A Chinese restaurant in Toronto has been ordered to pay a black man more than £5,660 ($10,000 CA) in compensation for a rights violation after requiring him to prepay for a meal.
Emile Wickham, 31, and his three companions were the only diners in Hong Shing restaurant, downtown Toronto, to pay their bill before eating when they visited the eatery in May 2014.
Mr Wickham had been celebrating his birthday at the popular establishment just east of Toronto’s Chinatown.
The server told the group they would need to pay for their meals in full before receiving them after taking their order, according to testimony provided by Mr Wickham at an April tribunal hearing.
They questioned the server, who explained it was restaurant policy, and they obliged.
Realising he and his friends were the only black people in the restaurant, Mr Wickham approached other diners to ask them if they had been required to prepay for their meals and they all said no.
Mr Wickham and his friends questioned the server once again, who admitted that the three men were the only ones who had prepaid.
The server and another staff member asked Mr Wickham and his friends if they wanted a refund, so the group took their money and left the restaurant.
Adjudicator Esi Codjoe of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal concluded that restaurant staff had violated section one of the province’s human rights code by treating Mr Wickham and his friends as potential thieves.
She wrote: “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.
“At its core racial profiling is a form of short hand that enables the perpetrator of the behaviour to assume certain facts, and ignore others.”
In November 2015, six months after Mr Wickham had filed his human rights complaint, the restaurant submitted a response through a lawyer.
They attempted to justify the incident by claiming that the restaurant “attracts something of a transient crowd” and that dine and dashes were common. They said that they adopted a policy requiring customers whom staff did not recognise as regulars to prepay for their food.
Ms Codjoe rejected the explanation and said there was no evidence such a policy existed.
The tribunal ordered the restaurant to pay Mr Wickham $10,000 as compensation for his Code rights infringement, “and for the injury to his dignity, feelings and self-respect.”
Mr Wickham said the experience made him question the idea that big cities such as Toronto are harmonious multicultural havens.
He told the Globe and Mail: “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." - ES
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