Black People

[dragon14]

My experience waiting tables and delivering pizza 15 or so years ago mirrors vkh's story. When waiting tables the average white tip was 15% while the average black tip was 5%.

When working for Domino's I kept a log one weekend of my tips (I always did this) and the race of the customer (I did this one weekend). White customers tipped 90 percent of the time and my sample size was around 130 customers. I had a total of 8 black customers that weekend and 0 of the 8 tipped. For those eight deliveries I didn't get a cent.

Now I do not know the motivation of a NYC cab driver or even if they frequently pass up black customers. But my own experiences receiving tips makes me wonder if this is the primary motivation of cabbies that pass up black customers or is it a fear of certain areas that they do not wish to go to (logically or illogically).

And to be fair, black income on average is far lower than white income and perhaps that's the reason for the tip discrepancy. But as one who works off tips, I can see cabbies preferring those who are more likely to tip well.