gave me the cheaper price when they found out that I could speak Chinese.

Posted by vermin jones | February 26, 2007 6:59 PM

That should be non-ipod owning, non-yuppie family, and I agree, we should ask them.

I think a lot of people in this thread have answered for them. Because they are white, they won't miss the dollar, and the Chinese family needs it more.

All I know is I haven't gotten my check from the Hollywood Jewish Conspiracy lately, and I could use the buck.

Try the uni got. Try it (freshly prepared) with just a hint of wasabi and you won't miss the grease.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 7:01 PM

I wonder if Jerry has ever devoted the amount of effort he's expended in this thread towards combating discrimination against non-white people. This could go on for 200 more comments and he'd still be repeating the same rhetorical argument about how he charges more rent to non-English speakers.

Posted by Steve | February 26, 2007 7:10 PM

Tim,

Again, on the language as proxy for race issue:

To my knowledge, the anti-discrimination laws in the US to not take intent into consideration-- absent an obvious and compelling reason for a given policy, it is only the de facto outcome of the policy that matters. People who speak Chinese, and thus can receive the discount, are going to be disproportionately ethnically Chinese. Therefore, the policy is de facto discrimination, whether or not it was intended as such, and is against the law. Language is not a necessary proxy for race, but it is as a matter of fact, which is important in the eyes of the law.

Posted by bchurch | February 26, 2007 7:21 PM

Well Steve, you keep on throwing up strawmen: it's angry white guys that are angry about this, the angry white guys have the wrong priorities, jerry doesn't do anything to combat discrimination elsewhere.

And though you don't like my rent analogy, you haven't pointed out what makes it a bad analogy. (Which it probably is.)

So far you haven't made any substantive points, just argued strawmen.

I wonder if you have ever made a substantive point? This could go on for 200 more comments and you would still be throwing up strawmen and not have made a single substantive point about why it is fair to charge non-Chinese speakers more.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 7:22 PM

"The real scandal is how bad chinese food is in New York. I've traveled with my (Chinese) wife to China twice; we frequently eat in restaurants that are unmatched in New York. Also, Chinese "homestyle" food is, for me, frequently better than restaurant food. And most homestyle food can't be found in restaurants."

I agree with this comment, or at least the part about Chinese home cooking and chinese-food-tasting-better-in-china. I have no idea how Chinese food tastes in New York.

Posted by Korha | February 26, 2007 7:22 PM

Ah well, just for the record, it is, in fact illegal in most places to charge different customers different prices for the same items in a retail establishment. It's not very illegal though, and it is a very common business practice. There have been many studies of gender bias in automotive repairs, for example, but I'm most familiar with the tactic in thrift shops and antique stores. The general rule of thumb is, however, if a proprietor can get away with it, they will.

Also, I'm willing to cut Jerry a bit of slack now, because the "uni got" remark was entertaining.

Posted by James Killus | February 26, 2007 7:24 PM

Neil,

"Nonsense"

Thanks for the intelligent response. Although you consider me wrong on this issue-- so obviously wrong apparently, that you have felt no need to justify your "responses" to me with even a minimal argument-- I was hoping nonetheless that you would do me the favor of explicitly stating the language of a law that would prevent de facto racial discrimination based on tests of knowledge (as took place under Jim Crow), but would allow the de facto racial discrimination based on knowledge of language. Be sure to state what compelling legal principle you used to differentiate the situations. Thanks in advance.

Posted by bchurch | February 26, 2007 7:28 PM

As a couple of people have said above, don't blacks and Hispanics ever eat in Chinese restaurants? (In fact, Mr. Lopez in the story is Hispanic.) If you're too full of white guilt to have sympathy for discriminated-against people of your own race, surely you can spare some sympathy for them.

Posted by James Kabala | February 26, 2007 7:32 PM

There have been many studies of gender bias in automotive repairs, for example, but I'm most familiar with the tactic in thrift shops and antique stores. The general rule of thumb is, however, if a proprietor can get away with it, they will.

I was just going to mention this. They are all wrong. Whether it's the dry cleaner that charges more for a blouse than for a shirt based on gender, or the car salesman/repairman that charges women more because they don't understand cars, it's all wrong. And they get away with it until someone makes a big enough stink.

I think in some areas the dry cleaning stuff is being addressed but not everywhere it should be.

I am just appalled in this thread that the tone seems to be that since it is merely discrimination against white people that can afford it, it is okay.

It is not okay.

The question of how to allocate and prioritize resources to eliminate are different questions.

It is not okay, because it is crap like this that is fodder for the Limbugs and O Liellys, and Hannities and Stossels.

It is not okay, because it is a divisive policy that separates along racial lines.

It is not okay, because the ends do not justify the means.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 7:32 PM

Ryan reminded me of a potentially legitimate reason for the cheaper prices on the Chinese menu: Asian's generaly prefer dark meat, whereas Anglos (for some reason) prefer (more expensive) white meat.

Posted by Chris Conway | February 26, 2007 7:37 PM

And it would be difficult to tell the difference just from eyeballing a plate, is my point.

Posted by Chris Conway | February 26, 2007 7:38 PM

all this talk of chinese food is making me hungry...

Posted by right | February 26, 2007 7:39 PM

So in the low end restaurants I can afford, they often have surcharges for a plate with all white meat....

That's true in the family restaurants as well as the fast food asian shops.

In other words, that's a legit pricing difference that can easily be explained on a menu, just as menus will say things like, $5 chicken, $5 beef, $6 shrimp.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 7:44 PM

I grew up hearing that the dark meat was moister and tastier. I usually ask for dark meat when I am asked.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 7:46 PM

I wonder if you have ever made a substantive point? This could go on for 200 more comments and you would still be throwing up strawmen and not have made a single substantive point about why it is fair to charge non-Chinese speakers more.

Actually, I made my substantive point at 2:48 PM, and I don't really have much to add to it. The point of a policy like this is to gouge the tourists, not to mention the rich lawyers who typically stroll over to Chinatown from the NYC courthouse complex for lunch. That's the whole story here.

Posted by Steve | February 26, 2007 7:47 PM

Look Jerry, I'm not saying that there isn't to an extent a certain amount of ethnic solidarity involved in the differently priced menus, but I just don't think it's worth enforcing, given the fact making an issue of it will, I believe, HURT MORE PEOPLE than the practice itself. Why? Well, I don't think this is true of you--you just seem a chauvinist--but I think that the reason this story would resonate among certain readers of The Daily News would be the pleasure they take in expressing anti-chinese racism (which they know is bad) encoded in the language of racial offence (which they believe is always virtuos). I think that significant legal responsiveness to an issue in which this sort of sentiment is so deeply embedded would be destructive. Something akin to (though not as severe as) efforts to relocate San Francisco's chinatown for reasons of "public health."

I also think that there are a fair number of circumstances that make dual menu-pricing significantly less than a crime. (I mean, just read that sentence.)

One of those circumstances is that we are talking about chinese food restaurants in cities with large immigrant populations, such as New York and San Francisco, where many of the people who run the restaurants are intimately familiar with the conditions under which those immigrants live, ie extremely frugally, and in some percentage of those of cases are members of that community themselves.

So they know that there is a large market that they can sell to as long as they keep their prices low enough. They also know that there is a large and wealthy market of non-immigrant citizens. By and large, they know that they can charge a large percentage of this market more by exploiting their lack of knowledge of the chinese language.

Based on my experiences with various extremely friendly restaurant owners, wherein I noticed a significant absence of race hate, I find this explanation for the dual-priced menu, much more plausible than the idea that every restaurant owner who practices dual-pricing does so because he/she thinks non-chinese people deserve to pay exactly one-dollar and fifty sense more than than someone who does.

These are all much more meaningful considerations than you're relentless unargued declarations that language-discrimination is a priori the variety of race-discrimination that must be righteously identified as bigotry.

Now, given the fact that the difference in price is relatively small, the discrimanatee is not meaningfully hurt by it, the discrimination is not based on any harmful form of racism, and the people who have the advantage in this case need every advantage they can get, I just can't get myself to work myself up into the same frenzy of intolerance that leads you to reflexively label me a bigot.

Posted by Tim Sullivan | February 26, 2007 8:10 PM

I'm a chauvinist? How so?

