Councilman John Liu
I’d love to get to know the readers of this blog, so I thought I’d pose a question to all of you. I hope you’ll all drop a comment if you have an opinion. Remember, registration on big WOWO is not necessary. I welcome everyone to share his or her voice.
In our podcast last week with William, James, Jason, Larry, and myself, we were talking about “Crabs in a Bucket,” and William mentioned that Councilman John Liu has taken flack from some Asian American groups for supposedly being a “media whore.” Minority Militant blogged about it here. (And I probably wouldn’t be writing this post if he hadn’t used his blog to bring attention to this part of our podcast…so, thank you.)
One thing that I’ve always respected about John Liu is that he’s always gone beyond the call of duty when it comes to representing us. He’s fought racist radio talk show hosts, and he’s taken bold steps to make sure Asian Americans are part of the dialogue in NYC. He’s a true hero.
But he’s also fair. I remember a few years back when there was a case involving a Chinese restaurant in which the restaurant would charge tax only to non-Chinese customers. When asked about it, Liu said that it was discriminatory and that no one should be allowed to discriminate. He has principles, and he sticks to them. That’s keeping it real.
So how does this relate to my Question for Readers?
This past Saturday, I went to my favorite Asian grocery store. They always have two newspaper ads, one in English, and another in an Asian language. I don’t want to say which Asian language since I’d prefer not to reveal the identity of the store. I will say, however, for those who would accuse me of being Twinkie-ish, that the language is not Chinese, which would be my ancestral language.
Anyway, I brought the package of ramen to the counter, and they charged me the regular price. So I took it up to the desk to complain. The woman at the complaint desk was very nice, and she pointed out that the ad mentioned the sale was only Monday through Thursday. Since I was there on a Saturday, the sale didn’t apply to my purchase. I looked at the paper again, and it didn’t say anything about Monday through Thursday, at least not in English. As it turns out, the sale AND the terms of the sale were not mentioned in the English version of the paper, but they were mentioned in the foreign-language version, which most people in the U.S. can’t read. Because I couldn’t read the foreign language version, I was not aware of the terms of the sale. I probably could’ve returned the ramen, but I knew I wouldn’t be returning during the week to get the sale.
So my question is this: Was I a victim of discrimination? Unlike the tax issue with the Chinese restaurants, the supermarket would’ve given me the same deal as everyone else, but only people from a certain Asian heritage would be likely to know about the deals since they only publish them in their native language.
If this is legal and non-discriminatory, the Chinese restaurant with the racial tax code could’ve worked around the tax issue by making a separate Chinese menu with deals that no one else knew about. The price breaks would then only go mostly to Chinese people.
Ideas? Opinions?
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But here is an...
I agree with everything you said. About #1…I think...
Byron,
I would have no problem with simply leaving this particular situation unanswered until the day that Asian-looking people have the same degree of economic and political influence in the U.S. as white people do.
-William
William,
Thanks for your honest opinion!
B.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say you were a victim of discrimination – although it’s somewhat evident. It sounds more like a case of false advertisement to me. Then again, it might’ve been miscommunication between the Chinese advertisement writer and the English advertisement writer not being on the same page. Try checking out another one and seeing if the same practice was employed again. If it is, then you have yourself case.
Thanks for your comment!
Actually, they do this every week. There’s an English language advertisement, and then there’s a foreign language ad. The two are different every week.
I think I may just send them a letter to let them know. It’s a fun place to shop, but I think it’s bad business to give two different prices to two demographics.
I think that if you continue to see the consistency in the English ads with an omission of information then I would consider this a discriminatory.
The information in the add is surely intended to be public knowledge. But if this “public knowledge” is restricted to a certain group of people then I see a problem.
In other words, if what they’re putting out is supposed to be known by everyone or can apply to anyone, and they don’t let everyone know what the real deal is — what the catch is.
Or in a weird, dramatic, metaphorical sense, It’s like saying we can give everyone a super power, and only telling all the people under 5’5″ that if you want a super power, you’d be losing your left foot and right eye.
Now, for that Chinese restaurant, on other hand, since the discount is not presumed to be common knowledge, I’d see it as more of “Gettin’ da hookup” Somewhere because the person and you had something in common, or because the person brightened your day, or is a personal friend (last one is bad business ethic but hey…)
Of course I think the problems are the fact that is is indiscriminately given to Chinese, and the fact that it’s specifically the tax they’re not paying.
Glad you’re not releasing the stores name though, they’d probably receive hell from it if some people in the area found out.
I’m actually going to write them to complain. I don’t know if they’ll do anything–as I understand the law, there’s no law against advertising certain deals in certain languages–but I need to let them know. As some Thymos members have said, it’s bad business and bad ethics.
Hey, nice website. I’m not really an activist, but I wanted to chip in.
Price discrimination is everywhere. Senior citizens and students get discounts for the same level of service. Kids get to watch movies for less. The end goal is less about helping the less fortunate than it is about maximizing the bottom line. It’s about getting people who are willing to pay more to actually pay more.
But yeah, it becomes an issue when race is involved. On one hand, immigrants tend to much poorer and more price sensitive (I’m from Chinatown NYC). Is it wrong to charge immigrants a lower price? On the other hand, this is also race-based discrimination where there are laws against such practices.
I’ve actually been on both tiers of this discrimination. Back in the day, I didn’t pay tax on infrequent restaurant meals. Just the other day I got a smaller discount when I bought some English related stuff from a store.
Even though in my heart I agree with William (the first post), there is no way something like this can be enforced legally. However, it’s generally ok to discriminate based on some special status. The key is to find the that special status that has the greatest overlap with the immigrant community.
(By the way, where I’m from, wowo is a monster that chews up little little kids that don’t finish their rice or eat their vegetables. When did it become a cute, fluffy, stuffed animal? Haha…just ribbin’ ya.)
Hyhy,
Thanks for stopping by! Thanks also for dropping a comment!
I’m actually staying away from commenting on this particular topic–mostly because I want to get more honest opinions like yours–but I hope you’ll drop comments on some of the other posts.
Thanks also for the hint on wowos! Hopefully my son won’t learn of big WOWO’s evil-twin-brother-alter-ego until wayyy in the future!
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