My Experience With Racism in a Canadian Chinese Restaurant

Today, I read about the Chinese restaurant in Toronto that was ordered by the Ontario Human Rights Commission to pay $10,000 (about $7,800 U.S. dollars) for telling black customers to prepay for their meals.

It immediately reminded me of an incident which took place at a Chinese restaurant in Ottawa nearly 25 years ago. This incident involved a friend of mine named Logong Raditlhokwa. A native of Botswana, he had been my housemate during my second year at Carleton University. He was pursuing his MSW and we spent many hours talking. After the academic year, I moved to another part of the city and he would soon return to Botswana. Before he left, I invited him to my favorite Chinese restaurant in Ottawa's little Chinatown on Somerset Street to introduce him to the wonders of hot and sour soup.

I had been at this restaurant many times with various friends. But this was the first time I had been there with a friend who happened to be black. This time things were very different. The waiters would not acknowledge Logong. When I ordered my usual large bowl of hot and sour they insisted I order a smaller bowl, but I said it would be large. It took a long time for our food to come and when it did they practically threw Logong's food at him. I could see all of this was making Logong quite uncomfortable. I asked him if he wanted to leave or for me to say something. He wanted neither. We were staying and eating whether they liked it or not. So we did but neither I nor my friends ever ate at that restaurant again.

Logong would soon return to Botswana and I would never see him again. I wish we had parted on happier circumstances. Sadly, he died in 2015 at the age of 50.

I often wonder what would have happened had I taken my mentor Moffat Makuto and his wife Amy out to that Chinese restaurant. You see Moffat is from Zimbabwe and Amy is from Hong Kong. They would have gone ballistic.

Food is something that ought to bring people together. But hatred is a custom as ancient as our meal time. Segregated lunch counters might be illegal these days, but one cannot legislate away bigotry and ignorance.

With that said, while such attitudes will always be around, I would like to think these incidents are the exception rather than the rule. If it weren't I would have stopped eating Chinese food long ago.