You seem to be acknowledging it's wrong and it's exploitive but that it harms no one. (Ignoring the Hispanic guy that complained.) You have quantified the deficit the Chinese population is suffering that needs to be relieved and you haven't quantified the deficit you would place upon non-Chinese people. And you have not explained why the targeted population should be the population that makes up that deficit.

Your argument comes down to saying that for you, the ends justifies the means.

Don't be surprised when you hear Limbug, Hannity, Savage, Stossel, Gibson complain about this.

Don't complain to me that people call you a bigot! My advice: stop advocating bigoted policies!

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 8:23 PM

bchurch,

I'm with you. I understand your objections and I think it's important to look at protests like mine pretty rigorously, given the profound discrimination-based injustices woven into the history of this country. Beyond basic high school history type stuff, I'm not really familiar with the legal traditions on equal rights and I think that in strict application of logic, you're right, these guys have probably committed a crime. I'll happily concede that. (Of course, I'd also concede that smoking marijuana is a crime.)

In fact, as I concede above, I'm sure there are a fair number of chinese-restaurant owners who hold all sorts of ugly misinformation about white people and black people and hispanics near and dear to their hearts. I just don't think that's the reason there are so many restaurants with menus with different prices for non-chinese speakers and that whoever is in a position to do something about it should focus on something else, like, I don't know, the sorts of exploitation of undocumented workers I was accused of approving of above or sex-slavery (a big problem here in SF) or housing abuses.

My feeling right now however--and none of Jerry's arguments or anything else I've read here has changed it--is that prosecution of this issue would create more race antipathy than it would eliminate.

Posted by Tim Sullivan | February 26, 2007 8:33 PM

Don't people realize that senior citizens, as a group, have *more* money than other groups, not less.

Posted by ed | February 26, 2007 8:37 PM

de facto racial discrimination based on tests of knowledge (as took place under Jim Crow) - bchurch

Is there a legal and institutional structure in place in New York City that prevents people not of Chinese ancestry from learning Chinese?

You may be interested to learn that the same supermarket chain in its South Bronx franchise charges lower prices for Coca-Cola than in its franchises on the Upper East Side. This is clearly an instance of anti-white racial discrimination, since location here is so obviously a proxy for race.

Posted by mattsteinglass | February 26, 2007 8:53 PM

Wikipedia on chauvinism: Chauvinism is extreme and unreasoning partisanship on behalf of a group to which one belongs (in your case, anti-racists;I'm in this group myself, just not in the same way you are).

You have quantified the deficit the Chinese population is suffering that needs to be relieved and you haven't quantified the deficit you would place upon non-Chinese people. And you have not explained why the targeted population should be the population that makes up that deficit.

This is illustrative and helps me see where you are coming from and would have been a better and much more civil answer to my question about why you didn't buy my argument.

To the extent that, as bchurch argues, intent doesn't matter (although I'd also refer you to that other dude's post about outcomes, along with other posts about the meaning of what we chose to prosecute and what we don't) there's a "deficit" involved, but to my mind it's vanishingly small. And that's the answer to the third part as well.

Your argument comes down to saying that for you, the ends justifies the means.

Yes--but only when the means aren't really all that bad.

Posted by Tim Sullivan | February 26, 2007 9:06 PM

The article paints an incomplete picture. Lopez is told that there is a $1 more charge for rice but sees other Asians eating rice and concludes that there is something discriminatory going on. The article doesn't say much more than that, other than the fact that he took copies of the English menu and the Chinese menu, and the commission decided there was probable cause to investigate the restaurant.

I've paid $1 a bowl for rice at restaurants when ordering in Chinese. I wouldn't expect a non-Chinese speaking observer to be able to conclusively decide whether I was charged $1 or not from the words exchanged. Often I don't find out until I get the bill what the charge is for rice (if they don't bring rice out with the food, I can conclude that there is a charge for rice, but I usually don't bother to ask what it is when ordering).

If it is an obvious case of two menus identical in dishes with clearly different prices, then that would be fairly egregious. Fine them and move on. That hasn't been proven to me by the article alone, so I'll just wait for the conclusions of the committee investigating.

My white and black coworkers who speak Chinese (yes, I work with dozens of them) usually get more favorable treatment than I do at Chinese establishments. It's more of the novelty of non-Asians speaking Chinese, and they are unimpressed with me because I don't speak Chinese as well as a true native speaker. Perhaps it's different on the East Coast; I wouldn't know.

All that being said, usually the restaurants I eat at make a token effort to translate their menu into English, but the names are usually not descriptive or helpful in English. 魚香肉絲 and 水煮牛肉 sometimes are translated into terrible-sounding dishes like "Fish flavored shredded pork" and "Boiled beef," respectively. Yeah, it sounds pretty shitty, but I personally love those two dishes. And the average non-Chinese speaking person would not be inclined to order it. This is more of a natural cultural discrimination that will always be present in ethnic restaurants. Some people get scared away by sesos or lengua burritos at a taqueria, so taquerias may choose not to promote them heavily to white people. No big deal, move on, and work on bigger issues like hiring practices and racial steering in real estate.

Posted by Shane | February 26, 2007 9:26 PM

I'll add my voice to suggest that this is the stupidest, most shallow, totally Park Avenue brat posts I have ever seen from an otherwise bright young man.

Posted by David Sucher | February 26, 2007 9:34 PM

Just to be clear, what I had meant was "You haven't quantified the deficit the Chinese population is suffering..."

Basically you are worried about a problem that you don't know exists or to what degree and you are proposing a solution and you don't know how efficacious that solution would be or its cost, and when people tell you what the legal, moral appropriate solution is, you scare them by saying it is expensive and will cause race hatred.

You have no evidence for a single one of your claims, but you are all ready to jump into a solution that everyone seems to agree depends on racial discrimination.

And then you say you believe the ends justifies the means when the means aren't really all that bad. But you have no way of knowing how bad the means are, and you have no way of knowing how much the ends cost.

And then you decide that enforcing this will cause race hatred, but no one has begun to discuss the methods available to enforce this!

Sure, I ain't letting you enforce it. Clearly you will go to each Chinese restaurant with a gang of your thugs and break windows.

Me, I think we can start with a series of statements by the Mayor or his staff that this behavior isn't acceptable and why, and ask people to voluntarily stop its practice.

Perhaps this reminder can be placed in the various brochures handed to restaurants each year by the various regulatory agencies.

I don't see the need for a massive budget or the use of your cudgels.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 9:43 PM

Mattsteinglass,

"Is there a legal and institutional structure in place in New York City that prevents people not of Chinese ancestry from learning Chinese?"

In the post-Reconstruction South, there was no legal institution *preventing* blacks from obtaining the knowledge they needed to pass voter tests. The fact that many could not pass such tests at the time is due to a number of factors, but in theory (quite distinct from the reality of the day, of course) they could have possibly hired private tutors during their free time.

And of course there's nothing institutionally preventing Mexican immigrants to this country from learning English. But I'd imagine that you would see a problem if some racist owner had the Spanish menu at his restaurant list double the prices given to English natives.

"You may be interested to learn that the same supermarket chain in its South Bronx franchise charges lower prices for Coca-Cola than in its franchises on the Upper East Side. This is clearly an instance of anti-white racial discrimination, since location here is so obviously a proxy for race."

Red Herring. Prices will always vary on location due to the different costs of operating. There's no way around this. But if a sign on that South Bronx grocery read, "Potato: one dollar", and underneath it read "Patata, ocho dollars" (pedantry note: I don't know what the spanish plural of "dollar" would be), would you still fail to see the problem? Or since there's nothing institutionally preventing Mexicans from learning English, are we free to rip them off until they catch on (or at least keep them away from white stores by letting them know they'll be ripped off)?

Posted by bchurch | February 26, 2007 10:02 PM

This is one the most frustrating thing about contemporary liberals. We seem to have swallowed whole the conservative notion that what was wrong with slavery, Jim Crow, Plessy v. Fergusson and Dred Scott was discrimination.

No, those things are wrong because they are inhuman policies motivated by racial hatred designed to entrench the subordination of already disempowered groups. Is everybody watching Stephen Colbert pantomine the race-blind Republican and just not getting the joke?

You'd think we'd have learned this after conservatives demonstrate, quite rightly, that the "non-discrimination" approach to civil rights is perfectly compatible with elimination of affirmative action, abolishing women's studies departments, belittling diversity as a goal, demonizing community loyalty, and (this just in) losing your fucking head over already-bargain chinese food.

