What's behind racial differences in restaurant tipping?

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Within the U.S. restaurant industry, black customers are generally considered comparatively poor tippers. One recent survey of roughly 1,000 restaurant servers from across the nation found that 34 percent thought black diners were “very bad” tippers. An additional 36 percent thought black patrons were “below average” tippers. In contrast, 98 percent of those surveyed believed white customers were “average” or “above average” tippers.

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This widespread negative perception of black peoples’ tipping practices cannot be attributed solely to racism because it is consistent with a substantial body of empirical evidence. A number of different studies using different methodologies and different geographic samples have found that, on average, black people do indeed tip less than whites in U.S. restaurants.

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studies have consistently observed a reliable black-white tipping difference even after controlling for consumers’ socioeconomic status, including income and education, and after controlling for perceptions of service quality. This race difference in tipping is also observed regardless of whether the server is white or black.

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How, then, do we account for this difference in tipping? Why do black patrons tip less, on average, than whites?

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Racial differences in tipping create numerous problems for all involved. Most notably, the observed black-white tipping difference has been linked to the delivery of relatively inferior service to black customers. In fact, in the previously cited national survey of restaurant servers, over half of the respondents admitted that they don’t always give their best effort when waiting on black customers.

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Race-based service discrimination not only compromises black peoples’ typical dining experiences, but also renders restaurants vulnerable to costly litigation and undermines their bottom line by discouraging black patronage.

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Additionally, employers’ ability to attract and retain waitstaff is largely predicated on the amount of tipped income that can be earned in their establishments. Therefore, restaurants with a large black clientele may have a difficult time attracting and retaining wait staff, which increases costs, lowers profits and ultimately makes black communities less attractive places to locate full-service restaurants.

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Our research indicates that black people tip less because they believe servers expect lower tips, and they underestimate the tip amounts that others leave.

Whereas roughly 70 percent of whites identify the customary or expected restaurant tip to fall within 15-20 percent of the bill, only about 35 percent of blacks do.

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These findings are important: They suggest that black-white differences in tipping could be sizably reduced by publicly promoting social expectations regarding how much consumers should and typically do tip their servers in restaurants (typically 15-20 percent of the bill).

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WashingtonPost

Long story short:

1) Studies show that black people do indeed tip less
2) Black people get inferior service because they are black and there exists a stigma that they tip less
3) the Washington Post thinks that they tip less because they simply haven't been told they should tip more (than sometimes nothing at all)
4) Point #3 is based on a study that showed that white people on average think a suitable tip is 14.5% and black people on average believe that number to be 13.4%. That 1.1% difference in appropriate tipping expectations is supposed to explain the disparity
5) The solution is simply to get the word out that a tip should be more