Toronto Restaurant Fined $10,000

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The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has ordered a Chinese restaurant in downtown Toronto to pay a black man $10,000 as compensation for a rights violation after it required him and three black companions to prepay for their meals.

In May, 2014, Emile Wickham went to Hong Shing Chinese Restaurant, a popular establishment just east of Toronto’s Chinatown, for a late-night birthday dinner with friends. After the server took their order, he told the group they would need to pay for their meals in full before receiving them, according to testimony Mr. Wickham gave at the April tribunal hearing. They questioned the server, who explained this was restaurant policy, and they obliged.

But Mr. Wickham was unsettled by this. Realizing he and his companions were the only black people in the restaurant, he approached other diners to ask if they’d been required to prepay and all said no.

When the server later returned to the table, Mr. Wickham and his friends questioned him about the policy, and the server admitted they were the only ones who had prepaid. He and another staff member asked Mr. Wickham and his friends if they wanted a refund. The group took their money and left the restaurant.

In her decision, adjudicator Esi Codjoe concluded that restaurant staff had violated section 1 of the province’s human-rights code – which guarantees equal treatment when accessing goods, services and facilities – when they treated Mr. Wickham as “a potential thief in waiting.”

“His mere presence as a Black man in a restaurant was presumed to be sufficient evidence of his presumed propensity to engage in criminal behaviour,” she wrote.

Staff from Hong Shing did not attend the tribunal hearing, nor did they send legal representation. But in November, 2015, six months after Mr. Wickham had filed his human-rights complaint, the restaurant submitted a response to the tribunal through a lawyer. In it, they explained the restaurant “attracts something of a transient crowd” and dine and dashes were common, so they adopted a policy requiring customers whom staff did not recognize as regulars to prepay for their food.

Ms. Codjoe rejected this explanation in her decision, saying there was no evidence such a policy existed, that the other patrons that night were regulars or that Mr. Wickham’s party was advised of this policy when they were at the restaurant.

Mr. Wickham said the experience has made him question the popular narrative that big cities like Toronto are harmonious multicultural havens.

“I feel a lot of Canadians feel like because they don’t say the N-word or they have that black colleague or they like to eat Jamaican food and know about roti and doubles” they think they’re not racist, Mr. Wickham said.

In a 2017 consultation on racial profiling conducted by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the retail/private business sector was the one in which black respondents reported encountering the highest level of discrimination. About 47 per cent said they’d been profiled in this setting, a rate much higher than all other groups surveyed.

 

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-toronto-restaurant-ordered-to-pay-10000-after-asking-black-customers/?cmpid=rss&click=sf_globe

[LIKELADYAGAGA 4,080]

I feel like this is important but I'm too tired to read all the text on this thread

[PunkTheFunk 125,703]

I wonder if there's a 10% discount if they pay the fine in cash

[dit 46,738]

Glad that racist restaurant got fined 10k. what they did was 100% gross and wrong. 

[Sanju 1,504]

Disgusting how the tried to get away with it by lying.. But I'm glad they got fined. Make it a lesson to be learned.

[kabirartfling 9,063]

Imagine being outcasted like this 

The restaurant deserves the fine tbh, you have opened a restaurant where people (regular and new) will always come in, you cannot judge them just on the basis of color or ethnicity. 

[ALGAYDO 35,061]

The worst part about this is that they actively tried to cover their asses by saying it was “policy” but then they got caught in the lie  

I’m glad they got fined. The management and server should be replaced as well tbh 

[Chris Evans 8,919]

it's what they deserve

[RadioIsOurs 13,876]

I feel like this has been a prevailing issue between us Asians and black people; we need to learn how to GET ALONG!

[MonsterPaws 2,745]

37 minutes ago, LIKELADYAGAGA said:

I feel like this is important but I'm too tired to read all the text on this thread

TL;DR: Waiters made the only black customers in the restaurant pre-pay their meals under "restaurant policy." The policy didn't and never existed, and proven on the spot when the black customers confronted the customers around him. Just for blacks apparently.

Super TL;DR: Racism isn't gone yet.

[Haroon 49,685]

Didn't they keep questioning the server after it was revealed that the other people hadn't been asked to pre-pay? I know if I was there I wouldn't have let that go because I'd just been lied to

This is horrible though and I feel like the restaurant's just gonna get themselves caught in more lies  Asking people who aren't regulars to pre-pay for their meal, how ridiculous  

[GypsyBabe 22,836]

This is so racist and asinine. They deserve to be fined. 

[ALGAYDO 35,061]

3 hours ago, RadioIsOurs said:

I feel like this has been a prevailing issue between us Asians and black people; we need to learn how to GET ALONG!

It’s crazy cause I used to think that Asians (especiales Koreans) were hella cool with black people, this news really shocked me lol

[Oriane 22,738]

53 minutes ago, ALGAYDO said:

It’s crazy cause I used to think that Asians (especiales Koreans) were hella cool with black people, this news really shocked me lol

I think there's more racism that we might think from Asian people and in Asian countries. I know someone who works in Japan, he was telling his employer that Japan was a very safe place to live and there were not thugs etc, and the employer said "it's normal, we don't have Arabs here".

[RAMROD 117,006]

Just now, Oriane said:

I think there's more racism that we might think from Asian people and in Asian countries. I know someone who works in Japan, he was telling his employer that Japan was a very safe place to live and there were not thugs etc, and the employer said "it's normal, we don't have Arabs here".

Yeah.

I mean, my dad is direct victim of it and he's white. Marrying my Asian mom, caused us to be excommunicated by that part of family. Oh, he is called as White Devil too.

By the way, they even being discriminating to fellow Asians too. Especially to dark skinned Asians, cos in the East Asian it is synonymous to poor people like the farmers, and seamen and such people who got their skin burned from being under the sun all day. Like, how ridiculous.