In my experience, these "separate-but-equal" menus have different prices because the food is prepared differently (less rice, more vegetables, less sweetening, less starch, etc.) to cater to more homely dining tastes. Also, as was noted earlier, the Chinese menus offer items that most non-Chinese tend not to be interested in. So the debate presently raging over the merits Jim Crow appears moot.

Posted by StJoe | February 26, 2007 10:02 PM

dólares. rhymes with clitares.

Posted by Larry David | February 26, 2007 10:12 PM

Quite right, StJoe, though I don't know that it's fair to blame liberals for the right's conversion of non-discrimination into an abstract principle divorced from all real social content. note how many of the comments here jump from the (utterly innocuous) actual case to non-existent hypotheticals. These people are not interested in race as it is lived and experienced in the real world.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | February 26, 2007 10:22 PM

Prices will always vary on location due to the different costs of operating. There's no way around this. - bchurch

No, bchurch, prices will always vary on location due to the different willingness of customers living in different locations to pay. To charge less than customers are willing to pay is known as "leaving money on the table". If costs of operating are high in a location but residents are unable to pay higher prices, then the business does not exist in that location. If costs are low but customers are willing to pay higher prices, then prices, regardless of costs, will be high. For instance, my parents just paid 1800 dollars to fly round trip NY-Hanoi-NY. Round trip Hanoi-NY-Hanoi costs 600 dollars less. The operational cost is the same. The price difference is due to the fact that Vietnamese are poorer than Americans. Racial discrimination?

Posted by mattsteinglass | February 26, 2007 10:22 PM

Amazing the number of comments this has generated ...
What about the possibility that the restaurants are hoping to turn some of the lower-price-receiving Chinese customers into regulars? Most of the white customers presumably are tourists and aren't likely to become regulars even if offered bargains.

Posted by Peter | February 26, 2007 10:27 PM

Reading some more comments here I find the pattern is clear: People who agree with Matt Y. (like Matt S. just above) cite real-world examples, while the outraged white people invariably cite hypotheticals.

Here's a clue for the clueless:

Discrimination against African-Americans is a problem not because it's an instance of the abstract category of "discrimination," any form of which is equally bad. It's a problem because African-Americans have been systematically excluded from full social, political and economic participation in American life for centuries; because the exclusion of African-Americans has deformed our political institutions in all sorts of obvious and non-obvious ways; because major isntiutions (like the criminal justice system and the housing market) still greatly disadvantage African-Americans; and because "the history of the 20th century was the history of the color line."

You can't talk about racial discrimination as if all possible cases were equally serious and equally plausible.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | February 26, 2007 10:35 PM

Clearly, Peter. Though I do also wonder whether my own reaction to this story evinces a phenomenon similar to that of "aspirational voting". Some lower-income people vote as if they were millionaires because they hope to someday become one. I may be siding with Chinese speakers here because I hope to one day speak Chinese. There may be some of this phenomenon underlying a lot of language politics -- people who can't imagine themselves speaking foreign languages side reflexively against non-English information in the US, while people who do speak foreign languages sort of snobbishly side with the non-English info as a form of polylingual identity politics.

Posted by mattsteinglass | February 26, 2007 10:37 PM

Mattsteinglass,

Your analogy is flawed in that a NYC-Hanoi-NYC trip is not an identical service as a Hanoi-NYC-Hanoi trip. There's a different demand for each service, caused in part by what each country's locals are willing and able to pay. The Chinese restaurant, from what I have read, offered identical meals and charged differently for them based on the ability to speak Chinese, which is a defacto proxy for ethnically Chinese people. (This has been challenged above, but we've been assuming arguendo that the meals are the same for the purpose of this debate-- if the meals are somehow different then the point is entirely moot). If the airline offered $1800 tickets to English speaking passengers out of New York, and $1200 tickets to Vietnamese speaking passengers out of New York, then yes, it would be de facto racial discrimination.

Posted by bchurch | February 26, 2007 10:39 PM

Lemuel,

Thanks for clueing me in that black people have borne the brunt of discrimination in this country. The problem is that you cannot write a law that says "discriminating against people who have been historically wronged is illegal, whereas discriminating against people who have no such history is legal". Or I suppose you could write such a law, but it would be pretty clearly insane. First, if it's legal to discriminate against people without such a history, then eventually they will develop that history and be covered under the law. In the meantime, they have to "earn" their right against discrimination by some level of hardship that you decide is worthy?

Also, of course, you'd violate the underlying and universal principle of the civil rights movement-- that no one should be discriminated against based on race or nationality-- and replace it with a principle stating that the color of your skin is in fact the deciding factor in whether or not you've been wrongly discriminated against.

Of course, barring your interesting idea of what the law should be, the real danger in this Chinese food case is that some creative racist in the deep South will find a way to use these same tactics to prevent black people from getting equal treatment.

Posted by bchurch | February 26, 2007 10:52 PM

There's a different demand for each service, caused in part by what each country's locals are willing and able to pay.

The analogy was intended to point out that the price different is caused not by different operating costs, but by different customer willing/ableness to pay, which you acknowledge, so we agree.

The Chinese restaurant, from what I have read, offered identical meals and charged differently for them based on the ability to speak Chinese, which is a defacto proxy for ethnically Chinese people.

Speaking Chinese is NOT a proxy for ethnically Chinese people. It is a method of tapping a differential willingness to pay on the part of people who have more information about the service offered. A non-Chinese-speaking Asian-looking person will not be offered the lower price out of ethnic solidarity. The reason for the differential prices is that Chinese speakers can understand all of the information posted throughout Chinatown and, if local residents (as many are), will know the prices for a given dish in many other local restaurants. This information differential results in a differential willingness to pay. Just as stockbrokers get lower prices when they make trades than day-trading regular joes do, and just as diamond merchants get better prices on diamond rings than tourists do, Chinese speakers are offered better prices on dishes. Similarly, though on a far larger scale, you will be ripped off on the first Turkish rug you buy in Istanbul. This is not a matter of racial discrimination. It is a matter of being a rube.

Conversely, the reason, I'm sure, for the NYC govt's concern here is that tourists do not like to feel like rubes. It is bad for the NYC tourism industry to give tourists the feeling that they're being charged higher prices than the locals are. But it is highly misleading to place this in the category of racial discrimination. The tourists are probably being overcharged for theater tickets, too, but they won't be able to raise that complaint on legal grounds because there's no plausible 14th Amendment claim. I think it is highly misleading to claim that chinese language here is a "proxy" for chinese race. In fact, I think that very sentiment may - not on your part, but on many people's part - be a "proxy" for anti-Chinese prejudice.

Posted by mattsteinglass | February 26, 2007 10:54 PM

Has a mattyglesias.com comment thread ever broken 200 before?

Posted by Korha | February 26, 2007 11:07 PM

Jerry,

Jesus. I don't see any reason to fling around inflammatory, insulting caricatures solely because I express disagreement with you. That's bully behavior.

And I'm not trying to scare anyone into agreeing with me. I'm stating my opinion that enjoying accusing a minority population of discrimination is a way to express racism. (And, as I said before, I don't think this is why you're so animated in defense of the subject.) Isn't that the whole argument against affirmative action? Don't you think that the majority of objections to affirmative action are latently racist, rather than principled?

My experience of a less affluent population of recent immigrants is based on limited personal experience, stories from friends about what it was like to grow up in chinatown in San Francisco. But its reasonably consistent. I don't really have any quantitative information about the income of chinese speaking restaurant goers vs. non-chinese speakers. I'd be very curious to learn if my theorizing about the differing markets would be reflected in those numbers.

But this whole argument is taking place in a quantitative vacuum. So I'm willing to put the argument about principal versus costs on hold.

In that regard, however, the regulatory brochure would be fine with me. In fact, I hadn't thought of such a sensible, low-key response. I was thinking more in terms of restaurant owners being sued in sensational, headline grabbing cases. I think that your suggestion is exactly the scale of response that this sort of thing warrants. (I probably wouldn't want the mayor to address it via press conference or anything. Only in passing or if queried and in all cases in a generalized way.) Beyond thise, I don't think it's worth crowding out more important issues from public, official discourse, and that the outrage over this thing is misplaced, especially if the circumstances I've anecdotally posited in various posts have any validity in the aggregate. I'm going to look into broader accounts of present day immigrant existence to see if my personal experiences area are reflected by the record. It's suddenly become very interesting to me.

