NPR

Food Stall Serves Up A Social Experiment: Charge White Customers More Than Minorities

To highlight racial income disparity, a chef in New Orleans opened a food stall, asking whites to pay $30 and people of color to pay $12 for the same meal. How did it play out?
A customer approaches the window at Saartj, a pop-up food stall in New Orleans running a social experiment. Customers of color are charged the listed $12 price for a meal. White customers are told about the income gap in New Orleans between whites and African-Americans and asked if they want to pay $30 instead, a price that reflects the gap.

Can a $12 lunch change the way think about racial wealth disparity in America? How about a $30 lunch? That's the premise behind a social experiment playing out in a New Orleans food stall.

Chef Tunde Way opened his pop-up stall in the city's Roux Carre venue in early February. The listed price for the Nigerian food is $12. But when a white person walks up to order, they are asked to pay $30. Why? "It's two-and-a half times more than the $12 meal, which reflects the income disparity" between whites and African-Americans in New Orleans, says Wey.

The median income for African-American households in. Over the same time, median income for white households in the city remained roughly the same, $61,117 to $60,070. In 2013, the median household income for African-Americans in metro New Orleans was 54 percent lower than for whites.

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