Author Ibram X. Kendi speaks in Portland about the legacy of slavery and tipping wages

Paying lower wages to restaurant workers in the United States is part of the legacy of slavery and continues to contribute to a system of oppression today, a bestselling author, historian and anti-racism activist said Friday night. in Portland.

“The slavers imagined that they were providing wages for the slaves by providing them with clothing, housing, ‘Christianity’ and ‘civilization,'” said Ibram X. Kendi. “In some cases, if not many, they would also provide what they called tips on top of what they considered these wages.”

During the 1830s and 1840s when movements began to end slavery, there were pro-slavery theories that slavery was good for slaves. “It’s striking because that’s precisely the argument that people are making today, that somehow this (tipped) wage structure is good for restaurant workers,” he said. Kendi said.

Kendi, who is the author of ‘How to Be an Anti-Racist’ and other books, spoke at the First Parish Unitarian Church as part of an event organized by One Fair Wage, a group promoting Question D on the Portland ballot in November. Issue D would raise the minimum wage to $18 an hour by 2025 and also abolish subminimum credit or tipped wages for service workers whose employers can currently pay them less than minimum wage provided that the difference is compensated by tips.

Opponents of the issue, including many tipped workers, say the change is unnecessary and could have unintended consequences such as restaurants having to close or laying off staff due to higher costs, d ‘increased automation and service charges.

Kendi was joined by Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, a Boston-based organization that advocates for all workers to receive full minimum wage and for service workers to earn regular minimum wage plus tips. Most states, including Maine, currently have a lower minimum wage for service workers.

Jayaraman provided a brief history of how restaurant tipping came out of slavery ahead of a Q&A with Kendi. Tipping originated in Europe in the United States, but it didn’t catch on until 1853, when waiters in the country’s big cities, most of whom were white men, went on a nationwide strike to demand higher wages. high, she said.

The restaurant industry initially replaced men with white women, thinking they could pay them less, but 10 years later, after emancipation, “something happened that they thought was an opportunity even better,” Jayaraman said.

Spectators fill the pews of First Parish Church to hear Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, best-selling author of “How to Be an Anti-Racist,” speak with Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage Friday. Brianna Soukup/staff photographer

“They felt it was an opportunity to essentially offer black people, black women in particular, the opportunity to work, to have the privilege of earning tips from white people and working for free,” she said. declared.

Today, restaurant workers continue to have a much lower federal wage for tipped workers – $2.13 an hour – although the minimum tip in Maine and Portland is over $6. $ per hour.

“That aligns pretty well with my findings and the history of racism – that is, you have extremely powerful interests that institute a racist policy that disproportionately harms, in this case women of color, and in this case also to other people, including white people. people,” Kendi said.

Kendi said there are ways to fight historically racist policies, including through organized labor.

“I think (workers) recognize the ways in which multiracial organizing is essential to union organizing,” Kendi said. “But to engage in multiracial organizing, workers must overcome racist and sexist ideas that have historically divided the workforce.”

He said people must work to overcome their own biases, such as ideas that poor people don’t work as hard, or that people killed by police were killed because they were reckless with the police.

“Once we start to unlearn these racist ideas, it allows us to start seeing the problem not as people, but as real policies, like sub-minimum wage, as the cause of inequality,” Kendi said. . “When we start seeing these policies and practices as the problem, we can start organizing to eliminate them.”

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