Posted by Tim Sullivan | February 26, 2007 11:08 PM

A couple of comments... no one has noted, I don't think, that the vast majority of Chinese restaurants run by Chinese in the West are, in fact, CANTONESE restaurants. Meaning that the menus use traditional Chinese characters, which are legible to a tiny minority of Chinese speakers (HK and Taiwan), and that your average mainland Chinese individual, while having some idea of what was on the menu, would probably not be able to order efficiently from said menu. So this really, really isn't a case of Chinese vs White, because you're conflating Cantonese with Chinese and English with White.

Also, virtually every menu I've ever seen in every Chinese restaurant I've ever been in from New York to LA and Beijing to Kashgar has used Arabic numerals for pricing, contrary to some of the comments above.

Finally, I guess this is kind of a shitty break to non-cantonese customers, but if they're really that concerned about it, the solution is really, really simple.. require that all new restaurant menus have all languages and all pricing information on the same document, with the translated terms next to one another. I don't see why this need a human rights commission.. just check on the next health/safety inspection for a new menu, and if they've printed a new one with seperate pricing info, ding them with a fine.

Posted by veritol | February 26, 2007 11:28 PM

Don't you think that the majority of objections to affirmative action are latently racist, rather than principled?

I don't know what the spectrum of objections are, or their distributions, so I cannot tell you what the majority of them are.

Fuck the racist ones, as a very liberal liberal, I think there are some very real principled objections.

I don't give a rats ass for the racist objections, but that doesn't mean the principled objections do not deserve an answer.

Beyond thise, I don't think it's worth crowding out more important issues from public, official discourse, and that the outrage over this thing is misplaced, especially if the circumstances I've anecdotally posited in various posts have any validity in the aggregate.

I'm not sure what the outrage is apart from the newspaper article.

I like to eat in Berkeley and Oakland where there are many restaurants that have the menus on the wall in Chinese. That's one indication for me that I might be at an okay restaurant.

I don't think there is any justification for prices for the same item to be at different prices. I think it's a holdover from the past. I think that now would be a good time for that practice to end.

I find the attempts to rationalize it and to make the people that are offended by it into angry white skinhead racists to be ridiculous.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 11:37 PM

I don't see how only offering one menu can fall into the domain of a health inspection. But it could fall into the regulatory nature of the restaurant business license.

I don't think that's a good solution though.

I don't mind having two or three different menus. Or having a chinese menu on the wall.

The only objectionable practice would be if the same items are charged different prices on different menus based on racial profiling.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 11:40 PM

I knew I recognised jerry's style from somewhere (he waxes concernedly in the comments).

Posted by JMo | February 26, 2007 11:41 PM

Jerry- yeah, I just suggested health inspection because they occur regularly so you would be able to check to see what the status of the menu was. As for it not being a good solution, the majority of Chinese restuarants I eat at in Toronto, where I live, have both languages on one menu, and so you know that you're not being ripped off. There are still chinese menus on the wall but they're used largely for daily specials, like fresh fish and lobster and so on, which tend to be more expensive than the menu dishes anyway. I think this system works quite well.

Posted by veritol | February 26, 2007 11:46 PM

Very good JMo, you were correctly able to equate "jerry" with "jerry".

Well done!

Huh?

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 11:48 PM

If you look hard JMo, you can find me posting at Washington Monthly, Atrios, Ezra Kleins, Brad DeLongs, FDL, C&L, TBogg, Oliver Willis. Other places too. Do you want my entire list of blogs that I read?

Yes! But you've outed me. Because I think that calling a practice that everyone seems to agree is racist is in fact racist and saying cities should put out pamphlets against it, you're right, JMo, I must be a concern troll.

Feel free to stalk me.

Posted by jerry | February 26, 2007 11:52 PM

That might be right, veritol, except I am not sure there's many mainlanders living in Chinatowns except ones who are proficient in all kinds of Chinese reading.

This is especially true since they spend time in Chinatowns where the signs are traditional Chinese and the newspapers, media, etc. are in traditional Chinese. I read traditional characters and dine at Cantonese restaurants with folks from HK, Shanghai, Beijing (maybe because they tend to be college educated). I have never encountered someone who was proficient in simplified Chinese but had problems reading a traditional menu. More common for me has been reading the traditional characters but being unfamiliar with (and mortified by) some exotic Cantonese dish.

Anyways, it doesn't matter. I have been Chinese for as long as I can remember, and have an equally long history of eating Chinese food. I never once suspected that Chinese language menus had any other reason for existing except to cater to acculturated diners who have special tastes. I am even more suspicious of the suggestion that Chinese are prone to expressing their solidarity by systematically overcharging round-eyes or by generously subsidizing the literate (huh?). Restaurants are just doing business.

This whole discussion is awesome.

Posted by StJoe | February 26, 2007 11:58 PM

I don't think most of the commentators are outraged that somewhere, someone is playing $1 more for rice because she doesn't read Chinese.

What I, ad I suspect a lot of the other responders, am reacting too is that a prominent liberal blogger like Matt Yglesisas would shed light on this practice for the purpose of declaring that there's nothing wrong with it.

MY's original post assumed that the practice was charging different prices for the same food, so that fact that there may be slight devaitions to suit native speakers is irrelevant.

I don't think anyone wants to go to Chinatown with pitchforks to shutdown the restaurants that practice this price discrimination. But the practice shouldn't be celebrated or publically approved, either. It's a private law vs. public law thing.

Posted by JohnMcG | February 27, 2007 12:09 AM

StJoe - sure, I'm just pointing out that cantonese/traditional characters are maybe not a great proxy for the Han Chinese ethnicity because the majority of Han don't use them. I'm not sure whether or not the majority of Chinese immigrants to North America are now Cantonese speaking (I think in Canada the majority of newcomers are now Mandarin speaking, so the Cantonese majority will soon be eclipsed by that group), but my personal, anecdotal experience is that the mainlanders/taiwanese I am friends with ordering at a cantonese restaurant will tend to order in English, from an English menu (if the menus are seperate). Many of the Cantonese waitstaff here do speak the putonghua, but a lot of them don't and will get exasperated with you for ordering in mandarin, so it's just easier to use English. So while many ethnic Chinese may have no trouble with the cantonese/traditional menus/waitstaff, many of them, in my experience, do, and thus I don't really think it's a great proxy for race.

Posted by veritol | February 27, 2007 12:16 AM

I'm not really sure what's wrong with this kind of business practice; it's no different from offering student fares on airlines or senior citizens' discounts at movie theaters.

In general, you don't have to read Chinese to get the senior discount.

In fact, typically the price is printed in the same language(s) as the higher prices.

So, can you ask for an English version of the lower price menu?

Posted by Lettuce | February 27, 2007 12:36 AM

我想着很好，可是我会说中文。

Posted by Chad Okere | February 27, 2007 1:05 AM

I completely agree there should only be one set of menus and it should be in Chinese. Non-Chinese speakers are paying more because they are receiving special treatment. First, they get a nice menu in English, then they get the waiter to take their order in English and write it down in Chinese. That seems like it is worth a buck to me. Also, in many Chinese restaurants the price is right their on the menu. If you don't want to pay that price, go to the next restaurant.

Posted by whiners | February 27, 2007 3:10 AM

Damn, as over the top as his hypotheticals get, Jerry is the voice of reason here. Maybe its a good idea to limit civil rights laws to descendants of slavery (the 13th Amendment would justify it) but that's not what Congress, the NY legislature and the NY City Council has chosen to do-- you can't discrminate under any of their civil rights codes on the basis of ethnicity or national origin and sadly that means that yes, white people (or here, Hispanics) have civil rights too.

If a discriminatory condition has a correlation to a protected class then its likely a violation of civil rights. The classic example, "grandfather clauses", exempted new voters in the Jim Crow South from voting restrictions if they had a grandfather who was qualified to vote. In theory it was race-neutral, in practice it let whites register at will, and blacks couldn't register until they aced a Civics exam that Woodrow Fucking Wilson couldn't pass.

Since there's a correlation between language ability to a protected civil rights class (as the EEOC put it, "The primary language of an individual is often an essential national origin characteristic") then a business cannot discriminate unless they can show a business necessity-- and since courts use strict scrutiny for non-gender civil rights cases, its highly unlikely the restaurant could prove that.

