Tipping in the U.S. is a civil rights issue
By JEAN JIANG | April 28, 2020Jobs which were available for formerly enslaved workers were limited. As a result, many African-American workers were employed in menial jobs as servants, waiters or barbers. At that time, tipping was a phenomenon that hadn’t been democratized yet in America. Nonetheless, the white ruling class saw the tipping system as a way to perpetuate the racial hierarchy that slavery represented.