Source: Gandee Vasan / Getty
They say the only way to get White People to realize injustices is to hit them where it hurts — their pockets.
Obviously, Chef Tunde Wey of New Orleans got them memo. Last month, Chef Wey opened his pop-up stall in the Louisiana’s Roux Carre venue and listed the price for the Nigerian food as $12. But when white people walk up to order, they were asked whether they want to pay $30.
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According to Wey, the method behind the chef’s madness was that “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. Statistics show that the median income for African-American households in New Orleans fell from $32,332 in 2000 to $27,812 in 2013 — while the median income for white households in the city remained roughly the same, $61,117 to $60,070.
So how did White customers react to the experiment? Wey says, “Some of them are enthusiastic, some of them are bamboozled a bit by it. But the majority of white folks, nearly 80 percent, decided to pay.”
The official food stall, called Saartj, is a reference to a 19th-century black South African woman infamously advertised as a “freak show” in Europe. The irony.
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