The case is a slam dunk for the City. Clearly the restaurant owner, like many people here, think civil rights laws only protect members of minority groups and that's just not true. If you think that's unfair, write your Congressman/ Assemblyman/ Councilman and get the laws changed.

Posted by beowulf | February 27, 2007 3:32 AM

To correct a misstatement, I forgot that "strict scrutiny" standard is only for government actions (so it wouldn't apply to a privately owned restaurant). But it still would be difficult for the restaurant to win the case. Its one thing to argue that its too expensive and labor-intensive to translate a menu from one language to another (the obvious business necessity defense McDonalds would use if sued for not offering Mandarin/Tagalog/German/Swahili/etc. as well as the standard English menu).

In this case, the restaurant DID take the trouble to translate the menu from Chinese into English (or vice versa), the civil rights violation was offering a special price on one menu that they didn't offer on the other. Ethnic solidarity (as more than a few white-owned Southern barbeque joints learned to their detriment) is not a valid business necessity.

Posted by beowulf | February 27, 2007 3:51 AM

I feel sorry for the OpenCongress post down below. Only one comment. So sad.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan thread - on an issue that could possibly lead to New York being blown up - gets about 20 comments. The thread about whether or not a Chinatown restaurant charges an extra dollar to English speakers for General Tso's chicken gets 180 comments. This is how Anna Nicole's death is front-page news.

Posted by Reality Man | February 27, 2007 4:11 AM

When I last went to a Chinese restaurant, I was less offended by the discriminatory pricing as I was perturbed by the peepee in my Coke.

Posted by Gregorio | February 27, 2007 7:09 AM

You aren't allowed to discriminate just because it makes you more money. I truly doubt that finding someone who speaks Mandarin and English is even kind of a hardship in Chinatown. Let's be clear here, this is racism. The goal isn't to charge speaks or Cantonese or Mandarin or whatever less than those who don't speak those language. The goal is to charge ethnically Chinese people less than other people. If the occasional white guy gets off with the lower price, so be it. But the goal here is for these people to treat their own race better than the other races. Pretending otherwise is a bit like pretending the Civil War was fought over a multitude of issues rather than the one issue it was fought over: Slavery.

Posted by soullite | February 27, 2007 7:58 AM

"....the thread about whether or not a Chinatown restaurant charges an extra dollar to English speakers for General Tso's chicken gets 180 comments. This is how Anna Nicole's death is front-page news."

Yes, but at least the Battlestar Galactica thread was only at 20 posts (as of 8:29 AM on Tuesday), which gives me hope. It's cute to see all the posters here splitting hairs with such passion and at such length, though--looks like a lot of people really miss the dear old days of 1L.

Oh, and my opinion on the menu-pricing issue: if a restaurant has two different menus offering different prices to people who speak different languages, that seems like clear-cut discrimination to me and should be remedied. Really, WTF?

Posted by James Gary | February 27, 2007 8:39 AM

A couple of comments... no one has noted, I don't think, that the vast majority of Chinese restaurants run by Chinese in the West are, in fact, CANTONESE restaurants. Meaning that the menus use traditional Chinese characters, which are legible to a tiny minority of Chinese speakers (HK and Taiwan), and that your average mainland Chinese individual, while having some idea of what was on the menu, would probably not be able to order efficiently from said menu.

Sorry, Veritol, this is not quite right. You appear to be misinformed on many levels. First of all, the majority of daily traditional character users are Taiwanese, secondly Taiwanese are not Cantonese - they mostly speak Mandarin (I think you know that, but the post isn't clear). Thirdly most Cantonese speakers are, in fact, mainland Chinese not Hong Kongers, and grew up with simplified characters. Fourthly, in Boston at least, most restaurants are not run by Cantonese - in many cases I've met mainland Chinese immigrants working in Chinese restaurants, and those restaurants use traditional characters. Hunan and Szechuan seem to predominate. Fifthly, and most importantly, most literate Chinese from the mainland can read your basic traditional characters, and indeed you still see traditional characters in the mainland all the time. Any college educated mainlander would be insulted at the insinuation he/she can't read a menu written in traditional characters, and even literate people with lesser education should be able to read a basic menu without any difficulty. It's not like they're being asked to read Lu Shun. The issues your mainland/Taiwanese friends have should have nothing to do with the way the menu is written, it's simply the fact that Cantonese is a different language from Mandarin, so reading the menu doesn't make up for the fact that you can't talk to the waiter. Also written Cantonese, contrary to popular belief, is not exactly the same as written Mandarin and does occasionally use different characters, or the same characters with different meanings - but that is not the same issue as "simplified vs. traditional."

Posted by vanya_6724 | February 27, 2007 9:36 AM

Out of the whole thread I count about four people who know Chinese people eat differently from Westerners.

My first wife and I used to go to Chinese restaurants and ask the waiter to bring us a dinner, and chopsticks. Go later in the evening, leave the choice up to the waiter, and you will eat very economically.

When her parents came to town, the experience was entirely different. Each person ordered their own dinner from the menu, her father always had to tell his "flied lice" joke, and, maybe this goes without saying, the dinner was somewhat more expensive. Go figure.

What I learn from this thread is that having enough money to eat out won't buy happiness, if 'eating out' means going to a restaurant.

Posted by serial catowner | February 27, 2007 9:54 AM

Oh boy, it's so clear that the more outraged on this thread have never worked in an ethnic or Mom & Pop restaurant, nor does it seem they have seen a single episode of the 1,000's of "foodie" TV shows & columns that are typically on the theme of "ask for the secret menu, tell them ol' Cajun Joe sent ya."

The idea of national franchises & chains with uniform menus and portions calculated by computers has so seeped into our culture that you can't conceive of a restaurant as a very small family business where all kinds of "shady" things always go on? So many proprietors think of it an extension their home with all customers invited guests. It's a silly notion to this ex-restaurant slave with memories both good and bad, but that's really the way it is.

If you're a celebrity, especially one that will pose for a picture, though that's not a requirement, your entire meal will be: FREE! If you're a nobody, who doesn't know the back way through the kitchen, you will not get the Goodfellas treatment where they miraculously find a table to seat you in the front row. If you are a regular, long time customer with roots in the old country, and you bring your family from overseas in when they are visiting, you will be served a feast of the "real" food that is not on the menu. You get to run a tab when you are friends with an owner, and not when you're not. If your nasty to the hostess, she will tell you there are no tables available and if to the waitress she will spit in your soup. When nicely dressed customers are upset with something, they get a free bottle of wine, when a bunch of noisy ghetto denizens start complaining about treatment, they might get the bill before they are finished eating.

It's ALL about discrimination, all kinds of discrimination.

The big secret to avoiding discrimination: give big tips to all concerned. If you don't have the funds for that, hang out, become a regular that entertains all, become part of the "family." Either way, the "special menu" will be available to you at all times, whether you can read the language on it or not.

Mho, it's a sick culture, but that's the way it is.

On the other side, can't some of you see how this sort of thing makes small business owners fear that "liberals" want to regulate them to death? Regulate every aspect of life?

Yes, lunch counters in the South in the 50's used this. Yes private clubs used this, yes there are so many examples that can be said to be the same in principle. But Yglesias is right, it's a matter of degree here....do you really want to get to the point where all food establishments are big regulated chains where people cannot discriminate in favor of their friends and their own "kind"? Shall it be regulated that they cannot give the "extra special rib sauce that's the boss" only to bonafide homies from the original hood who know to ask for it?

Posted by artappraiser | February 27, 2007 10:59 AM

If you're a celebrity, especially one that will pose for a picture, though that's not a requirement, your entire meal will be: FREE! If you're a nobody, who doesn't know the back way through the kitchen, you will not get the Goodfellas treatment where they miraculously find a table to seat you in the front row. If you are a regular, long time customer with roots in the old country, and you bring your family from overseas in when they are visiting, you will be served a feast of the "real" food that is not on the menu. You get to run a tab when you are friends with an owner, and not when you're not. If your nasty to the hostess, she will tell you there are no tables available and if to the waitress she will spit in your soup. When nicely dressed customers are upset with something, they get a free bottle of wine, when a bunch of noisy ghetto denizens start complaining about treatment, they might get the bill before they are finished eating.

All of that: discrimination.
None of that: racial discrimination.

Posted by jerry | February 27, 2007 11:10 AM

That last one may be racial discrimination -- depends on if there is a historical pattern of such behavior by the waitress or restaurant and if it is a function of the behavior of the guest, or their race.

Posted by jerry | February 27, 2007 11:12 AM

I don't doubt that there are occasions when an ethnic restaurant has favorites that would not be accessible to a wider audience that would be priced separately.

That is not the problem that was presented by MY.

The problem that was presented is that there are two menus with the same items, one printed in Chinese, one printed in English, and the prices were different on the two of them.

MY highlighted this, and said it wasn't a problem, which I think is what most people are reacting to. As presented, it's a pretty clear case of using language as a proxy for racial discrimination, which is illegal and against our standards.

Now, if the problem is differnt from the one stated, then it's a different issue, that is probably problematic.

But if we misunderstand the problem, then MY did too, and the fact that it's a differnt problem doesn't give MY a pass for getting the wrong answer on what he thought was the problem.

Posted by JohnMcG | February 27, 2007 11:29 AM

"All of that: discrimination.
None of that: racial discrimination."

Oh the jesus, jerry. You're gone way past resonable argument at this point.

Post #194!

Posted by Korha | February 27, 2007 12:00 PM

I wouldn't be at all surprised at this point to find out that "jerry" is one of those fathers' rights kooks. They all sound the same.

Posted by Steve | February 27, 2007 12:41 PM

Brad Delong and others have made the point that in America, a program only for the poor will be poorly funded. Thus people of not quite so poor status need to be included for strategic reasons. Can't a similiar point be made about this issue? If white people start getting the impression (whether correct or not) that anti-discrimination policies are not to protect them too, will thier support for anti-discrimination policies not sink (regardless of where you think thier support levels currently are at)? Shouldn't we prevent that whenever possible, including on this bruhaha?

Posted by pjgoober | February 27, 2007 12:50 PM

I'm not white or angry but I am annoyed. Not so much by the
actual practice itself as the fact that Matt Yg. sees it
fit to pronounce that there's nothing wrong with it.

He could have ignored it. If forced to confront it, he
could have acknowledged that its wrong but not that big
a deal. That, in his opinion, its now worth pursuing. Instead,
he feels the need to actively justify it, comparing it
to student discounts etc.

You're on firm ground if you argue that discrimination against
minorities is a vastly bigger problem than any reverse
discrimination. But actually going out of your way to
approve discrimination against the majority plays into
the worst caricatures of liberals.

Posted by Raj | February 27, 2007 1:08 PM

"If white people start getting the impression (whether correct or not) that anti-discrimination policies are not to protect them too, will thier support for anti-discrimination policies not sink"

pjgoober makes a great point. It applies even if you aren't
white. Most people would like to buy into the principle
that discrimination is wrong no matter who its directed at,
while accepting that, in practice, the focus would be on
discrimination against minorities. Very few people would
like to buy into the principle that discrimination *against*
them is OK.

Posted by Raj | February 27, 2007 1:16 PM

One time I went to dinner at one of my favorite Chinese restaurants with a school employee who spoke Cantonese and knew the proprietors. He did not use a menu to order, and the food was so good I was unable to return to the restaurant without him, knowing from my previous experience that GaiJin just don't know how to order the best food. Is that discrimination? I don't think so, but it ruined the restaurant for me.

Posted by Gregorio | February 27, 2007 2:31 PM

Here is Steve's contribution to this discussion:

it's angry white guys that are angry about this, the angry white guys have the wrong priorities, jerry doesn't do anything to combat discrimination elsewhere, jerry is a kook, jerry is a fathers' rights kook.

And as he points out, his substantive point is this:

The point is that locals get to eat cheaper than the tourists, which may not be right, but it's not the end of the world either. All these silly analogies are completely beside the point.

Which is true if by local you mean local Chinese speakers and not local hispanics or local anyone else, and if anyone anywhere still said that it was okay to discriminate on the basis of race.

In the meantime, Steve keeps dragging this discussion into the gutter by smearing those of us trying to honestly engage in it.

Steve, smearing and name calling alone does not an argument make. If you have a substantive point to make, why don't you contribute that?

Posted by jerry | February 27, 2007 3:19 PM

I am pretty appalled that people are still arguing that having a Chinese menu is a proxy for racism.

It doesn't seem to matter to those crying wolf that what is really going on here can be hypothesized either as only one of two things:
1) an innocuous way of catering to seasoned consumers, or at "worst" 2) loyalty and ethnic solidarity.

There are no signs on the menu that say "Blacks pay double" or "Whites not served here". Anything that falls short of expressing animus towards other races just doesn't deserve to be called racism. You might think Chinese menus are unfair at some level, but that's about all you can say.

And to people who think this practice should be stopped: are Chinese menus so patently unfair that you want to use state coercion to pry open small businesses run by an economic underclass? This is a cross-cultural issue that frankly most of the posters here are simply too ignorant of to be wagging their fingers so authoritatively. I mean, who here is prepared to run with this grievance and condemn real Chinese merchants as racists when you know nothing about them?

The reason why this discussion has exploded the way it has is that we are scratching at an absurdity in the highly abstract and unrealistic way we think about race and civil rights.

Applying broad "non-discrimination" principles just leads to the reductio that Chinese restaurant-owners are racist in the same way that Southern common carriers excluding blacks were racist. It leads to the reductio that a black individual who rises to prosperity from a poor, predominantly black community is racist if he subsequently devotes resources and energy to that community, because he is exercising de facto discrimination in his allocative choices.

Get a grip on your language before "racism" becomes meaningless. Discrimination is not the essence of racism.

Posted by StJoe | February 27, 2007 4:13 PM

who here is prepared to run with this grievance and condemn real Chinese merchants as racists when you know nothing about them?

Not me -- but I will dispute liberal blogger who ought to no better hilighting this practive and declaring there's nothing wrong with it.

Posted by JohnMcG | February 27, 2007 4:23 PM

There are no signs on the menu that say "Blacks pay double" or "Whites not served here". Anything that falls short of expressing animus towards other races just doesn't deserve to be called racism. You might think Chinese menus are unfair at some level, but that's about all you can say.

StJoe, that's not a reality based statement.

http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/housing/housing_coverage.htm

Posted by jerry | February 27, 2007 4:24 PM

I wonder if we can make it past 250 posts on this thread, even after the orginating post drops off the first page. Probably not, though I may be underestimating jerry's righteous rage.

Posted by Korha | February 27, 2007 4:54 PM

If the discussion bores you Korha, what are you doing here besides stalking me?

All you've down 3-5 times now is complain about the length of this thread.

Is there some resource we are taking up by posting 200 comments? That's almost 52,000 bytes! Help! Imminent Collapse of the Internet Predicted!

Or are we just not giving you the attention you desire?

Should you be posting over at FARK under the handle, "Attention Whore?" Look at Korha everyone!

Posted by jerry | February 27, 2007 5:03 PM

It doesn't seem to matter to those crying wolf that what is really going on here can be hypothesized either as only one of two things:
1) an innocuous way of catering to seasoned consumers, or at "worst" 2) loyalty and ethnic solidarity.

Innocuous in spirit, perhaps - not in outcome. And that is giving a big benefit of the doubt - restaurants employ all sorts of practices to reward their actual return customers, not certain language speakers that might be. The second, ethnic solidarity, is insidious and has been used to justify other practices (e.g. hiring discrimination). Oops, I guess I brought up one of those "crazy hypotheticals" again.

we are scratching at an absurdity in the highly abstract and unrealistic way we think about race and civil rights.

Discrimination based on race is wrong. That doesn't seem particularly abstract or absurd.

I don't buy the arguments that language isn't a proxy for race, or can be easily used as such. You won't convince me that it is the same as discount airline seats, or even geographic location (which can be used as a proxy for race in some cases, but the number of variables makes it awfully hard to prove meaningfully). It's Occam's Razor -- all the other explanations (frequent customers, etc) seem far more tenuous.

The only argument that holds any water here is that this is wrong, but not worth the resources to pursue. But that wasn't the original point of the post, nor the point of many, many of the comments that followed. The "outrage" is over the fact that this practice is being defended, not that it isn't being prosecuted vigourosly enough.

Posted by brad | February 27, 2007 5:16 PM

I'm trying to add to the length of the thread actually, though without being too grossly trollish. Apparently I've been unsuccessful in that regard.

I think it's great a thread about chinese restaurant price discrimination has managed to attract over 200 posts. Far from boring, it's been quite enlightening. And due credit goes to you, jerry, for singlehandedly keeping the thread alive. Cheers.

Posted by Korha | February 27, 2007 5:51 PM

Jerry wrote:

StJoe, that's not a reality based statement.

">http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/housing/housing_coverage.htm

Is that supposed to be some kind of gotcha? I do work with a public interest organization that files Fair Housing claims in the DC metropolitan area to protect the housing rights of African-Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities. Even though I disagree that "non-discrimination" is the guiding star of civil rights litigation, that doesn't mean I want to do away with a law that sensible lawyers have used to advance the rights of disempowered minorities. Maybe I have just adopted the "pragmatism" or "ethics without principles" of common lawyers. Please elucidate how the existence of the Fair Housing Act disrupts my reality.

brad wrote:
Discrimination based on race is wrong. That doesn't seem particularly abstract or absurd.

And my position is completely the opposite. Discrimination based on race is often very desirable. I want to make sure there are African-American jurors in a capital case with an African-American defendant. I want district boundaries drawn in such a way that we have some chance of sending people of color to Congress. I want community loyalty and "tending to your roots" to be considered virtuous, not radical ethnic nationalism. All of those things are impossible from your ideal, Stephen Colbert race-blind perspective.

It may seem like common sense to you, but stating that "discrimination based on race is wrong" seems absurd to me. From my perspective you seem to just be chanting a slogan. I think racism is a better candidate for our unequivocal condemnation, and my whole point in posting these comments has been to suggest that "discrimination based on race" is not interchangeable with "racism".

I don't buy the arguments that language isn't a proxy for race, or can be easily used as such. You won't convince me that it is the same as discount airline seats, or even geographic location (which can be used as a proxy for race in some cases, but the number of variables makes it awfully hard to prove meaningfully). It's Occam's Razor -- all the other explanations (frequent customers, etc) seem far more tenuous.

My Occam's Razor cuts the other way. Other posters have pointed out the general ignorance of the fact that written Chinese encompasses many different linguistic dialects and ethnic groups that fall under the Western rubric of "Chinese" -- which category, by the way, did not have the quality of "race" in the United States until the Chinese Exclusion Act period, where the US Census helped to construct the category. For example, as a Taiwanese, I do not consider myself to be part of the same "race" as someone from HK. You can fire your common sense in one direction, but my common sense tells me that people running Chinese restaurants are not racist and are just doing business. Given my knowledge of Chinatowns, your explanation of racism seems much more tenuous.

Posted by StJoe | February 27, 2007 6:22 PM

StJoe nails it.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | February 27, 2007 6:26 PM

You say, "There are no signs on the menu that say "Blacks pay double" or "Whites not served here". Anything that falls short of expressing animus towards other races just doesn't deserve to be called racism."

I am not the fair housing expert you are, but I don't think you need explicit signs that say no blacks allowed inside, no jews allowed to own, no chinese allowed to spend the night for the law to consider a pattern of behavior to be racist.

Sometimes, housing providers try to disguise their discrimination by giving false information about availability of housing, either saying that nothing was available or steering homeseekers to certain areas based on race. Individuals who receive such false information or misdirection may have no knowledge that they have been victims of discrimination. The Department of Justice has brought many cases alleging this kind of discrimination based on race or color.

This seems directly analogous to having two menus with the same items in different languages with different prices.

Common sense is frequently wrong, and can lead to illegal actions:

but my common sense tells me that people running Chinese restaurants are not racist and are just doing business. Given my knowledge of Chinatowns, your explanation of racism seems much more tenuous.

My common sense tells me to be afraid of renting to an African American. It's idiotic and racist and illegal and I recognize that. Common sense tells Hardaway to be afraid of showering with a gay athlete. Apparently, lots of people agree with him. That's common sense for you.

However, my common sense also tells me Chinese restaurants do not intend harm if they list prices differently. But my common sense assures me that the practice still has a racist outcome and there is no justification for it.

Common sense can be right or wrong. And often, your common sense ain't terribly common. Common sense tells me to be confused about who a jury of my peers is. Computer Programmers? Middle-aged jewish guys? Citizens that live near me? Citizens that live near a place I identify more with?

My common sense informs me that there are tradeoffs presented in all of your "good discrimination" scenarios. Common sense tells me being race blind is better than race minded, but that there are important societal tradeoffs involved.

My common sense tells me that charging more for the same items on different menus is not one of those cases.

But if you wish, to say that having a diverse jury is just as important as giving Chinese speakers $1 savings, than go for it.

Posted by jerry | February 27, 2007 6:37 PM

jerry you came very close to raising serious points, but then you regressed back to all fours with this:

But if you wish, to say that having a diverse jury is just as important as giving Chinese speakers $1 savings, than go for it.

So I'll ignore that vacuous point and address something else you said:

You say, "There are no signs on the menu that say "Blacks pay double" or "Whites not served here". Anything that falls short of expressing animus towards other races just doesn't deserve to be called racism."

I am not the fair housing expert you are, but I don't think you need explicit signs that say no blacks allowed inside, no jews allowed to own, no chinese allowed to spend the night for the law to consider a pattern of behavior to be racist.

First of all just for disclosure, I am not a fair housing expert, I just work with lawyers who are (the group does a wide range of litigation from fair housing to employment to refugee rights -- right now I work in prison reform). But I do know enough to say that you are right that you don't need explicit showings of racial animus in order to fall within the analytic umbrella of the Fair Housing Act. Notwithstanding that, I think a lawyer who used civil rights statutes and constitutional laww to indiscriminately eliminate any form of race-consciousness in all areas of life would be reversing the progress of civil rights. For example, I think attempting to dismantle affirmative action through the equal protection clause is perverse.

I think we can find common ground in approving of the way the Fair Housing Act is drafted, but for me that approval is contingent upon the DOJ and private litigators (i.e. those selectively vindicating rights granted by the statute) beings sophisticated enough to disabuse themselves of race-blindness.

Posted by StJoe | February 27, 2007 7:02 PM

From my perspective you seem to just be chanting a slogan.

Well, after several posts pointing out my reasoning, I feel like I should be surprised at this patronizing tone, but I am not. If you want to make the claim that this whole idea is absurd and abstracted intellectualism, don't be surprised by an answer that seems reductionist. I suppose I could have been more elaborate by saying that race-based discrimination that causes material harm to the victim is wrong (things like discrimination in sales, hiring, etc), but somehow I felt like it was obvious. Sorry if I misled you.

my whole point in posting these comments has been to suggest that "discrimination based on race" is not interchangeable with "racism".

I don't remember saying that. Where there is a material harm done, I simply disagree with accepting the policy. I honestly don't care whether someone has hate in his heart... I am not personally condemning souls, I am arguing that a policy should be illegal. It is the policy, not the person, that is "racist" (a term, frankly, I think you and the other people defending the position brought to the table, not us aggrieved white men).

Other posters have pointed out the general ignorance of the fact that written Chinese encompasses many different linguistic dialects and ethnic groups that fall under the Western rubric of "Chinese"

I fail to see that parsing the group even further creates justification. I'd probably feel the same if you needed to speak Welsh to get a non-inflated price at a store. You can cast the net as widely or narrowly as you want, it is still racism or ethnocentrism.

Given my knowledge of Chinatowns, your explanation of racism seems much more tenuous.

You defined me as saying that someone was racist, then promptly knocked down your own invention. If you can't see the difference between saying that a policy that has the effect of racial discrimination is bad, and impugning personal motives, I'm not sure I can help.

Posted by brad | February 27, 2007 7:08 PM

Which is true if by local you mean local Chinese speakers and not local hispanics or local anyone else, and if anyone anywhere still said that it was okay to discriminate on the basis of race.

The locals in Chinatown are, in fact, Chinese and not Hispanic. I'm sorry it took 200 comments for you to understand this basic fact.

Businesses want to make as much as possible off one-time visitors, and encourage locals and repeat customers to keep coming back. Having Chinese-language menus isn't a perfect proxy for this distinction, obviously, but it's pretty close and that's what they're going for in either event. There's absolutely no invidious intent.

The exact same thing happens in small towns across America, only there the difference is that you get charged more if you're from "out of town." The motivation is the same in either case, though.

Posted by Steve | February 27, 2007 7:20 PM

I don't live in NYC. The locals in Chinatown are only Chinese? That's not the way it works in San Francisco, Oakland, or Los Angeles.

I suspect you have a very narrow definition of local.

And it still ain't right to define local along ethnic or racial llines. If you want to make it cheaper for locals than for tourists, you don't say, can you speak chinese, you give out a punch card where the 10th meal is free.

StJoe, my claim wasn't vacuous: you are trying to equate these good ends
Discrimination based on race is often very desirable. I want to make sure there are African-American jurors in a capital case with an African-American defendant. I want district boundaries drawn in such a way that we have some chance of sending people of color to Congress. I want community loyalty and "tending to your roots" to be considered virtuous, not radical ethnic nationalism with this not so good end
Local chinese speakers get a dollar discount and say they are equal and so justify a not so good means, discrimination.

This entire time I've been saying that no one here who is defending this petty little holdover of racism will quantify just what deficit the Chinese population is suffering from, or quantify just how the $1 discriminatory fee will offset that deficit.

And you continue.

"It's such a small little nothing, and no one there has the intent to be racist."

I think we agree on both those points. But not intending to be racist and not being racist are two different things.

This is racism, and not nearly as justifiable as creating a district that can send a person of color to government.

Posted by jerry | February 27, 2007 7:33 PM

The locals in Chinatown are, in fact, Chinese and not Hispanic. I'm sorry it took 200 comments for you to understand this basic fact.

I was not aware that only Chinese people lived in Chinatown. Thanks for bringing this fact to my attention.

Or does this statement mean that it's a "basic fact" that a black resident in a majority white neighborhood is not a "local"?

Posted by JakeV | February 27, 2007 7:41 PM

Gregorio - The Cantonese certainly would have no place for a gai jin since it unlikely they would know what the Japanese word for foreigner means. I know we all look a like but we speak different lanugages and are different people. A douche bag such as yourself would be a gwai lo in Cantonese.

Posted by ura dick | February 27, 2007 8:38 PM

Nowhere in the Daily News story does it say the items on the English menu were the same as the items on the Chinese menu.
All it states is "The prices on that menu, written in Chinese, were an average of $1 cheaper per dish." When this is all said and done I bet it will be an ala cart menu vs a family style menu.

Posted by dont trust whitey | February 27, 2007 9:02 PM

StJoe, my claim wasn't vacuous: you are trying to equate these good ends ... [Local chinese speakers get a dollar discount] and say they are equal and so justify a not so good means, discrimination.

Again, the point is that discrimination is not the essence of racism. I am not equating ends. I am pointing out that if you follow the principle of non-discrimination you reach absurd conclusions.

I did not bring up trial by jury and representatives of color because I believe those are awesome as bargain noodles. I highlighted those ends to make the larger point that the competing principle of race-conscious is a better ideal. We should examine race as lived, rather than in an analytic vaccum that is insensitive to social power, economic status, history, you get the point. I'm sure you've heard that line from a historicists, critical leftist, or critical race theorists at some point before. I happen to think it's correct.

I think it is foolish to concede that "discrimination", thought of as treating one race different from another, is the central problem of race in our society. It bolsters a conservative picture of racial justice that distorts the severe racial dilemmas we face in this country. See e.g. this discussion, where bargain Chinese food is now something for the Human Rights Commission to investigate.

I cannot believe I need to spell this out. I am not equating the right to cheaper Chinese food with the right to fair housing, or the right to a fair mortgage loan, or the right to a trial by a jury of your peers.

Posted by StJoe | February 27, 2007 9:44 PM

We should examine race as lived, rather than in an analytic vacuum that is insensitive to social power, economic status, history, you get the point. I'm sure you've heard that line from a historicists, critical leftist, or critical race theorists at some point before. I happen to think it's correct.

I have no idea what you are talking about. It sounds insane and a quick way to get to race wars, but if you want to post some links, I would actually read them.

In the meantime, it smells like a gussied up rationalization for racial discrimination. And frankly until this thread came along, I never heard anyone try to justify that just to obtain discount Chinese food.

Posted by jerry | February 27, 2007 10:01 PM

I don't think you could find it online, but a good introduction to critical race theory is "Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement" by Kimberly Crenshaw et. al. If you have access to LEXIS or any other online database of scholarship, you could probably read about these ideas in any race-related article by Kimberly Crenshaw, Derrek Bell, Gary Peller, or Mari Matsuda.

I am most influenced by Gary Peller, a professor of mine at Georgetown Law. He is one of the co-editors of the mentioned text.

The pitfalls of "non-discrimination" are not limited to race, since they also play out in the gender context, although I can't think of any specific feminist scholars dealing with this topic directly since I'm not as well-read on this.

Posted by StJoe | February 28, 2007 12:55 AM

Actually, here is a good link with a summary of some critical race critiques of colorblindness. http://edr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/33/5/26.pdf

See the section on "Critique of Liberalism"

Posted by StJoe | February 28, 2007 1:06 AM

dointrtrustwhitey, the Daily News article is wrong, or incomplete. There were identically named dishes on both menus, with the ones Chinese language menu being slightly cheaper. So it really is price discrimination unless the identically-named dishes were not, in fact, the same dish.

Posted by AlanC9 | February 28, 2007 1:37 AM

StJoe, thanks for the last link. Based on those 6 pages, it would be hard for me to consider myself an expert on CRT.

But it seems like crap and/or you seem to be taking it beyond it's scope.

CRT scholars argue that
colorblindness has been adopted as a way
to justify ignoring and dismantling racebased
policies that were designed to address
societal inequity

As I've asked before, exactly what inequities are the Chinese speakers suffering from, and how is a dual menu pricing scheme designed to address those. Your response is I gather to offer counter stories so I will appreciate that the Chinese are not being intentionally racist. I think everyone agrees the restaurant owners are not being intentionally racist. But no one has bothered to explain what the societal inequity is, and wanting to charge tourists more is not a societal inequity.

I am about as liberal as they come, but CRT feeds into all the stereotypes, fears, and caricatures that conservatives complain about victim mentality and then wants that shit put into law.

Try to go with that CRT agenda and you will have race riots. Especially if you want to claim that a CRT counter story telling somehow makes the dual chinese menu thing okay.

Under the notion of incremental
change, gains for marginalized groups
must come at a slow pace that is palatable
for those in power. In this discourse,
equality, rather than equity is sought. In
seeking equality rather than equity, the
processes, structures, and ideologies that
justify inequity are not addressed and
dismantled. Remedies based on equality
assume that citizens have the same opportunities
and experiences. Race, and experiences
based on race are not equal, thus,
the experiences that people of color have
with respect to race and racism create an
unequal situation. Equity, however, recognizes
that the playing field is unequal and
attempts to address the inequality. Hence,
incremental change appears to benefit
those who are not directly adversely affected
by social, economic, and educational
inequity that come as a result of
racism and racist practices.

StJoe, you gave me a link that I read, here is a link for you:

Harrison Bergeron

Posted by jerry | February 28, 2007 9:59 AM

jerry I think you misunderstand what I am getting at by bringing up race discourse. I am not attempting to depict the Chinese language menus as some kind of remedy for wrongs done to Chinese speakers as a community. That would indeed be stupid.

I am saying, as I have from the very beginning, that I think there's nothing wrong with it, even though it falls into the category of "discrimination". Moreover, I made the larger point that the fact this opinion is so surprising to people (look how big a reaction Matt's opinion elicited) shows that our dominant ways of thinking about racial justice are woefully inadequate.

Thanks for the link: I do like me some Vonnegut but haven't gone through that story before. You might be surprised to find that I, too, think the ideal of equality is not a particularly coherent one.

Posted by StJoe | February 28, 2007 1:35 PM

I don't think we're that far apart. No one seems to think this is a big deal. As others have pointed out, the outrage is that there is a difference between thinking it is not a big deal and Matt actually defending the practice.

Without putting words in your mouth, I think there is a difference between saying there is nothing wrong with it, and actually defending the practice, especially since there are less onerous ways of achieving the same result, i.e., handing out frequent diner punch cards for example, or just comping the locals that you actually recognize a larger beverage or a dessert.

Posted by jerry | February 28, 2007 2:41 PM

Price Discrimination

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